When the Google Mobile app first launched for the iPhone, some users were found little use to the application that wasn’t already a part of the search bar in Safari.

Given that Google was already the default search engine in the iPhone browser, the Google Mobile app didn’t introduce enough new functionality to the device. That all changed, however, with the latest version of the application that now supports voice recognition.

Rather than just typing in a web search, users now have the option to put the iPhone up against their face, as if on a call, and speaking the search terms. Brief tests of this feature have yielded mostly positive results, making us think twice before launching Safari just for a search.

Speaking the words “gas station” even yield local addresses, as the app makes use of the iPhone’s location based services. The application was even able to make decipher expectedly difficult terms into the correct search – for example, we spoke out loud the title of Valve’s new shooter, Left 4 Dead, and Google successfully decided that the middle search term should be a “4” rather than “for.”

Finding a cup of overpriced coffee, however, proved to be a little bit more difficult. When we told the app to find “Starbucks,” it instead heard “are box” and promptly ran a search for that. Other times the application would have difficulty with the tilt sensor and left the audio pick up enabled for longer than needed, forcing us to cancel the search.

We spoke to the Google Mobile app in its preferred North American English accent, and for the most part, the voice recognition now justifies launching a separate app just for web search. All found results when clicked still launch in Safari, however, making this an exceptionally fancy search bar.

Perhaps most interesting of all is that such a feature is available on the iPhone before on Android. iPhone users can grab it on iTunes App Store here.

Kara Swisher over at BoomTown has managed to get her hands on the company memo sent out by former Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang following yesterday’s announcement that the Yang would be stepping back from his position as Chief Executive.

As is the norm, Yang sent out an all lower case email to employees after the news hit the wires yesterday afternoon. However, while it seems like the general consensus is that Jerry’s decision to leave has something to do with the company’s run of bad luck in the last year. Yang’s memo spells out a different story.

Yang explained to his fellow employees that last June, the board requested he assume the role of CEO to restructure and reposition the company. Yang continues on to say that he has had ongoing discussions with the board about locating a successor and that he and the board believes the time is right to appoint a new CEO who can take the company to the next level.

“last june, i accepted the board’s request that i assume the ceo role to restructure and reposition the company as a whole in order to more effectively meet the fast-changing needs of both users and partners. since taking on the ceo role, i have had an ongoing dialogue with the board about succession timing. thanks in large measure to your tireless efforts, we have created a more open, competitive yahoo! and we believe the time is now right to transition to a new ceo who can take the company to the next level.”

Yang went on to say that Yahoo! was a significantly different company than it was 18 months ago and he strongly believed that, having transformed its platform and better aligned finances, the right CEO had a unique position to take ownership of the critical decisions facing the company.

“i strongly believe that having transformed our platform and better aligned costs and revenues, we have a unique window for the right ceo to take ownership over the next wave of mission-critical decisions facing the company.”

The move certainly brings about some big questions about where Yahoo! is headed over the coming months and years. Yahoo! has yet to announce its next CEO. We’ll be sure to update when we hear anything.

Check out BoomTown for the complete memo.

The trial of one David Kernell, the student who allegedly gained access to former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s email account during the presidential elections, has been delayed.

Kernell, the son of Mike Kernell, a Democratic state representative from Memphis, was originally scheduled to go to appear in court on December 16 of this year. The 20-year old student was last month indicted for hacking into Sarah Palin’s Yahoo! email account, which the Alaskan governor was using for government business.

According to ComputerWorld, at a motion hearing before U.S. Magistrate Judge Clifford Shirley on Friday, federal prosecutors and an attorney for Kernell agreed to push back the trial date to May 19, 2009. According to the motion, additional time is needed because "significant forensic evaluation is required."

Palin’s account was compromised a few months back when a hacker took knowledge readily available over the internet to members of the public and reset the password on Palin’s email address.

The hacker reset Palin’s password using her birthday, ZIP code and the fact that she met her husband while in high school, something that is now common knowledge following the revelation that Palin’s own teenage daughter is set to marry her high school boyfriend.

Kernell’s lawyers have reportedly already aired their feelings about their client being referred to as a hacked during the trial. Kernell’s attorney claimed that the term hacking implies the use of sophisticated means or specialized computer skills and is not applicable to the alleged conduct.

Read the full story on ComputerWorld.

