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Google’s search-by-voice application is finally available on the App Store. To grab it, visit this link (the page still shows the old version, but you’ll download the new one). The application was originally announced on Friday, leading to widespread excitement that quickly turned to unrest as the application failed to make its debut on the App Store. The delay led to criticism of Apple’s App Store approval process, which apparently leaves all developers in the dark - even Google.

The app allows users to speak into their iPhones to submit queries to Google’s search engine, which can serve up both standard search results as well as movie showtimes, addresses, and other handy information. Voice detection seems to work pretty well, though it sometimes takes a few tries with long phrases and names (I was able to correctly search for the “answer to life, the universe, and everything” after only two tries). And when it works, it’s really cool - I’ll probably be using it on a daily basis.

My biggest issue with the app is that there is apparently no way to use the voice detection feature to call a contact, despite the fact that you can search through contacts using manual text entry. One of my biggest gripes about the iPhone is that there’s no way to make a hands-free call, and while this would still require at least one buttonpress, it would be an improvement. A free application called Say Who offers voice dialing on the iPhone, but it would have been nice to see the functionality integrated into the Google app.

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We’ve had a blast playing SGN’s suite of Wii-like games over the last few months - iGolf, iBowl and iBaseball (basketball, tennis and boxing are coming soon). The apps are being downloaded like crazy on the App store, and no wonder - you get to swing your iPhone all over the place while you play the games.

Now SGN is rolling out something a little different. iFun turns the iPhone into a Wii-like controller, but the actual games are played on normal desktop and laptop computers.

The first title to launch is golf. If you don’t quite get it, see the video below. SGN says they may license other online games to add to the iFun platform, and will release an API for other developers to launch their games on iFun.

Super. Duper. Cool.

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Expect Yahoo’s share price to jump tomorrow - Jerry Yang will be stepping down as CEO of the company, a job that he took on an interim basis in June 2007.

Yang will return to his former role as Chief Yahoo, and will remain on the board of directors. The company has hired executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles to find the new CEO.

This was an unavoidable event, and in our opinion Yang took too long to step down. In May it was clear that Yang’s heart was no longer in it, and he reconfirmed that last month at the Web 2.0 Summit. Under his watch the company has lost tens of billions of dollars in market cap and thousands of former Yahoo employees (and hundreds of execs) are now gone.

How much of the downfall was his fault? It’s impossible to say, except that he takes full responsibility for mishandling the Microsoft acquisition offer last February. One thing you have to love is Yang’s tenacity in keeping Yahoo an independent company at any cost. But what shareholders and employees need is a leader with an actual plan.

Who will be the next CEO? We speculated back in June that Jeff Mallet or Dan Rosensweig were possible candidates. Mallet wouldn’t consider the job, we’ve heard. But Rosensweig would probably take it if offered.

Whoever ends up with the job, let’s just hope it’s an outsider. Yahoo is being clear that they are considering internal candidates. President Sue Decker is likely being considered. But ex-execs we’ve spoken with say she was a big part of the problem at Yahoo, and if she takes over as CEO it will likely be more of the same.

The press release:

Yahoo! Conducting Search for New CEO
Co-Founder Jerry Yang to Step Down Following Appointment of New CEO
and Return to Former Role as Chief Yahoo! and Board Member

SUNNYVALE, Calif., Nov 17, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) –

Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO) today announced that its Board of Directors has initiated a search for a new Chief Executive Officer. Jerry Yang, co-Founder of Yahoo!, has decided to return to his former role as Chief Yahoo! upon the appointment of his successor as CEO, and he will also continue to serve on the Board. Yang, 40, assumed the CEO role at the Board’s request in June 2007, and he has led Yahoo! through a strategic repositioning and transformation of its platform.

Chairman Roy Bostock, working with the independent directors and in consultation with Jerry Yang, is leading the process of assessing potential candidates and determining finalists for consideration. The search will encompass both internal and external candidates, and the Board has retained Heidrick & Struggles, a leading international executive search firm, to assist in the process.

