“Search and natural language is how you will interact with them [mobile virtual assistants] and get information and services that you need in the moment, no matter if you’re cooking or driving or walking your dog or playing catch with your son” says Amit Singhal, senior vice president and software engineer at Google. Victor Luckerson (Time.come: time.com/google-now/) discuss the value of natural language voice search in mobile devices. He reported that Singhal demoed a prototype lapel pin, activated with a tap, modeled after the communicator badge from Star Trek. The device is still in the testing phase but is equipped with a microphone for Voice and (perhaps Speech) Recognition (not unlike Siri and Cortana). It also uses Bluetooth to send voice commands to other devices. This Bluetooth-enabled lapel pin has never before discussed publicly by Google yet and it can output sound through a speaker or accompanying headphones, allowing “users to talk to Google without having to fish out their cell phones.” A broader discussion of virtual assistants in their mobile form and the challenges that the natural language processing or AI and IT industries face follows. An interesting read!