I’m not sure how much longer people will care whether cellphones have keyboards because voice control is clearly on its way.

Google has just released a version of its mobile maps program that takes voice commands, but there are a few caveats:

Using your voice to search for businesses is super useful in situations when you can’t type, when the name of the business is long, or when you’re not sure how to spell it. In other situations — when you’re in a library or a rock concert, for example — typing makes more sense. Keeping that in mind, we designed this feature to grant you to select whether to talk or type. Get it now on your BlackBerry Pearl by visiting http://www.google.com/gmm on your mobile phone, or learn more here…

This feature is experimental, which means a couple of things. First, similar to other voice-recognition technologies, the accuracy of voice recognition will improve over time as more people use the voice search feature. Second, the feature is currently only supported on 8110, 8120 and 8130 BlackBerry Pearl models in the US.

Assuming this program works, expect Google to follow up with a voice-controlled version of Google Mobile Maps for the iPhone and, reasonably soon, for pretty much all smart phones that let you download applications.

Actually, this isn’t the first voice-control program for smart phones.

The folks at Nuance already sell an impressive service that lets users surf the Web and dictate simple memos over certain types of smart phones.

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Given that there are 1 billion nanometers in a meter, we’re talking some very small transistors here.

Need something to help you imagine that? A typical human hair is 100,000 nanometers across so a single transistor is to that hair as a 2.5-mile stretch is to the circumference of the earth.

Repeat: we’re talking about seriously small transistors.

But there are good reasons why Intel and other big chip makers will spend many billions of dollars to shrink chips down from the current state of the art — 45 nm — to the 10 nm level.

Smaller circuits use less power to do more calculations more quickly. The ability to cram more stuff into less space explains why today’s smartphones are more powerful than computers that used to fill entire rooms.

More shrinkage (along with some other breakthroughs) will make tomorrow’s smart phones (or whatever we call them then) nearly as powerful as today’s supercomputers — or at least that’s the word from Pat Gelsinger, VP of Intel’s Digital Enterprise Group.

Gelsinger spoke to reporters Monday to preview Intel’s plans for celebrating its 40th birthday, but according to ChannelWeb, he mixed memories of the past with some juicy predictions about the future.

Gelsinger’s remaining predictions were more abstract in nature. He said that better parallel programming for current multi-core processors and future ones would lead to “terascale computing at the level of everyone’s personal computer.” Intel’s and others’ work in simplifying tool kits for software developers to take advantage of multi-threading on multi-core processors would pay off for certain classes of workloads such as visual computing, he said.

One payoff end-users should expect fairly soon is “a dramatic restructuring of the user interface” that is immersive, intuitive and interactive. Asked whether he expectedMicrosoft (NSDQ: MSFT), Apple (NSDQ:AAPL) or somebody like to Nintendo to drive that evolution of the interface, Gelsinger again demurred, saying, “In Intel’s history, we’ve never been good at picking the next user interface or killer app.”

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Less than 10 days after I wondered why Apple had not responded to the falling cost of solid-state memory by cutting the price of the SSD version of its MacBook Air, the company has lopped a whopping $500 off the sticker.

I take full credit, naturally.

I’m curious how many SSD models Apple has sold since January and how much this price cut will spur sales.

Reviewers who compared both models said the SSD version booted far faster and ran a bit quicker overall, but they didn’t notice huge differences either in performance or battery life.

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Google Blogoscoped is reporting that Google will be closing its Dallas office. No word yet on how many jobs this impacts.

UPDATE: Google has two offices in the North Texas area - one in Dallas and one in Coppell. Sources close to the company say less than 20 people are affected by the closure of the Dallas office. The employees there will be offered other positions within the company. Official Google statement below:

“Following an operational review, we are consolidating our offices in Dallas and Denver, as we currently have at least two offices in each of these markets. This reorganization is designed to ensure we are serving the needs of our customers, stakeholders and Googlers efficiently. These are the only two cities affected by this review, and all affected Dallas and Denver Googlers will be offered opportunities within the company.”

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I took issue a couple weeks back with a Wall Street Journal story that suggested that high gas prices have convinced some significant portion of the world to ditch automobiles for Segways.

The real point of my post was that the “trend” — while significant from Segway’s point of view — probably wasn’t huge enough to be significant to any American who doesn’t own stock in the company.

But a lot of folks interpreted my post as an attack against the Segway or a recommendation that Americans would be worse off if they switch from vehicles to Segways.

At the time, I didn’t mean to recommend any such thing, but I’ve since learned the amazing dangers that Segways pose to unsuspecting riders.

Ouch!

Want more proof that Segways are killers (or at least injurers)? Look for more disasters here and here.

