Think of smart home thermostats and you probably think of Nest, but HVAC stalwart Honeywell wants to change all that with its WiFi Smart Thermostat with voice control. The touchscreen heating and air conditioning control unit not only allows you to fiddle with your settings with a fingertip, but call out instructions not only from […]
Intel continues to expand into the always-on universe of computing, having made public their acquisition of Spanish startup Indisys today. This acquisition was completed all the way back in May of this year, but for whatever reason was only revealed here in September – it’s possible that Intel was waiting to let this rain of […]
If there’s one thing we know about Siri, it’s that she sometimes has a hard time pronouncing names that can be a bit tricky, like if you have a non-English name that might be either hard to say or difficult to spell correctly. However, Siri in iOS 7 is getting a new feature where she’ll
This morning the folks at LG have been seeing their fair share of next-generation possibilities appearing in the news courtesy of anonymous tipsters from the shadows – and here with “Always On Voice Commands”, LG’s next smartphone continues to seem like no joke. While flexible OLED displays might be more your seemingly super-strange feature of
Windows Phone users may have noticed speedier results when using voice recognition in recent weeks, and depending on how well the feature works for them, perhaps also a slight increase in accuracy. This is because Microsoft has just announced a Bing update that has been getting pushed to users over the last few weeks, bringing
While Google Glass can enable hands-free video recording, it’s not exactly ideal in every situation. Take motorcycle riding for example: Google Glass probably isn’t too comfortable to wear when you have a helmet squeezing your head at the same time. It works, sure, but there has to be a better way. Enter LiveMap’s own solution.
Nuance has long been suspected of being the driving force behind Apple’s Siri virtual assistant technology in iOS devices. However, neither Apple or Nuance have ever actually confirmed whether or not this is true, until now. Nuance CEO Paul Ricci said today during the D11 conference that the company is “a fundamental provider for Apple.”
Nuance is known for its speech-recognition software Dragon NaturallySpeaking, but it’s now confirmed that the technology is also used in Apple’s Siri. It’s been all but confirmed in the past, but this is the first time that either company has directly mentioned it. Before being acquired by Apple in 2010, Siri’s voice recognition technology was built by Nuance. However, it wasn’t clear whether or not Apple changed anything around with the tech before debuting it on the iPhone 4.
Of course, Nuance is only just a fraction of what makes up Siri. Apple’s personal digital assistant also uses data from Yelp, OpenTable and Wolfram Alpha to do a lot of the things that it does. While Siri has seen its fair share of issues in the past, Ricci thinks that virtual assistants will evolve greatly over the next few years.
During the interview at D11, Ricci says that he believes that virtual assistants will be much more useful in the future, as well as cross-platform, noting that they “will be quite robust in the most common domains that you’d like to see on a smartphone.”
He notes that virtual assistants have come a long way in the past few years, but issues still remain, specifically the real problem being “creating a virtual assistant that can understand what the user wants and take action based on anticipating those needs.” Google Now is fiercely close to accomplishing that, but it doesn’t seem like Ricci is completely satisfied with where virtual assistants are at right now.
SOURCE: AllThingsD
Nuance CEO confirms Siri involvement is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
There has been a lot of confusion surrounding the various new features of the Xbox One, but one of those features seems to have been settled. The Kinect sensor that many people feared would always be listening to your conversations can actually be turned off when not needed. Otherwise, you can use the Kinect to tell it to turn on your fancy new console.
According to Kotaku, a Microsoft rep confirmed that the Kinect sensor “is not always watching or always listening,” and users will be able to “turn the system completely off.” During the unveiling of the new console, Microsoft said that you can turn on the console using a voice command, which proves that the console isn’t actually completely off, but more in a stand-by mode listening for such voice commands.
Of course, this stirred up some big controversy about privacy issues, and that the console would always be listening to your conversation to hear for an “Xbox on” command that would turn on the console. It wouldn’t be listening in on your living room conversations just for the fun of it, but enough people have been worried that there could be a secondary use for the listening-in.
Microsoft says that they’ll have more information in the future as far as different methods for turning off the Xbox One, but we’re guessing that — as most people would suspect — that the power button on the console will actually shut down the Xbox One completely, while shutting down the console using the controller or sensor through the software will only shut it down partially, where at that point the Kinect would be on and listening for voice commands.
However, it seems Microsoft says that users have no reason to be concerned. The company notes that they are “designing the new Kinect with simple, easy methods to customize privacy settings, provide clear notifications and meaningful privacy choices for how data will be used, stored and shared.” Of course, though, if you’re really concerned about Microsoft spying on you while you’re not playing games, there’s always the power cord that you can rip from the wall.
SOURCE: Kotaku
Xbox One can shut down entirely to prevent always-listening Kinect is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
If you haven’t heard of Sherpa, you’re mostly likely not alone. It’s essentially a new Android app that looks to dethrone Google Now and Apple’s Siri. Sherpa plans to launch on iPhone soon, as well as make its way to Google Glass to take down Google’s own voice command software on the new spectacles.
The company unveiled plans to bring its software to Google Glass, and Sherpa CEO Xabier Uribe-Etxebarria says that their voice command app is much more suited for Google Glass than Google’s own software, which is a bold statement. Uribe-Etxebarria says that voice commands on Google Glass are limited, and “it’s not taking advantage of all the features and the potential of Google Glass.”
What separates Sherpa from the rest of the pack is its ability to understand meaning and intent. The app can build its own metalanguage with rules and semantic concepts mixed in with using Google’s speech API. From that, Sherpa can do a wide variety of actions that you wouldn’t even think it could do.
The app is still in beta, but plans to roll out for Google Glass and other wearables either in late 2013 or early 2014. Sherpa is able to do a handful of neat tricks, including the ability to play music without downloading the tracks first, and automate directions for scheduled events in your calendar. The app can also do things like turn down the volume or toggle the WiFi.
And as Google Now does, Sherpa can also essentially predict what you will want to see and hear about, like score updates from your favorite sports teams or letting you know of some popular restaurants in the area if it’s close to dinner time. As for the kinds of things that the Google Glass app will do, that’s still unknown, but from what the company says, we can expect a lot more features out of Sherpa than with Google’s built-in offering.
VIA: CNET
Sherpa digital assistant coming to Google Glass, aims to outdo Google Now is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
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