Google and Microsoft on the cutting edge

Google was a big standout at this year's IFA convention that was held in Europe and is said to be the world's largest consumer electronics and home appliances trade show on the planet.

Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, was on hand and gave a very revealing talk on the realm of the smartphone, cloud computing and Google TV.

Let's start with the Android platform as well as the exciting new tool for voice search recognition and mobile speech translation called conversation mode.

Because of the unprecedented development of the many variations of smartphones, it is anticipated that there will be a staggering upswing in the growth of the smartphone handset market.

The numbers are incredible and estimated to go from the current 1 billion mark to 3 billion or 4 billion in the next four years and all this movement in smartphone technology and the consumer will be tied directly to the cloud, which will provide an increased impressive array of functions to smartphones.

It goes without saying that smartphone technology is seriously becoming the driving force in the world of information technology.

When you take all of this into consideration, it really isn't a surprise that the hottest smartphone on the market, the Android, is said to be shipping 200,000 activations per day.

Now here's the really exciting part. Google has made a significant push into the area of what is referred to as the "augmented humanity" model.

This is something that seeks to make the aspect of cloud computing and smartphone apps become aligned with you and me, the human being, and what we want in the way of services from our mobile technology.

One part of the model is designed to improve the search capability by building a more defined bridge between what you search for and what you mean with a solid degree of search efficiency that will determine and find exactly what you want to the most minute detail.

But the most exciting part of the new model is the upgraded voice recognition technology app that is expected to be released in the next few months.

Google introduced voice search recognition two years ago and it is calculated that Android search in the U.S. is now being done by way of voice at a rate of 25 percent.

The move into this area by Google is doing quite well and has very fast voice search capability and voice actions to include impressive speech to text tools.

I have personally had the opportunity to play around with this new technology and I must say that it has made a believer out of me, to the extent that I can truly tell you that it will change the way we all use our smartphones in that it will end the days of pushing buttons.

There is also the new app that Google will be releasing in the next few months called Conversations Mode and let me tell you, it is awesome.

So this is how it goes: Let's say you're in Turkey on vacation or business and you are shopping at an outdoor market place or eating at a local Turkish restaurant.

Of course you don't speak the language, but fear not, because you have your trusty smartphone.

You whip it out, go to the conversation mode app and begin to say what it is you want the merchant or waiter to know, all in English.

As you speak into the handset, within seconds your smartphone will send out a spoken translation to the merchant or waiter in their language and it will do so with perfect translation, to which the merchant or waiter will, in their own language, respond into your handset and you will then receive the spoken translation in perfect English.

Just think about how easy this will make travel to a foreign country and the fact that you won't have to make the mistake of ordering sautéeed goats eye's, when you really wanted fried calamari.

Doesn't that take a load off your mind, since you're planning on going to Thailand where there is some really exotic cuisine?

Join me next week as we take a look at Google television and Microsoft's new Cyber Security EBook.

- Andino Ward