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Time Inc. plans to launch Maghound this September, and from Folio’s description of how it will work, I’m interested:

Maghound.com allows consumers to choose titles from a variety of publishers for a mix-and-match “subscriptions” where they pay one monthly fee and have the ability to switch titles at any time. Unlike traditional subscriptions, members aren’t locked in their memberships and can cancel whenever they wish…

The pricing for a membership is tiered–three titles for $3.95 per month, five titles for $7.95, seven titles for $9.95, and $1 per title for eight titles or more. Titles that have a non-discounted traditional sub rate of around $19 or more per year are considered “premium” titles and will have an extra $2 fee per month (10-15 percent of titles fall in this category). First-time users will also be eligible for a free one month trial.

Some folks have questioned the concept by asking how many people want to change their magazine subscriptions mid-year.

I have no statistically significant answer, but speaking personally, I’d love to be able to switch my subscriptions around and judging by the crawl on its Web site, Maghound has a pretty good selection.

Why do I often find myself wanting to switch from one magazine to another? Two reasons.

Some magazines focus so narrowly on a topic that the eventually run out of new things to say about it. Long-time readers may keep getting new issues, but they’re not learning much they haven’t read before.

Men’s Health falls into this category for me.

Other magazines have the opposite problem, changing so much that they drift outside my sphere of interest or stop suiting my tastes.

GQ would be a good example here. It’s gone from being a general-interest men’s magazine to an odd combination of dubious fashion advice for would-be hipsters (near skin-tight suites) and angry political pieces.

I’d love to switch both subscriptions, but I can’t do it easily, so I’m stuck with two magazines I no longer enjoy. Maghound sounds like a good option for fickle folks like me.

Stephen Dubner, writing in the always interesting Freakonomics blog, notes another advantage that Maghound will hold over traditional magazine subscriptions:

To me, one of the biggest advantages of something like Maghound is far more prosaic: having one channel through which to handle all your magazine subscriptions, rather than having to hassle with that constant flood of mail from every magazine, reminding you 4 or 6 times that your subscription will be expiring in a mere 12 months.

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A study by ETH Zurich, Google and IBM found that about 40 percent of all World wide web users have failed to download security patches and other major updates to their Web browsers.

Researchers made this determination by examining Google user logs collected between January, ‘07 and June, ‘08.

The most surprising result: a whopping 52.4 percent of Internet Explorer users still use the woeful IE 6 rather than somewhat superior IE 7.

The study didn’t speculate how much damage people do to themselves and the Internet community by using browsers that expose them to phishing, viruses and other dangers.

Still, the researchers think the problem is bad enough that it might warrant an extreme solution: putting expiration dates on browsers so users are forced to download newer software.

Alternatively, the researchers recommended that all browsers should update themselves automatically.

This strikes me as a better recommendation, but it still doesn’t address the problem of getting people to upgrade from whatever they’re using now.

A lot of these people will probably be using IE 6 several decades hence, unless folks like you, who read technology blogs, step in and help your less savvy friends.

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The Roku Netflix Player is already pretty awesome. The $100 device lets Netflix subscribers stream an unlimited number of movies and Television shows from a selection of 10,000.

But a major improvement is in the works. The folks at Roku told Forbes that they’ll add more content from a “big player” by year’s end.

That announcement got the folks at Silicon Alley Insider speculating about potential partners:

It’s possible the set-top box could plug into Google’s (GOOG) YouTube interface, the same way other gadgets like Apple’s (AAPL) Apple TV and iPhone do. Or Roku might be adding a Web browser with an Adobe (ADBE) Flash plugin to its systems, which could theoretically play video off YouTube, Hulu, or potentially any other company that uses Flash for its video, like ABC or NBC.

If Roku does strike a deal with one or more of the large TV networks, it will be huge news.

Why? Because it will spell a reasonably quick end (say five years) to much of the TV distribution industry.

If anyone with a fast Internet connection, a $100 box and a $9 monthly subscription to Netflix could get both movies and commercial Television on demand, who will pay the money for cable?

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Grotesque? Yes.

Tantalizing? Yup.

If I don’t see these at the Texas State Fair this year, I’m demanding a refund on my ticket.

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The Register, in a long, rambling article, says that Apple has already made a prototype iPhone with a slide-out keypad with traditional plastic buttons that it is demoing to select customers.

The goal is to pitch the slider iPhone to professionals who still prefer the tactile feedback of their BlackBerries and Windows Mobile devices.

The keypad iPhone won’t be out until next year at the earliest, The Register says, but the site seems fairly confident it is coming eventually.

Given the gradual proliferation of different iPod models (Shuffle, mini, etc.), it’s certainly plausible, especially once Apple’s exclusivity deal with AT&T ends.

Maybe the iPhone won’t need a keyboard dock after all.

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