Google released Chrome 25 in beta today, and this version of the browser is noteworthy because it supports voice commands via the Web Speech API. Developers will be able to tap into this to integrate speech recognition into their web apps.
Google speech specialist and software engineer Glen Shires pretty well sums up what this means when he says, “Using your voice to search on your computer or phone is handy, but there’s so much more you can do with voice commands. Imagine if you could dictate documents, have a freestyle rap battle, or control game characters with your browser using only your voice.”
When this hits the stable release, Google should really have some cool stuff to show off when it advertisers Chrome on TV as it has been doing lately.
The beta also automatically disables some extensions on Windows that have been added by third party programs without you necessarily knowing about it.
“The original intent was to give people an option to add useful extensions when installing applications, but unfortunately this feature has been widely abused by third parties who added extensions without user consent,” says Shires. “A notification will appear with the option to re-enable the affected extensions.”
The beta can be downloaded here. Once you do, you can check out this demo Google has set up, where you can compose an email by talking.