“Over the past year and a half, despite extraordinary challenges and distractions, Jerry Yang has led the repositioning of Yahoo! on an open platform model as well as the improved alignment of costs and revenues,” said Roy Bostock. “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.”

“From founding this company to guiding its growth into a trusted global brand that is indispensible to millions of people, I have always sought to do what is best for our franchise,” said Jerry Yang. “When the Board asked me to become CEO and lead the transformation of the Company, I did so because it was important to re-envision the business for a different era to drive more effective growth. Having set Yahoo! on a new, more open path, the time is right for me to transition the CEO role and our global talent to a new leader. I will continue to focus on global strategy and to do everything I can to help Yahoo! realize its full potential and enhance its leading culture of technology and product excellence and innovation.”

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Facebook is launching its “Verified Apps” program today. The program was first announced over the summer at their F8 Developer Conference - Third party applications will be segmented into “Great Apps” (currently reserved for iLike and Causes), “Verified Apps” (trusted apps, just not the best of the best), and everything else.

Facebook says they expect at least 10% of the 48,000 applications currently available to eventually become Verified Apps, although they won’t speculate beyond that. Apps that get the Verified designation will be given a special badge to place on the application, designation on the application directory, plus a few other bonuses like advertising credits and easier rules on how many notifications, emails and invitations they can send out to users.

The guidelines for acceptance are here, and consist primarily of proving that they are “trustworthy.” This is determined based on how secure, respectful and transparent the apps are:

Secure: Protects user data and honors privacy choices for everyone across the social graph. Facebook users are deliberate and specific about which data they choose to share, how they share it, and with whom. All applications must respect users’ choices and the choices of their friends by only accessing, using and sharing data users have explicitly allowed. Users put their trust in Facebook, our Platform and your applications. This trust enables us to provide with social information for your applications. So it is up to all of us to earn and maintain user trust.

Respectful: Values user attention and honors their intentions in communications and actions. Users trust that when they use your application, you will represent their intent and best interests, especially the messages you send about them or on their behalf. The more control you give them over how you represent them, the more likely they are to trust your application and want to use it more. Make sure to also value users’ time by employing proper communication channels and neither spamming users, nor encouraging them to become spammers.

Transparent: Explains how features will work and how they won’t work, especially in triggering user-to-user communications. Nothing is more frustrating than to click a button expecting one thing to happen and having something entirely different and confusing happen instead. Even worse is sending communications to a user’s friends that the user did not intend or want to send. This can undermine a user’s personal relationships and deters users from freely communicating on Facebook and through applications. The best applications are clear about their features and don’t try to deceive users.

Developers can apply now for the program, and will be slotted for a much longer application process at a later date. Once all apps are reviewed the program will go live, sometime early next year.

This Will Be A Serious Revenue Machine For Facebook.

There’s just one catch - developers must pay a $375 to “cover some of the operational costs of the program.” If every application applied, that would be $18 million in incremental revenue to Facebook. Our guess is half or more will apply.

Developers are given three chances to get approval (with feedback along the way). If they fail after the third attempt, they can re-apply 3-6 months down the road.

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Philippines-based media company ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corporation has paid $5 million for a 5% stake in Multiply, the media-centric social network with a userbase primarily composed of adults. The investment pegs Multiply’s valuation at $100 million, which is within range (though on the lower end) of our social network valuations based on past deals. ABS-CBN also has the right to purchase up to 10% of Multiply within the next two years.

Multiply has a significant presence in the Philippines, with around 3 million users. ABS-CBN plans to capitalize on its investment through advertising, and by eventually offering a mobile version of the site for users in the Philippines. For more, read the ABS-CBN announcement here.

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Movies are easier to access than ever, but many of us still struggle with the age old question, “What to watch?” The days of milling around Blockbuster may be gone for many people, but most cable boxes and online movie stores offer little in the way of movie recommendations. Jinni, a new startup launching today in private beta, is looking to help. The site has compiled an index of 10,000 movies and television shows that can be searched using natural language. TechCrunch readers can grab one of 500 exclusive invitations by registering here.

