Nixta Rolls

Google’s iPhone App does voice recognition now using unpublished APIs and proving the point that if you’re big enough you can squeeze anything (in this case a direct contravention of the terms and conditions of iPhone development) through any system (in this case a totally random approval process).

Until my last attempt it’s worked rather well. But here, in a frustrating exercise that took me right back to 1999, were the results for Mercadito, a Mexican restaurant just down the road from us. I even tried a comedy Spanish accent with grotesque rolling “r”s in case it helped. It did not.

1. pizza nyc
2. batista ny
3. mac depot ny (that was Merrrrrrrrcadiiiiiiiiito)
4. 952 ny.com (that was mercaditony.com)
5. lyrics tito

I’ll try again right now and see what it does…

1. marketing on y (that was me using my comedy Texan accent with “Mercadeedo ny”)
2. arca de noe ny (same voice, “Mercadeedo New York”)
3. bertha detroit mi restaurants in dc (normal voice, asking for “Mercadito mexican restaurant, avenue b”)

I now officially give up. Thank goodness I made the reservation before I tried the Google app. By the way, here’s the page that Google gave me when I typed it in.