After Dragon Dictation, this is the second app that Nuance has released gratis for a limited time this month. The only thing stopping Dragon Search from being a must-have is that voice search with your Google app will bring up largely the same top results, so for casual surfing it's a bit redundant. If you're looking for a deeper dive, though, the scrolling Search Carousel UI is actually a useful tool. Dragon Search also acts as a nice cheat to use voice search for the iTunes store, which might save your thumbs some damage in the long run. [iTunes]

This Week's Apps

If you hate hate hate galleries, click here to view the apps as a single page.

Honorable Mentions

• Google Mobile: This update keeps the app from launching into Safari as much as it used to, and widens its voice capabilities. A minor but useful upgrade.

• My Name and Head Shoulders Knees & Toes: I suspect most of you don't reader these roundups to find ways to entertain your children. But if you do, My Name, which will teach your tot how to spell whatever is on his birth certificate, and Head, Shoulders Knees and Toes, which makes a simple touch game out of the children's song, will distract them long enough for you to gobble up enough Zoloft to keep the gears moving without anyone noticing.

• Wolfram Alpha: Once a comical $50, this mega calculator app is now a slightly less comical $20.

• Monkey Ball 2: Last week, I noted that this app seemed to have a widespread crashing problem, and therefore couldn't recommend it, despite the fact that it's a worthy—if not revolutionary—followup to one of the iPhone's best launch titles. The bug has been identified: If you have a jailbroken phone, avoid this one. If you don't, and you loved Monkey Ball numero uno, give it a shot.

• iClassic: Replaces your music interface with a faux-clickwheel. Jailbreak-only.

• Voltron: A name and a concept worth getting excited about, let down by mediocre execution.

• Aqua Forest 2: Same deal as above: A game with a pedigree and a soild concept, but on which the developers didn't quite follow through well enough.

This Week's iPhone News On Giz

• Mega-iPhone Dorks Who Idolise Rambo, Strap This On For Size

• Apple Countersues Nokia

• Analyst Claims iPhone Users Are Suffering From "Stockholm Syndrome"

• Apple Patent Shows Dock Made From 'Elastic Sponge-Like Substance' That Conforms To Shape of iPod/iPhone

• In Which a Telco Executive Makes Taking Sound Like Giving

This list is in no way definitive. If you've spotted a great app that hit the store this week, give us a heads up or, better yet, your firsthand impressions in the comments. And for even more apps: see our previous weekly roundups here, and check out our Favorite iPhone Apps Directory. Have a great weekend, everybody!

Dragon Dictation (link opens iTunes), which is based on the desktop Dragon NaturallySpeaking software, lets you do pretty much everything you'd use the iPhone's keyboard for, but with your voice. That includes using the iPhone's clipboard for cutting and pasting, as well as saying your latest Twitter or Facebook update aloud (warning: Saying "Just ate a sandwich LOL roast beef LOL" aloud may frighten those around you). Update: It is now available at the App Store. LOL! [Nuance]

Wanted to share this… I am an avid (daily) Gizmodo reader (commenter GarouDiams).

I have played with Legos since I was a little kid. When my wife gave me free reign over my groom's cake, I knew what I wanted… A Lego castle cake. I still have the manuals and the pieces for the Kings Castle (6080) and Knight's Castle (6073). I recently got the new King's Castle Siege (7094), which set the mental gears turning. After a trip to the Lego store in Houston to pick up some individual bricks, I turned over some of my pieces and a sketch of what I wanted: a tiered chocolate cake with chocolate / vanilla icing and an epic battle for the life of an ill-fated bride.

The cake was make from scratch by a friend of the family.

I'm a little disappointed it's not the classic Lego Yellow Castle, but congratulations to both of you, Clint. Photography by Whitney Lee Photography of Austin, TX

It's such a short time before the skies over Florida will no longer thunder to the sound of the Space Shuttle's main engines under full thrust. But that doesn't mean that after September 16, 2010, there will be any letup in the requirements to put people and hardware into orbit. What ships are in line to hop into the venerable old Shuttle's shoes? Five, at last count, all with their own talents and differences.

Check out each photo in the gallery, a dossier of facts about the next vehicles that will take us and our crap into orbit, and possibly to the moon and Mars:

And there you have it. Though none of these Space Shuttle replacements appears quite as glamorous or high-tech, each is special in its own way—and with any luck they could all be cheaper and more reliable in getting people and hardware into space. Orion, of course, has a historic future ahead of it, as it follows in the Apollo program's footsteps and takes man back to the Moon.

Additional Resources and Photo Sources:
Orion: NASA and Wikipedia
Dragon: SpaceX and Wikipedia
Cygnus: Orbital and Wikipedia
PPTS: Russian Space Web and Wikipedia
Kliper: Russian Space Web and Wikipedia

Puff scans the area to find flames then attempts to "blow" it out with his built-in fan. The problem is that Puff's courage only goes so far. If he fails to blow out the candle in two sweeps he panics and runs away. Apparently, Puff had an incident with kids and some Chinese firecrackers a few years back and now he suffers from post-traumatic stress. Hit the following link for a basic visual guide that can help you build your own Puff arduino dragon. [Let's Make Robots via Hacked Gadgets]

All you have to do is download the 2PLEX software upgrade for your Dragon, install it, and you can hook up with any other Bluetooth headset to have a two-way conversation, or sync up so both of you can have a Skype call (via PC) or regular phone call (on a cellphone) with someone else. The software is $40, but if you have another Bluetooth headset already and don't want to buy another Callpod Dragon ($100) it's a decent alternative for BT walkie-talkie. [Dragon]

Our own tests at home found that the Phoenix was pretty solid in doing what it promises. Pairing the five included headsets was as easy as pairing one to your phone. You can then take the headsets and wander around your office (house) and be able to talk to any of the other headsets automatically. Muting and standby options are also available.

