Hasta La Gadget!

Android users across Europe are waking up to some bonnes nouvelles this morning, because Google has now expanded its Voice Actions service to France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK. Beginning today, loquacious smartphone and tablet users will be able to place calls, send texts and conduct Google searches by speaking into their devices. All you have to do is press the microphone button on your home screen’s Google search field and open the Voice Search app, or simply press the physical search button on your handset to bring up the “Speak Now” field. From there, you can begin chattering away in French, German, Italian, Spanish and real British English. Interested parties running Android 2.2 or above can get started by downloading the Voice Search app from the source link below, or by checking out Google’s demo video, after the break.

Continue reading Google expands Voice Actions across Europe, with multi-language support (video)

Google expands Voice Actions across Europe, with multi-language support (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 16 Sep 2011 05:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s like DayZipping, tailored for nerds. Nerdy Day Trips has just taken the wraps off of itself, launching a “slightly in development” website that aims to give jetsetting technologists a guide for their upcoming excursions. Put simply, users can navigate around the world and find published day trips that involve shockingly geeky things — you know, like a quick jaunt out to see Tokyo’s monumental Gundam statue or The Robot Museum in Nagoya. As it stands, almost all of the recommendations are in the United Kingdom, but that’s not to say it’ll always be that way. The company’s already planning to improve searching, develop a mobile app, integrate a social networking aspect and showcase places to stay near said trips, and you can help expand the database by tossing in trips that you’ve already accomplished. As for us? We’ll have our endeavors to ESPN’s 3D haunts, Westone’s headquarters and Ferrari’s Italian lairs in there shortly.

Nerdy Day Trips guides traveling technophiles, could use your input originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 13 Sep 2011 08:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Waterstone’s isn’t exactly the biggest name in book sales (at least not stateside), but it knows that to survive in this market it’s gonna have to get on the e-book train. The British company’s managing director, James Daunt, told Radio 4 that it planned to enter the market with both an electronic book store and an actual reader by spring of 2012. Mr. Daunt claimed he was inspired by the success of the Nook, and the challenge it posed to Amazon’s Kindle, to finally take a stab at ushering the UK chain into the 21st century. Of course, while we hate to harsh his buzz, Waterstone’s has already been offering e-books and e-readers since 2008 through a partnership with Sony with only minimal market impact. And we’ve already seen one major book seller (one twice the size of Waterstone’s) fall flat on its face as it tried to enter the digital age. But still, we wish Daunt and his company the best of luck.

[Image credit: Chrisloader]

UK book seller Waterstone’s to enter the e-reader race originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 10 Sep 2011 03:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Quantum computing has a long way to go before becoming truly mainstream, but that certainly hasn’t stopped us from indulging in dreams of a qubit-based existence. The latest bit of fantasy fodder comes from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where researchers have become the first to combine a quantum processor with memory mechanisms on a single chip. To do this, Matteo Mariantoni and his team of scientists connected two qubits with a quantum bus and linked each of them to a memory element, capable of storing their current values in the same way that RAM stores data on conventional computers. These qubit-memory links also contained arrays of resonators — jagged, yet easily controlled circuits that can store values for shorter periods of time. The qubits, meanwhile, were constructed using superconducting circuits, allowing the UCSB team to nestle their qubits even closer together, in accordance with the von Neumann architecture that governs most commercial computers. Once everything was in place, the researchers used their system to run complex algorithms and operations that could be eventually used to decode data encryption. The next step, of course, is to scale up the design, though Mariantoni says that shouldn’t be too much of a problem, thanks to his system’s resonators — which, according to him, “represent the future of quantum computing with integrated circuits.”

Researchers wed quantum processor with quantum memory, quaziness ensues originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 02 Sep 2011 22:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Wondering what Mountain View has in store for Google TV — that half-baked content platform available on only a small handful of devices? Well, it’s not going away, apparently, and may even cross the Atlantic into Europe next year. Google Chairman Eric Schmidt is currently making waves in Scotland, giving Edinburgh International Television Festival attendees a rather vague overview of what the next generation of Google TV may look like. Schmidt said that the service has yet to take off because it’s currently integrated with (a rather limited selection of) TVs, which we don’t tend to upgrade more than once or twice a decade. He added that additional hardware and content partners will be coming soon, though, and didn’t deny that Google TV could end up on Motorola cable boxes — an obvious move, given the company’s recent acquisition announcement. With widespread implementation and many more content partners, Google TV could definitely be a hit, but with ABC, NBC and CBS still unwilling to come onboard, the struggling service likely has a very rocky road ahead before it can be deemed a success.

Google remains committed to TV business, expects more partners soon originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 27 Aug 2011 14:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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