The Weekly Round-Up: 21.11.08

I say tom-ah-to, you say tom-ay-to, Google says gorillas or kitchen sink...

No, the Round-Up's not trying to ruin Gershwin songs but is referring to the launch of Google's hotly anticipated voice activated search engine for the iPhone.

The latest cool free Google Mobile app for the iPhone lets users search Google by voice - a blessing for the Round-Up and other sausage-fingered users (and this poor guy no doubt) who've struggled to master Apple's touchscreen keyboard.

It's simple to use - after bringing the iPhone to your face as if making a call, it beeps and you speak your search query. Hey presto, Google brings up the results. Brilliant!

Unless you're British, that is.

Google warns that the application currently only works for the English language and says it works best with North American accents - and it's not kidding if reports about some of the problems Brits have had with the voice search recognising those weird Limey accents are true.

A user with a Welsh accent using voice search for 'iPhone' returned searches for 'gorillas' and 'kitchen sink', according to the Daily Telegraph, while someone in Kent worryingly got back 'my sister'. The "traditional Kentish accent" returned searches for 'volcanoes' after a query about 'pizza takeaways'. Someone searching for 'fish' also reportedly found themselves looking for 'sex'.

In the true tradition of gonzo journalism, the Round-Up downloaded the Google Mobile app for the iPhone and gave it a whirl. Seeing as a lot of people seemed to end up with search results for 'sex', whatever they were looking for, the Round-Up started by searching for 'sex'. After three attempts where the app didn't recognise the word at all, Google finally came up with the result....'church'.

Hoping that was just a bad start, the Round-Up put the voice activated search through its paces and, that aside, actually found it remarkably accurate for both long and short search queries.

But until such a time that Google decides to perfect the Queen's English version of its Google Mobile voice app, the Round-Up recommends trying an American accent for more accurate results.

Sticking with the iPhone a study this week by mobile warranty firm SquareTrade found Apple's touchscreen device has half the failure rate of RIM's BlackBerry in the first year of use. The most common iPhone malfunctions were touchscreen-related, accounting for a third of all issues reported.

The study made no mention, however, of the iPhone glitch where - ahem - 'inappropriate' photos of the user automatically attach themselves to an email and appear in the sent folder, even though no email was ever sent.

What? Oh, you've not heard of that glitch? Obviously while Steve Jobs and co were busy on the 3G reception they must have overlooked that one.

At least that's if one poster on an Apple support forum is to be believed this week. A woman asked:

"I took my husband's iPhone and found a raunchy picture of him attached to an email to a woman in his sent email file. When I approached him about this, he admitted that he took the picture but says that he never sent it to anyone. He claims that he went to the Genius Bar at the local Apple store and they told him it is an iPhone glitch - that photos sometimes automatically attach themselves to an email address and appear in the sent folder, even though no email was ever sent. Has anyone ever heard of this happening? The future of my marriage depends on this answer!"

Now at this point, the Round-Up admits to thinking it all sounds a bit of a hoax, and the answers from the Apple faithful on the forum ranged from the practical "the iPhone has fairly reasonable security measures" to the less serious and or sympathetic "it's a glitch, but only happens if the pic is sufficiently raunchy", to the downright unforgiving. Perhaps we are fortunate the iPhone only has a 2-megapixel camera…

It's the time of year that silicon.com's annual skills survey is published, giving IT departments everywhere more material for lunchtime speculation about what co-workers and managers really earn. And this year is no exception. At the top of the tree - no surprises here - CIOs' earning power appears to have grown a little since last year, with the majority of the CIOs who responded earning more than £70,000.

One in five IT consultants surveyed reckon they were taking home between £70,001 and £110k; and the same percentage earning between £55,001 and £70k. There's plenty more data to make you groan with envy or feel quietly smug (depending on your job title) in the full story here.

So, with all the doom and gloom around at least you now know where to go if you want to borrow a fiver. And forearmed with this knowledge you might even find it easier to get a Friday after work pint out of the boss too. They can afford it.

So from the iPhone earlier in the Round-Up and now onto the BlackBerry. Not just any BlackBerry, but the 'first' BlackBerry - as in the US Presidential BlackBerry.

After the celebrations of winning the election Barack Obama now has to face up to the reality of the tough job ahead and he may have to do it without email or his beloved BlackBerry.

As the most tech-savvy head of state in the world Obama 'tweeted' to almost 130,000 followers through the election campaign on Twitter, he plans to be the first President to bring a laptop into the Oval Office and he used his BlackBerry to keep on top of email and receive briefings and campaign material from his staff.

But Obama's aides have told the New York Times the BlackBerry may have to go. Not because he's switching to an iPhone or a Treo but because of the Presidential Records Act.

Under the Act, all the President's correspondence - paper and electronic - is stored for the public record and White House history.

There's already a precedent for this with both Bush and Clinton not using email during their time in office - although Vice President Al Gore did use his government email address while in office.

Possibly preoccupied by more important things, such as the economic meltdown, a decision on Obama's emailing hasn't yet been taken but one possibility under consideration is that he could continue to receive emails but not send them, which is akin to being able to answer your phone but not speak into it.

That's all for this week but theRound-Up recommends you check out the excellent exclusive interview with inventor and "futurist" Ray Kurzweil who paints a scary vision of a future where gene therapy can reverse human ageing.

He also discusses a future where the boundaries between humans and machines become blurred. Which is probably a bit like that weird feeling you get when you spend all day Saturday playing video games and have to go out into the real world.

Fed up of reading? Too right. So watch a video of silicon.com putting the wi-fi on France's TGV trains through its paces.

Has the tech skills crisis turned a corner? Find out some more in the results of silicon.com's annual Skills Survey.

And finally, silicon.com takes you on a tour of the most interesting apps developed by the Googleplex boffins in Google Labs. The Round-Up mentioned Mail Goggles a few weeks back - the program designed to stop you sending unwise emails while drunk and you can see more of it here.

And of course, there's the silicon.com caption competition for you to sharpen your wits on. And if that's not enough, check out the links below for some more must read stories from this week.