Google just launched “Google Voice Local Search” a free phone based local information tool. They are calling it Google 411.

How it works: Dial 1-800-GOOG-411 (1-800-466-4411) from any phone, the service then asks for city and state. It then asks for a category or business name. It uses speech recognition to input your selections, and returns the results using computerized speech synthesis. The speech is much better than Microsoft Sam, but still sounds computerized.

Verdict: Absolutely brilliant.

Internet Explorer 7 has been launched by Microsoft. It took me two attempts to install it, it froze during the first. Not too much has changed between the RC1 and now. I’m off to bug-test my personal and client’s sites in the new ie! Grab your own copy over at microsoft.

Google Labs has released a public search code tool, check it out at Public Code Search. It enables searching of source code directly, which will allow website developers to search for examples to particular coding problems or similar code to use as a guide when they get stuck. Obviously this is only going to help with clientside scripting like javascript. I’m going to experiment a bit more and report back any other uses I find.

Update: Patrick has an interesting post about the potential security holes created by codesearch Google Presents Code Search and it’s threat to Wordpress security. This is similar to problems with leaving any file on your server, even if its not directly web accessible (linked to).