Digital assistants have taken off in the past few years, allowing you to speak to Siri on your iPhone, Alexa on your Echo speaker, Cortana on your PC, or Google Assistant on your Android phone. But all of those platforms have something in common: they use proprietary speech recognition techniques. Amazon, Google, and Microsoft all […]
voice recognition
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What are the coolest features your smartphone has… that you don’t use?
These days you can ask most smartphones questions as if you were speaking to another person, use your phone as a GPS navigation device, tap a button on your phone to instantly get contextual information about whatever’s on the screen, and do a whole bunch of other cool things. But a recent study from Creative Strategies suggesting […]
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Hound voice assistant for iOS, Android launches (exits beta)
Last year SoundHound introduced an early version of a voice assistant app for smartphones that works a bit like Siri or Google Voice Search. It’s called Hound, and it leverages SoundHound’s expertise in audio recognition to provide quick responses to your queries. SoundHound, by the way, was one of the first apps that allowed you […]
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Amazon wants Echo’s Alexa Voice Service on third-party hardware
As promised, Amazon is taking steps to let anyone incorporate the voice assistant software used by the Amazon Echo into third-party hardware. This could let computers, TV boxes, smart speakers, or pretty much any device with a microphone, speaker, and internet connection respond to voice commands by using Amazon’s technology. Amazon has launched a developer […]
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Moto X style always listening demoed on Nexus 5
One of the key features that sets the Motorola Moto X apart from the competition is an optional always listening mode which lets you activate your phone by speaking to it — even if the display is off. It’s part of the phone’s Touchless Controls feature — but it turns out the Moto X isn’t […]
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ZTE Grand S II is a 5.5 inch Android phone with hands-free controls
ZTE’s latest flagship smartphone features a 5.5 inch full HD display, a speedy Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor, and a 13Mp camera. But that’s hardly enough to make a phone stand out from the crowd these days. So ZTE beefed up the voice recognition features on the ZTE Grand S II. Most recent Android phones include […]
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OK Google: Voice search comes to Chromebooks
Google is bringing some of its voice search technology from Android to Chrome OS. If you have a Chromebook that’s running on the Dev Channel, you can now enable support for “OK Google” voice commands. This lets you search the web with your voice — and could eventually let you launch apps, start a hangout […]
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Chrome is listening: Google adds Web Speech API to Chrome browser
If you have a computer or mobile device that supports speech input, you can talk into a microphone to enter text, initiate voice commands, or perform other actions. Now it’s a little easier to do the same thing when visiting websites using the Google Chrome web browser. Starting with Google Chrome 25 beta, Google’s web […]
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Coming soon: Ultrabooks with Dragon voice assist software
Microsoft has been including speech recognition software with Windows for a while, but apparently that’s not good enough for Intel. The chip maker partnered with Nuance earlier this year to develop voice assistant technology specifically for ultrabooks. Now Nuance has announced that the first ultrabook with Dragon Assistant Beta will ship in the 4th quarter […]