Google's new voice-recognition search tool for the iPhone has problems understanding Australian accents, leading to some bizarre answers to spoken queries. Similar problems have been reported in the U.K. with regional accents.

Users down under have noticed searches for the word "iPhone" can return pages of results for "priceline", "mustang" or simply a message saying "try again."

The number eight becomes a search for "ike", seven turns into "Clinton", and don't even try searching for the number six.

Google recommends the tool, which is available as a free download for the iPhone and iPod Touch in Apple's Application Store, works best with a North American accent.

It seems again a case that for anything outside of America, there be dragons. It is surprising that large "international" companies take this attitude. I recently complained of Goolge ignoring my browser language preferences.

Another great example is LinkedIn.com. Obviously if you want to do international business networking, you have to speak and write English. It seems all too hard for the Americans to comprehend that there is a world beyond their shores. Xing.com while developed by Germans, are very conscious of the need to speak multiple languages, hence the greater uptake and multi-lingual networking taking place there.

We may now live in the global village, but we do need to make an effort to reach out to each other and communicate in ways best understood by the people we engage with.

For the uber-geeks or the down right nerds, today is a day to rejoice. Monty Python have created their own YouTube channel. In their own words, "For 3 years you YouTubers have been ripping us off, taking tens of thousands of our videos and putting them on YouTube. Now the tables are turned. It's time for us to take matters into our own hands."

It seems the great comedians have come to agree with the maxim, if you can't beat them, join them, as digital age of media on demand is irrevocably changing our thoughts towards access and usage. 

It was also revealed today that their famous dead parrot sketch might not be so original.An ancestor of Monty Python's famous Dead Parrot comedy sketch has been found in a joke book dating back to Greece in the 4th Century.

Philogelos: The Laugh Addict, which has been translated from Greek manuscripts, contains a joke where a man complains that a slave he was sold had died.

"When he was with me, he never did any such thing!" is the reply.

A NEW type of internet that can send information in deep space has been successfully tested by NASA.

The technology sent dozens of images from a NASA spacecraft to Earth
over 32.4 million km – almost ten times the distance between Earth and
the moon.

This deep space internet may one day be used to transmit messages at the speed of light between planets.

Now spammers can find you no matter what corner of the universe you live in.

http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,25642,24675320-5014239,00.html