Hasta La Gadget!

Without Adam Cheyer, there would be no Siri. At least, Adam was the chief technical architect of Siri, Apple’s virtual personal assistant technology that debuted in the iPhone 4S so you know that he has a pretty big part to play in the development of Siri that millions of people have come to use and depend on today. According to Cheyer, “I left Apple for personal reasons some time ago.” and Apple has confirmed that Cheyer is no longer under Cupertino’s payroll.

So what is Cheyer up to these days? Probably just resting and taking a break from it all, as he has yet to take up a position with another company while claiming that he has no future plans for the moment. I don’t suppose he ever needs to work any more for a day in his life considering the amount of money he must have made from stock options over at Apple, but you know the entrepreneurial types, they work for the sake of loving it, and not because of the financial rewards that tend to follow in most successful cases.

There will still be Siri in iOS 6, which will be the next operating system version on the iPhone and iPad. Will Cheyer’s legacy continue in future iterations of Siri?

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Siri API to be introduced at WWDC 2012 on June 11?, Apple Siri falsely advertised?,

Audience, the company responsible for developing the EarSmart technology which power’s Siri, has announced that Apple is “unlikely” to use the system in the next-generation iPhone. More »

When Apple launched iPhone 4S with the voice-based personal assistant Siri, the world was mesmerized by the idea of Siri and this has popularized the concept of digital voice-activated assistant – in the real world, Siri wasn’t so hot (check our iPhone 4S review), but this is another story… Since then, many other vendors, such as Samsung, have tried to leverage their own voice-based assistants, but Siri is still considered the top-of-the-list by many.

However, that may change soon now. Compared to Siri, IBM’s Watson artificial intelligence system is a rather mega-project which has been designed to crunch massive amounts of data and act on them. Watson made a name for itself by winning the Jeopardy! TV show. Apparently, it can now answer voice questions too. (more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Apple sued again in China, this time over Siri, IBM bans Siri on internal networks due to privacy concerns,

Apple has agreed with Google that their Google Now voice search engine will be allowed on the iPhone in the very near future. This announcement comes this week as Google also revamps the rest of their search abilities with a new initiative for “one million users” to join in and allow the company to integrate their Gmail search results with their regular worldwide search results – this doesn’t mean your Gmail account it out for everyone to see, but does mean that you’ll soon have one integrated system for yourself. As for the mobile version of voice search, Google’s working with iPhone will make a huge splash on the Siri-loving fans across the globe soon, and very soon.

This step-up of voice-enabled search will be coming to iOS via the iPhone first for the big A, but will also continue to be developed for Android as well. We had our own hands-on look at Google Now, part of the Google voice search system, back at Google I/O 2012 when it was launched. This system is available on Android devices running version 4.1 Jelly Bean now and will more than likely be coming to the iPhone in its entirety very soon.

At the moment, however, it only appears that the voice recognition element of Google’s search engine for the mobile platform will be pushed. The Google Now element, being a rather enticing bit of software for Android users on the horizon, will be staying on Google’s Mobile OS for the near future. Below you can see the Google Nexus 7 showing off Google’s new voice search abilities courtesy of Android Community.

Google mentioned once again that they’re nearing “Star Trek” software for the future, but at the moment they’re still taking “baby steps” – this projection of the future coming from Google senior vice president Amit Singhal. Have a peek above at Google Now and prepare yourself for a whole new iPhone experience as the new device appears later this year as well. Google has been booted from the basic build of the iPhone in both maps and YouTube, so we’re expecting a full frontal assault from them in the software world for iOS in the coming weeks – Google made, Google updated.

[via Mercury News]

Google voice search heads to iPhone to take on Siri is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Personal voice assistants such as Siri and S-Voice certainly help shift handsets, but their functions are limited in scope to what Apple and Samsung implement. That issue can be sidestepped thanks to Nuance, who have today introduced Nina, a voice recognition service designed to be implemented directly into customer service apps for iOS and Android. The service combines multiple technologies such as text-to-speech, voice biometrics, and natural language understanding, all processed in the cloud that helps carries out commands.

Nina is apparently the first voice assistant service that combines voice recognition with biometrics, enabling services and companies to implement the solution and potentially serve up information or allow customers to pay bills without ever requiring a password. In Nuance’s examples, users could interact with their banks to help find the nearest ATM, or ask more complex queries regarding household insurance policies.

One banking institution is especially confident in the new functionality provided by Nina, with USAA, a bank that serves the US military and veterans, announcing a partnership with Nuance that will see the new technology used in its mobile banking app. A pilot app is expected to be unveiled in August for certain members before full fledged functionality rolls out to all USAA members next year.

Anyone else who wants to make use of Nina can do so with the release of the SDK today. It will be available in US, UK, and Australian English, and Nuance says that more languages will be coming in the future.

Nuance’s Nina brings Siri’s smarts to customer service apps is written by Ben Kersey & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.