Nuance, which provides world-class voice recognition technology behind Apple's Siri personal assistant, today announced its entrance into the fast-growing connected cars market.
Their new automotive platform combines Nuance's Dragon software and natural language understanding technologies to allow drivers to dictate messages, search for content, control music playback, navigation and more.
Was this an iCar solution Steve Jobs was dreaming about in his final days?
Digital secretary Siri was, and still is, the headline feature of the iPhone 4S. It owes some of its allure to the vast processing power of Apple's servers that run a remarkably sophisticated voice recognition software licensed from Nuance, a Burlington, Massachusetts-based provider of arguably the best voice technology money can buy.
According to Nuance’s marketing honcho, you can bet on Siri to improve over time. Upcoming developments in personal assistants will enable new stuff, such as more accurate voice recognition and personalization. So yeah, eventually you'll be able to ask Siri “Is my favourite movie on tonight?”
In the months leading up to Apple's iPad event, there was a lot of speculation on whether or not the new tablet would include Siri. The feature has become quite popular since it debuted last October, so iPad integration made perfect sense.
Well, as you may know, Apple has foregone the digital assistant in its latest slate. But its Dictation component some how made the cut. Wondering how well the voice-to-text service works on the latest iDevice? Keep reading to find out...
Still no word about Siri as I am typing this, but the new iPad sure is coming with dication support. Just like the iPhone 4S, it supports English, French, German, and of course now, Japanese.
It's not been confirmed that this will come to previous iPad models as well, but I doubt it. Just like Siri for the iPhone 4S, dictation on the iPad will be one of those features that could technically be ported to older devices, but won't for marketing reasons.
Clear, the minimalistic, yet insanely stylish todo app is all the rage right now. Perhaps you've been enjoying it?
To maintain its simplistic look and feel, the developers imposed a 30 character limit for tasks, which is completely understandable — especially after you see what more than 30 characters looks like.
You can use Siri Dictation to outright bypass the 30 character limitation for a seemingly infinitely long task entry. Obviously this trick isn't amongst the most practical tricks in the book, but it's cool because, well, it can be done.
Sara Dictation is a jailbreak tweak that allows you to have Siri-like dictation on a non-iPhone 4S device. This isn't the first time we've seen a tweak that allows this — siri0us immediately comes to mind — but it is certainly worth trying.
If "Sara" sounds familiar, that's because it is. It's from the same developer that brought you the Siri alternative named Sara, which we covered last week.
Everyone loves Siri, or at least everyone that can actually make it work with their less-than-perfect accent does. It may be great to be able to ask your iPhone to do things and dictate messages to it, but you know what would be insanely great?
Yep. Using Siri to dictate content on your Mac.
That's where Air Dictate comes into play, giving iPhone 4S owners a way to harness the power of Siri's dictation feature and have it send the resultant text over to a designated Mac.
It's not Siri. In fact, it's not even close. Yet, you still may find it interesting enough to give it a shot, especially if you're already a user of Voice Activator.
Automatic Dictation is essentially a meshing together of Voice Activator and Dragon Dictation. It basically allows you to (almost) use Dragon Dictation completely handsfree. It even allows you to send tweets directly from your dictation screen.
In the end, it's a very clunky semi-hand-free solution that works, but it's definitely no Siri...
Earlier we told you about the update to TouchPad, a VNC remote control app for iOS devices. It's a well known app in itself, but this latest update is sure to make a few people ecstatic.
Indeed, Edovia — the highly esteemed developers behind this and other great apps, like Screens — has updated TouchPad to allow Siri dictation between an iPhone 4S and a Mac, Windows, or even Linux machine if that suits your fancy.
Check out our video demonstration inside...
Hackers have been trying to port Siri to older iDevices since the virtual assistant was announced alongside the iPhone 4S. Siri doesn't technically require the new handset's A5 processor and increased memory, so limiting the technology to the 4S is clearly a marketing maneuver.
We've already seen Siri running on an iPhone 4, so we know it's possible. But those instances required special circumstances, and we didn't know if we'll ever see a public release. Siri's dictation feature has now been made publicly available in Cydia for the iPhone 4, and it actually works.
Even though Siri has received mixed reviews, a majority of the public seems to like the digital assistant. Folks are chomping at the bit for the feature to be ported to the iPhone 4 and other non-approved devices. And some are even hoping it finds its way to the Mac.
While we wait for Siri to arrive on the desktop by way of either Apple or hackers, this workaround might help fill the void. It allows users to dictate text on their desktop computers (Mac or PC) using Siri. It doesn't cost any money, and it's actually really easy to do...
Apple has built its brand on attention to detail. The company has been known to spend months going over the tiniest components of a product to ensure perfection. Why do you think its devices come so terrifically packaged?
Apple's obsession with the tiny details even spills over into iOS, and the folks over at iPhoneinCanada have found a perfect example. Have you ever noticed how the dictation button changes color when you add another keyboard?