Related Links

Son of Democratic Tennessee State Lawmaker Indicted for Palin Hack
Sarah Palin’s Email hacked; FBI Investigating
FBI Searches Student’s Apartment in Connection to Palin Hack

SiPort Inc, the company that on Friday saw its CEO, vice president of operations and head of human resources brutally murdered last week, has set up a memorial fund in memory of the deceased employees.

A public relations representative for SiPort contacted us early this morning and informed us that the company had established a memorial fund for the victims of last Friday’s fatal shootings. Money raised for the memorial fund will go toward supporting charitable causes identified by the families of Sid Agrawal, SiPort’s former CEO, Brian Pugh, former vice president of operations and Marilyn Lewis, the company’s former human resources manager.

“The SiPort family of employees overwhelmingly supported the creation of a memorial fund to honor Sid, Brian and Marilyn, who were loved and respected,” said Aiman Kabakibo, current CEO and founder of SiPort.

Last Friday at around 4 p.m. local time, Jing Hua Wu, entered the SiPort premises and requested a meeting to discuss his future following his recent departure from the company. SiPort company officials obliged and it was during this meeting that Wu allegedly shot and killed the three SiPort workers.

Mr. Wu fled the scene in a silver SUV and remained at large on Friday night. Detectives arrested him on Saturday at a Mountain View Intersection after receiving a tip off about his whereabouts. Jing Hua Wu was not armed upon arrest, nor was there any weapon found in his vehicle.

Related Links

Former Employee Kills Three at Start-up

You’re looking for a portable computing device but you already have a laptop. Netbooks are slightly underpowered and underwhelming for you, and you actually want something smaller. What do you do? ASUS delivers with it’s P565 Pocket-PC phone, and claims the.

Along with the Marvell PXA930 800MHz processor, the ASUS P565 has a roomy 2.8-inch 480 x 640 touch screen, built-in GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth v2.0, 3-megapixel rear camera and 300k for it’s front video conferencing camera. The device has 128MB of DDR RAM over its 256 MB ROM and has a MicroSD card slot that supports up to 8 GB. All of this packed into 125 grams of weight.

The operating system is Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional, which will most definitely attract the underground cellular crowd for modding, custom ROMs / kitchens and the like, but it will also open the doors to processing capability. Windows Mobile is notorious for running ‘sluggish’ on even the best devices currently on the market, but hopefully the P565 will put an end to that.

The 800MHz speed of the processor alone backs up the claim by ASUS to be the ‘World’s Fastest’ PDA, but it’s still too early to actually test it out. There’s no word of pricing yet, or even where and when it will be available.

The P565 network supports HSDPA 3.6Mbps, UMTS 2100, EDGE/GPRS/GSM 900/1800/1900 MHz – Class 10 , which means it will more than likely be carried by most providers of this service at some point. Tom’s will be keeping an eye on this one!

More information can be obtained at the ASUS Web page for the P565.

A 15-year-old Swedish boy collapsed after a marathon World of Warcraft gaming session.

The boy, along with six of his friends, had just purchased the newest WoW expansion, Wrath of the Lich King and began playing the game Saturday afternoon. According to the Times Online, the boy eventually collapsed because of the lack of sleep and food.

The parents told the newspaper that the kids ate very little while playing and added that their son only slept two hours the previous night. So it’s no wonder that 15 hours later or approximately 2PM on Sunday, the boy began having epileptic seizures and his parents rushed him to the hospital. Fortunately, the kid will apparently make a full recovery.

Logging in long hours after a game’s release is a badge of honor for many hard-core gamers. Yesterday we wrote about “Nymh” who leveled his character to level 80 in 27 hours after the WoW Wrath of the Lich King expansion release. And to be fair, thousands of people manage to put in hours of gaming with no adverse effects.

But there have been a few instances in the past of people dying after long gaming sessions. Back in 2005, a 28-year-old South Korean man died after playing Starcraft for 50 hours straight. In 2004, a 13-year-old Chinese boy jumped to his death after a 36-hour World of Warcraft stint.

Source – Times Online

Yahoo! has said that Chief Executive Officer Jerry Yang will step down from his current position as soon as the Internet giant finds a replacement for him. Previously held by Terry Semel, Jerry Yang only took up the position of CEO last year but has since been the target of a great amount of criticism for his decisions.

One of the most talked about of Yang’s decisions was the rejection of an acquisition bid from Microsoft in May. Despite Microsoft increasing its bid to $33 per share, or about $5 billion more than its previous offer, Yahoo! insisted on a price of $37 per share, at which point Microsoft dropped the offer altogether.

