Personal assistant iOS app Donna puts your phone to work for you
The iOS app blends location services, calendaring, reminders and push notifications to mimic the work an actual personal assistant that keeps your schedule for you can do. Read more »
Nuance to create a universal voice assistant, bridging phones, TVs and cars
photo: Shutterstock / brem stocker
Nuance plans to integrate its growing number of speech command platforms into a universal assistant for the internet of things. It’s also trying to make its speech technology more dynamic, using crowdsourcing to capture the language zeitgeist. Read more »
Lexee gives devs a new Siri-like tool for apps
Developers are getting another Siri-like tool to embed speech-enabled virtual assistants in their apps. Lexee, a new product from interactive voice response provider Angel, offers an SDK for iOS and Android users. Lexee has a point and click system for building conversation flows and user analytics. Read more »
Tracking everything, Placeme is the smartphone assistant of the future
Placeme for iOS and Android may be both the scariest and amazingly futuristic app I’ve seen yet. The free software uses every sensor in your handset to track your activities, location and environment. Scary, yes, but it could power the smartphone personal assistant of the future. Read more »
SpeakToIt: A personal assistant for older iPhones, iPads
Siri is hot, but the software is exclusive to the iPhone 4S; iPads, iPod touches and older iPhones need not apply. The situation provides an opportunity for developers on non-Siri devices, and SpeakToIt Assistant, a $1.99 app, is one of these. How does it stack up? Read more »
Siri: Enabler of more data consumption, not the root cause
A recent report on the outsized increase in data usage among iPhone 4S users blamed the bandwidth drain squarely on Siri. But while Siri may be used as the mechanism for more Internet searches and smartphone services, the application itself uses very little data. Read more »
Nuance buys Vlingo, builds a voice technology giant
Nuance and voice recognition rival Vlingo have put away their knives and are now set to become one company with the announcement today that Nuance was buying its competitor. The two companies are set to take on the exploding opportunity in providing natural language interfaces. Read more »
Does the Siri outage reveal its success?
Siri went down on Thursday for its first extended outage — around five hours, according to most counts. Five hours is hardly three days (like another noteworthy recent mobile service blackout), but the reaction of media and users show Apple’s personal assistant is making its presence felt. Read more »
How Siri could revolutionize the 911 system
Health care policy analyst John S. Wilson believes that Apple’s recently released voice technology can revolutionize the 911 system. With its natural language processing, contextual search and ability to carry out tasks, Siri has the potential to better equip first responders to save lives. Read more »
Google’s Andy Rubin doesn’t think Siri makes a good friend
On Wednesday, I wrote about how Siri had finally convinced me to use voice commands with a phone, despite an inherent reluctance to do so. According to Google’s SVP of Mobile, Andy Rubin, however, I’m hanging out with the wrong crowd. Here’s why he’s wrong. Read more »
