While you’ll likely be able to speak to and be understood by most of your electronics in the distant future, here in the present Google’s Chrome browser updating with a new Web Speech API is still considered a big deal.
For the past few months Google has been in the process of integrating WebRTC into Chrome. WebRTC allows webcams and microphones to connect with the browser without using Flash. Chrome 25 also comes with WebSpeech API, which allows us to use voice commands using a simple snippet of JavaScript.
With the latest Chrome beta, Google is giving developers some big new voice-centered tools that will allow them to integrate speech recognition into their web apps.
There are a lot of pretty obvious applications for the functionality, which will eventually allow Chrome users to dictate search queries, documents, and other text inputs. While there’s not much new ground being broken there, it won’t be long until developers figure out other, more interesting uses for the new voice API.