Karaoke satellite radio and voice activated search

During the holidays I traveled quite a bit by car. Usually when I'm in the car, I listen to Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. (NASDAQ:SIRI) -- don't get excited, it's the lame Canadian version -- and I use my Research in Motion Ltd. (NASDAQ:RIMM) BlackBerry for different purposes, mostly email and search.

So while I was happily singing along to one of the songs, inventing the lyrics as I go along, an idea came to me. Why couldn't the satellite radio companies, Sirius and XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:XMSR) have karaoke style radio? After all, the artist and song names are already displayed on the devices, why not the lyrics then too? Granted, this could be too complicated for all channels, but why not have a few dedicated karaoke channels or even just one? Silly idea? Well, people have made money on sillier ideas than that and Karaoke software for MP3 players does exist.

Then, as I was searching for border waiting times, another idea hit me. I'm an incompetent texter. It simply takes me forever to text three words. Wouldn't it be a lot easier if we could have mobile voice activated search? We already talk into the device, then why not complete the circle and integrate voice activated search? Speech to text technology is nothing new.

It seems it's not that simple. Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) has been working on voice activated search for more than two years but now even the demo page is unavailable. Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) is discontinuing its Yahoo! by Phone service for voice operated commands (not search). Could salvation come from Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT), a company that already has speech to text technology and voice commands on Microsoft Windows Mobile? Or maybe V-ENABLE is the solution, especially after it claimed to be the first in the sector to receive a mobile voice search technology patent (mind you, Google may have a patent as well).

Regardless, someone should innovate now. Just imagine how easy life would be if lyrics arguments could be so easily resolved and if we could just tell the phone what we're looking for.