Nuance unveils Nina, the virtual assistant for iOS and Android apps

By Christian Zibreg on Aug 6, 2012

Nuance, the voice recognition engine that powers Siri, today announced a new kind of digital personal assistant aimed at mobile customer service apps. Called Nina, she “transforms iPhone and Android mobile apps into powerful engagement tools that allow customers to serve themselves”. Nina promises to cover everything from paying your bills to getting answers to your questions to changing or adding service on the fly.

Built on the same voice recognition engine from Nuance that Apple licensed for Siri, Nina can be added to iOS and Android apps via a software development kit (SDK) issued today as part of the announcement. What’s best, Nina doesn’t require that you tediously type in your password for various services and instead recognizes your voice to provide secure authentication… Read More

 

Taiwan university sues Apple over Siri speech recognition

By Christian Zibreg on Jul 30, 2012

A university in Taiwan has sued Apple over its use of dictation feature in Siri and the underlying speech recognition engine, claiming Apple’s implementation violates its patents. National Cheng Kung University has on Monday launched a lawsuit against the iPhone maker and is seeking undisclosed damages, though its lawyers noted that any calculation would be based on Apple’s U.S. sales of devices that use Siri, quite possibly amounting to millions of dollars in damages… Read More

 

AT&T opens up its Watson speech engine via SDK for iOS and Android

By Christian Zibreg on Jul 9, 2012

Realizing Apple and Google are moving swiftly to mainstream speech recognition on mobile devices, U.S. carrier AT&T today announced that it is opening up its own Watson speech engine to iOS and Android platforms via a software development kit (SDK), now available on the AT&T Developer website.

Much like Apple’s Siri or Google Voice Actions in Android (and Google Now), Watson takes input, analyzes it, performs one or more services and returns a result. Input can be audio files, speech, gestures, face recognition and text. Here’s a video of Watson in action… Read More

 

How to Enable OmniFocus Siri Reminders on iPhone 4

By Nick Prokesch on Apr 14, 2012

OmniFocus for iPhone is a great productivity tool. With Apple’s new iPhone OS came integration with Reminders and Siri. When enabled, OmniFocus will check the Reminders app for new tasks, add them to your Inbox, and remove them from your Reminders list. This holds true for Reminders created using Siri in addition to those entered manually.

However, for some reason, The Omni Group limited the powerful new iOS 5 integration to iPhone 4S users. The good news is if you’re an iPhone 4 user, you can enable Reminders and Siri integration with a little bit of preference file editing. This trick does not affect the OmniFocus app’s performance, stability or existing functionality. Here’s how to do it… Read More

 

Nuance to Buy Natural Speech Competitor Vlingo to Take on Siri

By Oliver Haslam on Dec 20, 2011

It seems Apple’s introduction of Siri to the world of smartphones has had an unexpected affect – it has stopped the ongoing legal wrangle between two competing natural language software development companies. So much so that the pair are now in cahoots.

Both Nuance and Vlingo have been at each other’s throats over perceived patent infringement, but the pair are now best buds after Nuance announced that it was to buy Vlingo, the same firm it took to court not that long ago.

The reason for the sudden turnaround? The pair seem to think that they need to join forces against a common enemy, namely, Apple… Read More

 

ESRA: A Siri-Like Assistant For Older iOS 5 Devices

By Jeff Benjamin on Dec 5, 2011

Let me preface this by saying that ESRA will be a disappointment to those who are expecting it to compete with Siri.

Now that the disclaimer is out of the way, let’s talk more about this jailbreak app. ESRA stands for Experimental Speech Response Application, and as you can see from the video, it more than lives up to the “experimental” portion of the ESRA acronym… Read More

 

Siri Proxy Makes Starting Your Car With Your Voice a Reality

By Oliver Haslam on Nov 25, 2011

A few days ago we told you about one clever fellow who had found a way to create a ‘Siri proxy,’ allowing him to intercept Siri commands. This, in theory, makes Siri compatible with just about anything with an API, and the original proof of concept demonstrated Siri controlling a thermostat.

Now it seems that proof of concept has become something of an arms race, with likeminded individuals now making Siri connect with all manner of things, the latest being an automobile.

Using a Viper car system, an individual was able to instruct Siri to lock and unlock the car’s doors, as well as start and stop the engine. Super cool, indeed… Read More

 

OmniFocus Gains Siri Support and iCloud Syncing

By Oliver Haslam on Nov 20, 2011

For those that really take todo systems seriously, the OmniFocus app is often at the top of the list for getting things done. With a suite of apps that covers the Mac, iPad and iPhone, OmniFocus creators The Omni Group have created a real powerhouse of applications that many swear by.

In the latest update for the iPhone version of their OmniFocus app, the developers at The OmniGroup have taken Apple’s lack of a Siri API and gone all Chuck Norris on it. Instead of waiting for Apple to give them permission to use Siri to create tasks, they have linked OmniFocus with iCloud, which in turn gives the app full access to reminders created using iOS 5′s built-in Reminders app.

The end result? You can now tell Siri to create reminders in OmniFocus… Read More

 

‘Hands-Free Control’ Will Allow You to Invoke Siri By Voice

By Jeff Benjamin on Nov 3, 2011

Wouldn’t it be cool if you could invoke Siri without pressing and holding your Home button?

I’ve always thought that Apple should include such an option for when we’re on the road and want to control our devices with Siri.

That’s the concept behind a new jailbreak tweak entitled Hands-Free Control. Once the iPhone 4S jailbreak is made public, it will allow you to invoke Siri by voice alone.

In the meantime, though, you can invoke Voice Control on pre-iPhone 4S devices… Read More

 

VoiceKeys: Speech-to-Text on Your iPhone

By Jeff Benjamin on Aug 29, 2011

VoiceKeys is a brand new jailbreak tweak from Ryan Petrich, that attempts to bring easy to use speech-to-text to the iPhone.

In order to make the tweak as seamlessly integrated as possible, Ryan opted to use the already popular Action Menu as a means to invoke the speech recognition properties.

The result thus far has been sort of a mixed bag, but keep in mind that this is only version 1.0 of the tweak. Check inside for a video demonstration of VoiceKeys in action… Read More