Mr. Yang was also involved in penning an advertising deal that would see Google ads displayed along with Yahoo! search results. This partnership would have made Yahoo! approximately $250-450 million in the first year. The deal fell through when Google began to feel the pressure of the European Union anti-trust regulators and the U.S. Department of Justice, although Google also blamed Microsoft for the anti-trust problems.

In a statement, Yahoo! said that Yang would be returning to his former position as "Chief Yahoo!" and will continue to serve on the company’s board.

"Jerry and the Board have had an ongoing dialogue about succession timing, and we all agree that now is the right time to make the transition to a new CEO who can take the company to the next level. We are deeply grateful to Jerry for his many contributions as CEO over the past 18 months, and we are pleased that he plans to stay actively involved at Yahoo! as a key executive and member of the Board."

With a new CEO and corporate vision, it is possible that Microsoft may again pursue the Internet company with another takeover bid, but the software giant declined to comment on the suggestion.

PETA, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, wants you to think twice about cooking up that turkey for Thanksgiving Day.

The organization has released a gory Flash game that parodies the popular Wii cooking game Cooking Mama by Majesco. PETA’s game, titled Cooking Mama: Mama Kills Animals, has cartoonish gore as the player plucks feathers and removes guts from the turkey. To top it off, Cooking Mama has been transformed from a smiling mother into a demonic, evil grinned, killer.

On its gaming merits, PETA’s version is not bad. The graphics are cartoonish, but above average when compared to other Flash games. The music is catchy and the sound effects are decent. However, this game really isn’t meant to be played repeatedly as it only contains a few scenes. The player must first pluck all the feathers from the turkey and then he/she must control a hand that reaches inside to scoop out the guts. Players are rated on speed and accuracy. After completing the game, the player has the option to view a gory (real gore this time) video of a turkey slaughterhouse.

While many gamers may laugh while playing the game, PETA is dead serious. The organization created the game to parody the original Cooking Mama game. “Majesco’s game is so heavy on dishes that are made from dead animals that the only things missing are the blood and gore,” PETA says and their reimagined game merely adds the blood and gore back in.

PETA claims that 40 million turkeys end up on our tables during the holidays and PETA spokesperson said, “There’s nothing funny about the suffering endured by turkeys and other animals who are killed for food.”

PETA is encouraging players of the real Cooking Mama game to petition Majesco for additional vegan recipes.

You can play PETA’s Cooking Mama: Mama Kills Animals here. The game is also available as a downloadable PC or Mac program.

Did cellphones kill the camera and the MP3 player? Probably not, but it’s still fun to speculate why mobile devices are taking over the world.

According to an article over on Wired, the five gadgets that saw an early demise because of the nasty cellphone beast includes the PDA, the camera, the UMPC, an actual wall-mounted phone and the MP3 player. That may sound crazy, but when looking at Apple’s iPhone and RIM’s Blackberry, one can’t help but wonder if devices like MP3 players and home-based phones could really be a thing of the past. Could cellphones even take down the mighty laptop? Sorry, that might be pushing it a bit.

But let’s be honest: current cellphones eat up battery power like kids in a candy factory. To even consider that consumers would resort to listening to music on cellphones by default is utterly ridiculous... or so it would seem. Granted the ability is useful every now and then, but it’s difficult to fathom Apple’s iPod or Creative’s Zen biting the dust anytime soon because the Blackberry can play MP3s or WMAs. The same goes for any kind of built-in camera: while they’re useful in quick situations, cellphone cameras aren’t exactly the ideal device for family snapshots or detailed vacation highlights. Wired is correct though, cellphone cameras speak to a young demographic who love to take quick snapshots of groupies, credit card numbers, and/or private parts.

Probably the biggest adversary to the cellphone is the actual landline however. What’s more convenient than taking to friends and family no matter the location, whether it’s the back yard, on the toilet or from Santa’s lap down at the local mall. Unless calls are forwarded to mobile devices, landlines only stretch so far when using a wireless phone. In July AT&T reported its second-quarter results, specifying that while the wireless aspect of its services continued to grow, the landline voice services were actually down 7.8 percent from the first quarter of 2007; retail consumer lines fell a whopping 5.4 percent between 2006 and 2007. However, cellphones aren’t wholly responsible for the decline: digital phone services and the overall economy plays a big role as well.