The site has created what it calls “The Movie Genome” - a database of movies tagged by a team of humans aided by a computer algorithm, with attributes spanning fifty categories. The database is reminiscent of Pandora’s Music Genome Project (which is also sorted by human professionals), though it is significantly smaller at this point. Users can either search for movies based on a manual search, browse through movies by their attributes, or can generate recommendations after completing a brief test that determines their movie personality. After finding a movie or show they’re interested in, users can buy or rent them (or in some cases, watch them free) through a number of linked services, including Hulu, Amazon, and Netflix.

In practice the search seems to work well. Each match is visually displayed in a grid as a thumbnail, with the most relevant matches emphasized with larger images. This style makes it easier to quickly identify movies you might be interested in, and also makes false matches less jarring.

Jinni will see heavy competition from existing movie sites like Netflix, which have invested years into developing accurate recommendation algorithms (Netflix even offers a $1 million Prize if anyone can best its algorithm). But Jinni has a fun, intuitive interface and seems to work well, so it may be able to carve out its own slice in the market. Other players in this space include Flixter, which offers social recommendations and TheFilter, which launched movie recommendations earlier this year.

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Fring is trialing something it should have implemented long ago if it ever planned on making money: ads.

Fring is essentially a mobile VoIP / chat service provider that works on the iPhone and any device running Windows Mobile or Symbian, with technology that enables users to make free calls using the Fring service itself, Skype, Live Messenger, Google Talk, and other communication services.

Up until now, the chat functionality was completely ad-free, but now Fring will gradually start rolling out banner display ads, beginning with a small number of randomly selected users.

From the Fring blog:

We wanted to give you the heads-up, as you may soon see small clickable advertising banners in the fring chat window, beneath the chat itself. Clicking the ad will open your browser and take you to the advertiser’s site; you may even find extra special offers, cool promos & other nice surprises behind the click from time to time And, more clicks mean happy advertisers; and happy advertisers mean more resources for us to develop cool new stuff for you to play with in fring!

The beta version of Fring was made publicly available in January 2007, and is now being used by millions of users across the globe. With (at least) $10 million in venture funding, the company was bound to come up with a monetization effort for all those users soon. Unlike competitors such as Jajah and Truphone, Fring is committed to keeping the costs of calling as low as possible and will try to make up for that revenue by slapping ads on chat screens.

(Thanks to Harel Schattenstein for the tip)

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Forget the printed books and cluttered sites like this one, you can now pick your new baby’s name in style. Two year old Jackson Fish Market’s newest site is What A Lovely Name. Peruse and click on descriptive tags and see names that reflect those traits.

For example, English, Elegant, Intelligent and Wise yields twenty-six boy names:

You can also see what any individual name means:

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Some of the most useful set of apps on the iPhone are the restaurant apps that tell you what is to eat nearby. There’s UrbanSpoon, Yelp, and LocalEats, among others. But once you find a restaurant, you still have to call to make a reservation. Now, you no longer have to use up those minutes. Online reservation service OpenTable released an iPhone app today that lets you not only find nearby restaurants, but book a table as well. You don’t have to call and wait on hold. The app uses OpenTable’s online reservation system to book and confirm a table. It will even give you directions to the restaurant from wherever you are.

You are shown only nearby restaurants, and cannot filter by type of cuisine or refine your search as easily as you can on the Website. But the app is perfectly functional. The key is that it only shows you nearby restaurants that have open tables for the time when you want to eat.

OpenTable is especially great for reserving tables at high-end restaurants. If you are on a business trip, or wandering about town with some friends and want to make impromptu dinner plans, I could see this app becoming indispensable. I’m a big fan of OpenTable, and already have an account there, so for someone like me it is a must-have iPhone app.

The app is free and you can download it from iTunes (link opens up iTunes).

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