Of course, the main reason you'll be using this for (in businesses at least) is to make calls, and that works just fine. Same Callpod Dragon quality, just multiplied by five. The unit also comes with a car charger, a five-way Chargepod charger and a Drone, which is a Bluetooth dongle for your computer so you can pipe the conferencing through a Skype call.

Would we recommend this? Sure, if you're in one of the target markets listed above. If it's your business that's paying the $3000 price tag, what do you have to worry about? You'll get to listen and participate in conference meetings while going to the bathroom. Can you really put a price on that? Well, yes, and it's $3000. [Callpod]

The Price: $99

The Verdict: Much improved on the technical front, but the ear loop bugs us to no end. We loved the old version, with a loop that was locked in one position and gave us a tight fit and secured the headset no matter how wildly we were moving around. The V2 has a rotating scheme that makes it fit better for people with weirdly sized ears, but until there's a way to lock the position in, we still prefer the old one.

On the other hand, both incoming and outgoing call quality has been improved. It's got the dual-mic, which Wired says is great only when you perfectly line it up with your mouth, but we had no problems no matter how we adjusted the headset. Old features like walkie-talkie mode (pair this headset with another Dragon and you can have chats sans cellphone) and a 100 meter range made it safely into the V2. The battery life is just as good, or even better, than the first—which means it's great.

The Dragon's a bit pricey at $99, but it's right up there with the Jawbone as one of our favorite Bluetooth headsets on the market today, even with the loose ear piece. [Dragon]

The Price: $119.95

The Performance: Incoming sound was rich and full, but outgoing cellphone sound was only very slightly echoey. The effect we heard gave the listener the feeling that the caller was inside a room. Nothing dramatic, but it was noticeable. It stacked up quite well compared with our current favorite, the nXZEN nX6000, with comparable incoming and outgoing call quality. It's also just as comfortable, with both an in-canal earbud and a hook over the ear for security.

There's even a special Dragon to Dragon walkie-talkie mode that goes for around 100 meters (we got somewhere between 50 and 100, but it was through a wall) that sounds as good as a cellphone call. Might not be useful for you, but Callpod tells us Cirque du Soleil is using it to communicate with performers on stage.

The Verdict: If you've got a need to Bluetooth walkie-talkie yourself around the house while you're not using it as a headset, the Dragon can fit the bill quite nicely. The miniUSB charging port means you can charge it with the included AC adapter, car charger, or even the Chargepod adapter (nice touch) that it shipped with. Plus, Callpod's got a Phoenix conferencing system coming soon that can join five Dragons together and make calls over a cellphone or Skype. At a price of $119 (which means it's on par with the rest of the Bluetooth headset crowd), it's got great quality with future extendability. [Callpod]

The best part? It actually looks functional, and it's still capable of hauling stuff. – Jason Chen

Dragon Tank Truck [English Russia via Jalopnik]

I love this machine's design. First off, the 20.1-inch widescreen ultrabright has a generous 1680 x 1050 resolution, backlit by two lamps. A hinge let's it swivel from two places, the middle of the panel's back and the standard location, for optimal screen positioning. HP even promises to bump the res to true 1080p-capable 1920 x 1200 pixels in a future version. Secondly, the keyboard tray is so generous that it can fit a media center remote in its left side, and a built in SD/HD OTA tuner (something many vendors have abandoned.)

Laptop Mag reviewed one of the first preproduction samples, and quoted their performance results:

This preproduction model wouldn't run PCMark05, but its 3DMark03 score of 12,240 and 3DMark06 score of 4,002 mean this system can plow through graphics-intensive applications. Thanks to Intel's new draft-802.11n connection, wireless scores were through the roof, hitting nearly 18.9 and 15.8 Mbps at 15 and 50 feet, respectively. Battery life, while not great, was better than we expected at one hour and 31 minutes on our DVD rundown test. This is likely attributable to Santa Rosa's power-saving technology.

[DEEEP Breath]And then 400GB of storage spread over twin 200GB SATA drives, and HD DVD Rom with a DVD+/- double layer burner, gigabit ethernet, quad speaker setup plus subwoofer, 4 gigs of RAM, and a Centrino Duo setup with Core 2 Duo proc at T7700 (2.40GHz, BTW), and an ATI HD 2600XT with 256MB of GDDR3 RAM that can use some system mem to eek out more performance. [INHALE]

HP HDX Preview [Laptop]
HP HDX News [Notebooks.com, thanks Xavier]

Five colors are available, but if you're going to do writing more than once or twice a day we'd recommend spending the money on a real tablet instead of a half-half. – Jason Chen

Enet [via Everything USB]

SOV 3000 Dragon Skin Bulletproof Vest [Defense Tech]