Hasta La Gadget!

Those lucky enough to have their hands on a BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha device were treated to a nice little software update this week. While some were having trouble just getting it installed, others were able to fire it up pretty quick and found a nice surprise waiting for them — voice controls. Hold down the play/pause button on the side and you’ll be prompted to speak a command and offered a unified search interface. Sound familiar? It should, Android and iOS have both hopped on the speech recognition bandwagon, and its becoming an expected feature of a modern mobile OS. The fine folks over at N4BB were able to give the suspiciously familiar sounding virtual assistant a run through and, lets just say it’s a bit rough around the edges. Of course, thanks to the limitations of the alpha quality software there wasn’t much to actually test anyway. To see it in action check out the video after the break.

Continue reading BlackBerry 10 gets voice commands in latest dev update (video)

Filed under: Cellphones, Software

BlackBerry 10 gets voice commands in latest dev update (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 20 Jul 2012 13:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You’ve seen us give Google Now a shakedown in our Jelly Bean review, but one JLishere decided to give the voice command system an unusually thorough grilling. The 47-question test goes beyond what Google showed onstage at I/O and shows that, in some cases, Android’s new rival to Siri can cover a wide range of answers, whether it’s day-to-day queries like directions and image searches to more esoteric trivia, like the minimum height for riding Disney World’s Space Mountain. There’s even a special treat for those who dare to bring up Google’s best-known Easter egg. That said, we wouldn’t be too eager to kick earlier voice command systems to the curb: we’ve tried a few close variants on the questions and sometimes managed to stump Google Now, so it’s clear Google could stand to layer on some more polish. JLishere’s original video evidence is available after the break.

Continue reading Google Now gets an epic 47-question interrogation, survives for now (video)

Google Now gets an epic 47-question interrogation, survives for now (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 03 Jul 2012 17:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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While Vic Gundotra wasn’t willing to talk Glass in our run-in here at Google I/O, a few others were. In speaking with folks from Google, we learned a few new details about the project, while confirming some whispers that we’d heard floated in the past. Here’s a quick rundown:

• Engineers are currently ‘experimenting’ with connectivity options. Existing prototypes — including those worn in the skydiving stunt this morning — do not have any sort of built-in WWAN connectivity.
• While it’s possible that a 3G / 4G module could end up in production devices, the general idea is that latching onto nearby WiFi hotspots or relying on a wireless tether with your smartphone will be the primary way that Glass gets its data to the web.
• Controlling Glass will eventually rely on a mixture of inputs: it’ll recognize voice commands, while also taking cues from the right sidebar. There’s a touch-sensitive pad on there that’ll understand gestures.
• It’s entirely probable that Glass will also be able to be controlled via one’s smartphone, but physical inputs will be the preferred ones.
• Glass has an accelerometer and a gyroscope, enabling wearers to tell Glass what to do by nodding, shaking one’s head, etc. (For what it’s worth, we’ve seen similar demoed by NTT DoCoMo.)
• The internal battery sits just behind the ear on the right side; the capacity and longevity weren’t confirmed, though.
• Glass will be able to record locally, but the idea is to have ‘most everything’ streamed live to the web; it’s the “live, right now!” nature of Glass that Google intends to push as one of its differentiating factors.
• In an area where wireless data isn’t available (like a remote National Park or a hospital room that forbids phone usage), storing video locally would be possible for uploading later.

We also confirmed that the team is playing around with various colors, with orange, white, black and blue editions being sported here at I/O. Whether or not all of those hues make it to market remains to be seen, of course, but we’re adequately jazzed about the possibilities.

More Google Glass details: experimenting with connectivity options, control possible via voice originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 27 Jun 2012 16:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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