Fisker halting Surf production, but will build you one if you’ve got a ‘big enough checkbook’

Fisker halting Surf production, but will build you one if you've got a 'big enough checkbook'

Like the ambitious diner at the all-you-can-eat-buffet, Fisker’s got a lot on its plate. Between recalling all of its self-immolating Karma models, taking flack from its rivals and hiring a new CEO, something had to give. As such, it’s halted production on the Surf and Sunset while it concentrates on getting the Nina / Atlantic onto the streets. However, one-percenters needing a five-door EV are in luck — Fisker’s Roger Ormisher has said that “if someone came along with a big enough checkbook” they’d discuss building a model tailored to their needs. While he remained coy about a specific price in his statement to Autoblog (after the break), a Fisker Buzz member has pegged the figure to be $200,000 — but hey, that’s pocket change to you, right?

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Fisker halting Surf production, but will build you one if you’ve got a ‘big enough checkbook’ originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 22 Aug 2012 14:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nuance’s Nina is a new virtual assistant for mobile customer service apps

Nuance already wowed us when it introduced Dragon Drive and Dragon NaturallySpeaking 12 in April and July respectively. Today, the expert provider of voice and language solutions for businesses, is introducing a new virtual assistant for mobile customer services apps. It’s called Nina, and the name stands for Nuance Interactive Natural Assistant. Nina is actually a suite of voice-powered personal assistant technologies that combines Nuance speech recognition, Text-to-Speech (TTS), voice biometrics, and Natural Language Understanding (NLU) technology hosted in the cloud.

The Nina Virtual Assistant is comprised of the following three technologies: Nina Virtual Assistant Persona, Nina Virtual Assistant SDK, and Nina Virtual Assistant Cloud. Nuance also broke the news that USAA will be adopting Nina within its popular mobile application. Nuance said that it will begin experimenting with the functionality this month, with the end goal of launching the service to all members of the USAA early next year. The Nina Virtual Assistant SDK and cloud service is now available from Nuance in U.S. and U.K., with additional languages to be made available later this year. You can learn more about Nina by visiting the company’s official website.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Microsoft releases Office Store for Office 2013, Evernote for Mac updated with Account Switching, LinkedIn sharing, and new keyboard shortcuts,

Voice assistant ‘Nina’ lets any app obey commands, makes speech your password

Voice assistant 'Nina' lets any app obey commands, makes speech your password

Voice recognition technology from Nuance is all over the place — in everything from Smart TVs to Beemers. But today, in response to the growth of device-specific voice assistants like Siri and S-Voice, the company wants to take things down a different route: launching a mobile SDK for iOS and Android that any third-party app can employ. Baptized “Nina,” the voice assistant won’t only be able to understand instructions, but will also identify the speaker using vocal biometrics. That means Nina could potentially pay a bill, arrange a bank transfer, book a vacation or even interact with government services without ever requiring you to enter a password. The video after the break shows just how intimate things could get — assuming you’re able to find a spot where the two of you won’t be overheard.

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Voice assistant ‘Nina’ lets any app obey commands, makes speech your password originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Aug 2012 06:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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