Hasta La Gadget!

Welcome to Thursday evening folks. Today we heard that Samsung may use MWC 2013 to unveil a new Galaxy Note 8.0 tablet, which is certainly exciting to say the least. According to new rumors, Verizon may be shipping the Samsung ATIV Odyssey on January 24, while a new Apple job listing suggests some major Siri improvements coming in the future. Instagram said today that it has 90 million monthly active users who are uploading 40 million photos per day, and even though Intel’s earnings for Q4 2012 were down, the company still managed to pull in $13.3 billion in revenue.

New photos from the incoming Steve Jobs biopic are showing us what John Gad looks like as Steve Wozniak, with Time Warner Cable accusing Netflix of discriminating against its customers today. Carrier-specific Galaxy Nexus phones are getting updates to Android 4.2.1 Jelly Bean save for Verizon’s version, while Sony showed off the construction of products that were new to CES in a five-minute video. King.com has unseated Zynga for the top spot on Facebook’s charts, and 13-inch Retina MacBooks are now available in Apple’s refurbished store.

Dish network is asking the FCC view SoftBank’s deal with Sprint as “unripe for consideration,” and Sony announced that Classic White PS3 bundles will be making their way to North America on January 27. Speaking of the PlayStation family, we learned today that the PS Vita can only hold 100 apps, even if there’s room on the memory card for more. Google CEO Larry Page talked about what kind of influence the company has over Motorola, while in the same interview talking about why Google may not exist if it weren’t for Nikola Tesla.

Skype said today that it isn’t helping Facebook with its new calling service, while a new patent suggests that Google Glass could be outfitted with laser-projected keyboards. American Airlines unveiled a new look today, and Temple Run 2 was busy burning up the iOS App Store’s free chart just hours after release. NASA says 2012 was the 9th-warmest year on record since the 1880s, and Valve has announced that it will be showing off a virtual reality port of Team Fortress 2 at GDC 2013. Finally tonight, Don Reisinger asks if Apple doubt is beginning to creep in. That does it for tonight’s Evening Wrap-Up, we hope you enjoy the rest of your night everyone!

SlashGear Evening Wrap-Up: January 17, 2013 is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Think of voice recognition, and you probably think of Siri. Now, though, the company behind Apple’s tech, Nuance, is planning a cloud-based, cross-platform system which could make the tech properly useful. More »

Not enough Siri in you life? Hop into a 2013 Chevy Spark. Those vehicles rocking a MyLink radio are eligible to upgrade to Apple’s friendly iPhone 4S / 5 helper. Using the Bluetooth button on the steering wheel, you can access the assistant. We got a demo from a GM rep, who showed us how to access messages, read back to you through the car stereo.

If you’re feeling vocal, you can also dictate responses and Siri’ll shoot them back off, all without ever having to take your hands off the wheel. You can also ask for things like recommendations for local businesses, but those won’t play through the display. Siri also won’t answer your philosophic questions, as GM doesn’t want to display Wikipedia pages on the screen while you’re driving. From the demo, the whole thing seemed pretty straightforward for anyone who’s ever used an in-car Bluetooth system, checking things like stock prices and sports scores, if you’re so inclined.

We also received a quick demo of TuneIn, an iPhone app that pulls in radio stations around the world, featuring recommendation features like a Favorites button, local trending and a Jump button, which uses an algorithm to pull songs and the like based on your listening habits.

Jon Fingas contributed to this report.

Continue reading Chevy’s Siri and TuneIn in-car apps hit 2013 Sonics and Sparks, we go hands-on (video)

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These days, there are plenty of Bluetooth speakers available, and you no longer have to pay hundreds of dollars to get something decent that sounds good. If you’re looking for a small, but feature-packed speaker, you might want to check out the Boombot REX.

The hexagonal Boombot REX isn’t just a single channel – it’s a 2.1 speaker – with a pair of full-range drivers on front and a dedicated woofer on back. It also has a noise-canceling microphone, and a built-in clip, making it quite portable in a variety of different situations. It connects via Bluetooth to many different devices, from iPods to smartphones and tablets.

There are dedicated buttons to change tracks, adjust volume, answer and hang up calls. In addition, the REX is Siri-enabled, so that you can push a single button on the phone and speak your requests to it and hear them back through the speaker. Beyond all of its technical capabilities, the REX is water-resistant and built to take a beating.

The project is currently raising funds over on Kickstarter, having already amassed more than $85,000 against an initial goal of just $27,000, with 15 days of funding left. Needless to say that this project will be fully funded. You’ll have to pledge $80(USD) to get yours, and you can choose from a blue, green or black version for that price. There’s also a $100 option which lets you choose a custom set of grills in either purple or orange.

[via designboom]

An Apple patent filing published by the USPTO and spotted by AppleInsider on Thursday describes a task manager that goes well beyond the standard Reminders app that is now built in to iOS and Mac devices. The patent describes a smart to-do list that combines natural language processing for easy text entry, with contextual information sourced from your device to fill in all the little details that you might omit in making a casual task entry. It’s a little bit like Google Now in the way it actively seeks information from the device, but with the specific aim of turning a lightweight reminders app into a much more powerful and intelligent getting-things-done tool, without any additional complexity required on the user’s part.

The use case is simple: A user quickly enters a task into their phone such as “send him an email,” because they think at the time it’ll be enough to trigger a memory about all the other important details. But as we all know, what we think we remember one moment doesn’t turn out to be what we actually do remember later. Apple’s patent application addresses this by having the phone look for supporting information, including recently read and opened emails, recent voice messages or calls, text messages and more to determine who the user is talking about, and potentially even when might be a better time to call, depending on calendar information. It could fill in details in this way for all kinds of different tasks, including “attend meeting later,” “catch flight at 8 PM,” and many more.

Apple accounts for both spoken and text entry of tasks, and actually it’s surprising how much this resembles Fantastical’s vision of how calendar management should be handled on iPhone, with the added benefit that an Apple system-level process would have access to everything stored on the phone, potentially making its powers of deduction much stronger in terms of making educated guesses.

The system would also be able to group and trigger task and notifications based on cues, so that an item like “pick up eggs” would automatically be set to be triggered when near a grocery store, and would live in a sub-category of tasks that acts as a grocery list. Notifications could also be triggered by more than just location and time – one example provided is “Remind me to call my mom the next time I am on the phone,” or “Remind me before sunset this evening.”

Some of these types of features are already being used and improved upon by Google in its rival Android mobile OS via Google Now, but Apple’s patent is also a natural extension of what it has already been trying to do with Siri, Passbook and Reminders in terms of making the iPhone more into a comprehensive personal digital assistant.