News Roundup for November the 17th

The weekend’s big news — where ‘big’ is in comparison to, for instance, the news that the original MacBook Air can handle four finger gestures — is of course Google’s Voice Search for the iPhone. This promises to take your spoken query, convert it to text, and then submit it to the world’s favourite search engine. Check out the video below, where assorted Googlers demonstrate both the technology and their lack of basic general knowledge — “What it the capital of Iceland?” Jeez.

Just to make things more ‘interesting,’ confusion reigns over when and even if the app is coming to the App Store. Rejected for duplicating the function of the user’s brain, perhaps?

Meanwhile, Apple’s plans for world domination continue apace, with news that the iPhone is now available in Egypt (whose capital is Cairo, in case any Googlers were wondering), and that the iTunes store has come to Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur). And in China (Bejiing) they are advertising for an “iPhone Quality Assurance Engineer.” Most people have concluded that this means the People’s Republic will be getting the super phone in the not to distant future. To me, it just suggests they’re looking for someone responsible to ensure that as the phones roll of the production line, none of them contain hairline cracks. Or that they all contain snaps of cute Chinese girls.

Want to jump onto the iPhone development bandwagon? MacWorld UK (London) is reporting that Intrinsic Developments is about to start running an iPhone developer course.

Finally, a quick shout-out to Wales-based Think Mac Software, who today released the latest version of their iKana learning tool.