Cloud computing brings many benefits. It can reduce costs, improve operational efficiencies, and make computing infrastructures far more flexible. But there are other benefits that are not discussed as much. One of them is the fact that cloud computing effectively turns any device into a supercomputer.Google has just demonstrated this with the release of its latest feature for the Android mobile operating system. Called Google Voice Actions, it lets users interact with their Android phones almost entirely by voice alone.
Users of the feature (available in Android version 2.2 and above), are able to speak instructions to their phones, and also to dictate text. "Send text to Andy Jenkins. Meet me upstairs at Johnny's Bar" will send the text directly to him - no extra interaction needed. But what if you need to reserve a table, and don't have a number? Saying "Call Johnny's Bar in Madison, Wisconsin" will cause the system to interact with Google Maps, look up the number, and automatically place the call
But what is "the system"? Today's mobile devices, while powerful,
are still limited by computational constraints. The real system resides
in the cloud. Google's Voice Actions program sends the recorded voice
signal to the cloud, which is where the analysis and the searching takes
place.
This is the beauty of the cloud. Its
ability to devote almost limitless computing power to a problem (in this
case, interpreting intuitive search commands) puts it far ahead of any
device that resides in a pocket, or on a desk.
We are seeing this development in other services. Google Goggles, for example, uses the cloud to search for everything from local landmarks, through to books and logos, purely by analysing images and, where appropriate, GPS data.
Not
only does cloud computing unlock computational resources, but it also
unleashes a plethora of data resources, too. Being able to reference
data in the cloud makes a device seem omniscient. Instead of just
searching for contact information stored on a phone using a natural
language interface, it theoretically becomes possible to search for
anyone.
As search algorithms and voice and picture
processing techniques improve, we will begin to see this concept take
hold, and profoundly change the nature of search. Imagine if, for
example, we could ask our phone "Find me a sociology professor in the
state of New York," or if we could take a picture of a designer coffee
mug and say "are these for sale in anywhere San Francisco?".
Such
capabilities are coming - but only because we are able to rely on the
cloud to do the extensive data mining and number crunching work that
complements intuitive mobile phone interfaces. In the next few years,
the combination of these two technologies will alter our lives in ways
that we have not yet conceived.
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