Google’s mapping and local search data is making its way into more connected car platforms. Automakers aren’t quite ready to let us download Google Maps directly into our dashboards, but they’re definitely leaning more heavily on the search giant to power their nav systems. Read more »
Look out Nuance. there’s a new speech recognition player in town, AT&T. Ma Bell has taken the locks off of its Watson speech application programming interfaces, allowing any developer to use them to add voice commands and natural language understanding to their apps. Read more »
AT&T President Glenn Lurie has big ambitions for Ma Bell’s Digital Life division. He’s not slapping together a bunch of connected home applications. He’s building a platform — an iOS for the Internet of things. And like the iPhone, Digital Life may come with its own Siri. Read more »
Swype just got a whole lot smarter. Nuance is updating Swype with the same sophisticated contextual-anguage technologies it uses in its speech-recognition products. The result is what Nuance is calling a “living keyboard” — one that can learn both its user’s vocabulary and his habits. Read more »
A lot of automakers are lining up to support Apple’s new Siri Eyes Free technology, but Ford, the most aggressive company in the connected-car space, isn’t joining the queue. A platform war over the connected-car interface might be in the making. Read more »
In the last few months, Nuance Communications has launched Dragon TV, Dragon Drive and even an Android version of Dragon Go. Now we have a new Dragon to contend with: Dragon ID, a voice identification application that allows you to unlock your phone with your larynx. Read more »
Perhaps not surprising for a telephone operator, AT&T has some cool stuff in the works around speech. The company showed off some of its newest stuff out its AT&T Labs Thursday and some of the biggest news was around the work being done in voice-related technologies. Read more »
The line between car and home entertainment center is getting blurrier by the minute as electronics makers and car companies take to the Consumer Electronics Show 2012 and concurrent Detroit Auto show to strut their stuff. Here’s a sampling of the news. Read more »
Samsung is putting some effort behind its smart TV lineup, with plans to add new functionality for consumers to interact with their TV screens. Its next-gen smart TVs will include voice, gesture and facial recognition features that will enable even smarter TV applications. Read more »
At Intel’s CES press event, Ultrabooks were the focus, as were the six “experiences” these thin and light notebooks bring. But consumers are getting such experiences from smartphones and tablets, so who has a problem that could be solved by Ultrabooks? Intel itself comes to mind. Read more »
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 »
Are Google, Yelp and Facebook scared of Siri? If they aren’t they should be, as should any mobile website, service or app that depends on advertising. Siri is the first user interface that shifts our attention away from our phones’ screens, but it won’t be the last. Read more »
Mainstream mobile users have been slow to embrace location-based services. But location apps could really see a boost through the smart use of voice activated AI systems like Siri, which can help users more easily unlock the world around them. Read more »
Buzz around voice recognition technology is louder than ever, thanks to the debut earlier this month Apple’s iPhone 4S with Siri. But Apple isn’t alone in the space. Voice recognition startup SoundHound says it has seen impressive user growth over the past year. Read more »
Vlingo, a voice recognition start-up, isn’t sweating the introduction of Apple’s Siri voice action and AI system. In fact, the start-up saw its best week last week with five consecutive days of record usage with voice actions up 50 percent daily over the previous high. Read more »
Siri is a big draw for customers interested in the iPhone 4S. Apple’s promo material about Siri make it look absolutely amazing, and by most accounts, it is. But if you’re not in the U.S., you might experience a little disappointment when you fire Siri up. Read more »
Apple unveiled its latest handset, the iPhone 4S, at the company’s Cupertino headquarters on Tuesday, showing off new software and updated hardware features. Although I’ve been a full-time Android user for the past 22 months, there’s much to like about Apple’s new hardware and software. Read more »
The next iPhone’s biggest difference, according to an extensive profile by 9to5Mac, may not be any hardware feature. Instead, the Siri-based “Assistant” system-wide software coud steal the show. Assistant could make talking to your phone as natural as touchscreen based controls are now. Read more »
Speech technology is poised to be a game-changer for smartphones, especially as they get embedded into operating systems and hardware. Nuance CTO Vlad Sejnoha said speech is transforming from an alternative to text input into a powerful tool that can connect users more quickly to information. Read more »
Nuance’s new Dragon Go app dives deeper into voice activated searches by pulling up websites and apps that complete a user’s query. It’s part of the natural evolution of voice technology, which is making the move from just recognizing a user’s words to completing actions. Read more »
Even under the best of circumstances– standing desks, ergonomic keyboards, customized chairs– typing can be a major pain. Voice recognition technology startup SoundHound hopes to eventually be a part of the solution by allowing people to simply talk to our computers rather than type. Read more »
Nuance announced Wednesday that it has already signed on 2,500 devs to its Mobile Developer Program in its first 90 days. Dozens of voice-enabled apps have already been created through the program. Nuance announced this milestone amid rumors of ongoing strategic partnership talks with Apple. Read more »
Google announced today that it is releasing an alpha version of its Google Translate conversations mode, a promising technology that allows two people to speak in different languages into a phone and have their words translated in near real time. Read more »
Google is working to improve its Android Voice Search product by adding a new personalized recognition option, which should improve voice transcription over time. But more importantly, it also provides a glimpse at how how we’ll end up interacting with increasingly personal cloud services. Read more »
Ilya Bukshteyn, senior director of marketing for Microsoft’s speech business, explains how voice control is an integral part of the interfaces for both Xbox Kinect and Windows Phone 7 and how it will increasingly be a consistent experience across many of Microsoft’s products. Read more »
TV apps will soon be “everywhere,” according to attendees of a recent GigaOM Bunker event examining the future of the TV market. But how that market will develop, and which TV platforms will win out, is yet to be ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Vlingo today added voice support to Foursquare on Android handsets, allowing Foursquare users to check in, find friends and send shouts through speech-to-text. Vlingo users can also update their social status in both Facebook and Twitter by using the Vlingo widget and speaking their update. Read more »
When you spend most of your day at the computer, the idea of speech recognition software certainly appeals. But most of the software available for the Mac seems to have been ported over from the PC as an afterthought. Read more »
Speech-recognition technology could soon — finally — get its moment in the sun. Democratic senators last week introduced legislation that would require states to ban texting and e-mailing while driving or risk losing 25 percent of their annual federal highway funding. The move came on the ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