As for PDAs, its slow death began many years ago as laptops became ultra-portable and cellphones took on more of an intelligent form. HP and Palm are but two manufacturers still keeping the PDA alive, the former currently selling the iPAQ 211 Enterprise Handheld Organizer for a whopping $450 and the iPAQ 111 Classic Handheld Organizer for $300. But PDAs have been around since the early 1980s, so it’s no surprise that the "personal data assistant" would eventually come to an end.

Still, when considering cellphones such as Apple’s iPhone 3G and RIM’s Blackberry Storm, and their intentional capability to play music, video, surf the web and take pictures, it’s easy to see how separate MP3 players and cheap cameras could be phased out. Throw in touch-screen technology and an uber-quick wireless network, many consumers just might decide to abandon laptops altogether. With cellphones taking an open approach to user-created applications, these devices are becoming more like pocket PCs rather than instruments originally dedicated to making calls wirelessly.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with a little game playing either. Don’t be surprised to see mobile phones taking a bigger portion of the gaming market as the years go by. Although not a cellphone, by the looks of it, Apple’s iPod touch just might be a step in the right direction as far as portable graphics are concerned... and it’s super slim, too. Perhaps consumers will eventually see game visuals heading in that direction, with the inclusion of left and right triggers planted on the cellphone’s backside or a built-in accelerometer. If that happens, cellphones could get blamed for the death of portable gaming consoles as well.

Wednesday marks a special day for Xbox 360 owners, as Microsoft will unleash the new interface they like to call "The New Xbox Experience."

The company took the Xbox Live servers offline earlier this morning in preparation for the console’s new interface, although Microsoft wasn’t clear on what the 45-minute downtime actually accomplished. But gamers impatiently waiting for the unique console dashboard only see the downtime as a step towards a revolutionary new way to interact with the hardware. The New Xbox Experience (NXE) update comes just in time for the always-lucrative holiday season, along with hot titles like Gears of War 2 and Fallout 3 hitting the market.

But the new interface isn’t just another update: it completely changes how owners interact with their consoles. The update is so important to Xbox 360 owners that one gamer - enlisted in the "preview program" - actually ripped his version of the update and released it onto Torrent sites; the NXE download could be installed via a USB thumb drive. But according to Major Nelson, those who installed the leaked NXE would discover their Xbox Live accounts disabled until November 19. Shortly thereafter, he turned around and said that those who install the leaked NXE won’t be allowed on Live at all.

According to Microsoft, NXE offers an interactive dashboard reminiscent of Windows Vista’s Aero interface. Vertical menus stand upon a virtual floor, allowing the gamer to switch from one to the other easily, moving between the games library window, the photo library window, the video library window and so on. Gamers will be able to create custom, 3D avatars much in the same manner as The Sims (the Personality Plus tool), choosing clothes, hairstyles, pants and more. Netflix also has a space in the NXE dashboard however the "program" is not installed by default.

Sony is also working on an interactive interface for its fledgling PlayStation 3 console. Entitled PlayStation Home, the virtual environment follows in the footsteps of "Second Life" and offers console owners the ability to create a personalized avatar, move into an apartment, and enter a thriving world filled with other PlayStation 3 owners. Gamers can gather to watch movies in the Theatre, play games in the Arcade, shop for items in the Mall and even visit specialized areas based on PlayStation 3 games (such as Drake’s Fortune and FarCry 2). PlayStation Home is expected to hit open beta status sometime this holiday season.

Nintendo plans to add a few updates to the Wii System as well this holiday season, although not quite as dramatic as Microsoft and Sony’s consoles. The updates include the Wii Demo Channel, an overhaul of the WFC friend system and possibly DVD playback via software. The Wii Speak Channel hit the Wii dashboard just yesterday, three days before Microsoft unleashes its own dashboard overhaul. However, as reported earlier today, Nintendo’s Wii Speak microphone comes with a one-time activation code, permanently attaching it to the original buyer (meaning the peripheral cannot be sold used). Additionally, Nintendo’s holiday line-up is surprisingly lackluster compared to last year, featuring only one or two high-profile games including Animal Crossing: City Folk and Sin & Punishment 2.

Still, Microsoft seems rather pumped at the upcoming release of NXE. "When the New Xbox Experience launches, we will be inviting the whole world to play," said John Schappert, Microsoft’s corporate VP for Interactive Entertainment, referring to the new Xbox Live Party feature included with the update. Xbox 360 owners seem rather pumped as well, and they have less than 48 hours until the New Experience takes hold of their Xbox 360 in a brand new, exciting way.