News.com.au is reporting today that the new Google Voice Search app for the iPhone can’t handle the Australian Accent. The idea behind the app (short for application) is to allow hands free searching.
The app is a free download from the iTunes store but Australian customers might want to take note, the Australian accent is returning some bizarre search results.
According to the article in news.com.au, the number eight becomes a search for “ike”, seven turns into “Clinton”, and don’t even try searching for the number six.
Google admits the app works best with North American accents so I think we all need to get a dialect coach :-)
This is not just a local phenomenon, Roger Ellinson from Kent said, “I’ve got a traditional Kentish accent and the thing kept on spitting back ridiculous things, I asked it to find my nearest pizza take away and it came back with something about volcanoes.”
A News.com.au test found that the voice search tends to work best with multisyllabic words – it was able to understand “supercalafragilisticexpialadocious” in an Australian accent, yet still had trouble with simple words like fish, lunch, and news.
I will download this app and get a bunch of people to try it out for an official Geek Actually test run. I’ll report the results in the next podcast – episode 16.
