Google Voice Commands for Finding Time

Google Voice Commands for Finding Time!

Google is everywhere, and Google voice recognition and voice commands offer powerful time-saving possibilities that I want to explore with you today.

At its recent I/O 16, Google announced a number of new enhancements and developments, including  Google Home – slated to be coming soon and intended to compete with Amazon Echo. (As an aside, my VA has an Echo and finds it a very useful and user-friendly tool. She said that when she was recently away on a trip, she actually missed “Alexa” a little bit!)

You can use Google voice search on Chrome so long as you have a mic, and it’s well-integrated with lots and lots of web services available on any Android device and enhancements to Google Assistant, they say, will make the use of voice commands and voice search that much easier and more user-friendly.

Here’s a video depicting some of the possibilities:

What Google Assistant does, as you see in the video, is allow for much more conversational voice commands.

Here’s a post by Whitson Gordon from lifehacker that outlines the kinds of things you can do with voice commands and voice search. Want some examples? Here you go (this is a great list taken from the lifehacker post):

• How many quarts are in a gallon? Everybody knows Google can make calculations and perform conversions, but boy, it’s a lot faster to ask it than it is to type it in. This is especially handy when you’re in the kitchen and just need a quick answer, when you want to convert Fahrenheit to Celsius, or…anything having to do with the imperial and metric systems, really.
• Define “bellwether.” My friend and I didn’t know what this word actually meant, so I just asked Google.
• Show me a video of how to peel garlic. If you specify that you want a video, Google will ensure videos show up at the top of your search results. The same works for images, too: Show me pictures of the Playstation 4will push image search results right to the top. You can even give it more detail, like Show me pictures of the Lincoln Memorial at sunset.
• When does Whole Foods close? This is way faster than looking it up on Yelp or Google yourself.
• What’s the weather like this weekend? Weather apps are usually just a tap away, but this is nice if you want to see the weather for a specific day without having to scroll through a bunch of information, I suppose.
• When is Father’s Day? I hate holidays that change every year.
• What’s a good Thai restaurant near me? It’ll search nearby Thai restaurants. If you change your mind, you can then ask How about Mexican? It’ll understand you’re still searching for restaurants nearby and act accordingly.
• How long is The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey? As if you didn’t already know the answer was “too long.”
• What is area code 909? This is awesome for when you get those unnamed calls.
• Who is the CEO of Ford Motor Company? Google knows who a lot of people are.
• When is the next Red Wings game? You can also ask for the score of the last game, and other such things.

As you can probably guess, the time-saving here is often simply the ease of speaking rather than typing – especially when you’re on a small device like a phone.

It can also help you quickly deal with those distracting thoughts or questions that sometimes take you away from your work (as you look up a word or factoid and then get caught up in exploring other interesting tidbits).

So the possibilities of Google voice search and voice commands seem like something you may want to check out and incorporate into your workflow.

Here’s to your time success!

Disclaimer: I have no material connection with the products and services mentioned here and have received no compensation for this material.