A new patent filed by Apple suggests Siri could be coming to MacBooks or even third party devices.
The “Voice Control System” patent has the iPhone 4S connecting wirelessly to notebooks, laptops and third party devices such as cameras.
Siri’s popularity on the iPhone 4S has led to many asking when the functionality will be available for Mac computers. If the patent filing is any indication, Siri will at least be able to control a Mac via the iPhone.
“Apple may well use this system with the iPhone 5, but judging by the patent image… they could bring it to the iPhone 4S before the next level iPhone is released later this year,” reports SlashGear. “This type of generational jump in functionality is generally reserved for new device releases, so perhaps it’s going to come with the next version of the Mac computer instead. Perhaps look to the MacBook Air-thin MacBook Pros of this mid-2012 instead.”
Nuance Communications has become a leader in voice technology. Already in use for Apple’s Siri, the company is developing voice technology to command televisions, cars, computers, and smart devices such as coffee makers, refrigerators, thermostats, alarm systems and appliances.
Nuance’s Dragon Go voice assistant app for Android and iPhone, which has been downloaded several million times, listens to voice commands regarding mobile entertainment, streaming media, social networking, and shopping.
It is actively working directly with websites like Spotify, Yelp, YouTube, AccuWeather, ESPN, Facebook, Fandango, LiveNation, Pandora, Twitter, Wikipedia and others. The app bypasses search engines like Google and Bing, which are both developing their own voice command systems.
Nuance is also working with major corporations to develop voice-enabled information systems. In healthcare, a Nuance system can scan dictated doctor’s notes for key information. US Airways has created “Wally,” a voice operated customer service that can anticipate and respond to requests for flight information.
LG will soon introduce a Dragon TV-enabled voice-command system that can find programs, make calls via Skype, shop on Amazon and even allow viewers to update their Facebook and Twitter accounts.
Smartphones have had a significant impact on Internet radio usage, which has increased more than 30 percent in the past year.
“The weekly usage of Internet radio (which includes both the online streams of terrestrial broadcasters and streams from pure-play streamers such as Pandora) has increased from 22 percent of Americans 12+ in 2011 to 29 percent in 2012,” Tom Webster of Edison Research wrote on his blog.
“This is a number that we are accustomed to seeing grow bit by bit each year, but this is the largest year-over-year increase we’ve seen since we began tracking this stat in 1998,” he added.
More specifics will be available when Edison and Arbitron release the 20th edition of “The Infinite Dial: Navigating Digital Platforms” in April.
“Smartphones have changed the game here from music as active entertainment choice to music as the quite literal soundtrack to your life,” says Webster.
A new CNBC survey suggests that more than half of all U.S. households own at least one Apple product.
“Of the households that own Apple products, they own an average of three, making the overall ownership rate of the American public 1.6 Apple products per household. About 25 percent plan to buy another Apple product in the next year,” reports Mashable.
“The survey shows Apple buyers tend to skew male, young, with higher education and incomes (77 percent of households making $75,000 or more have an Apple product),” adds the post. “If you have kids, the likelihood of being an Apple household grows — 61 percent compared with 48 percent if you don’t.”
CNBC polled 836 Americans during three days in March to conduct the study, and suggests the margin of error is plus or minus 3.4 percent.
Although Netflix isn’t bringing back the dreaded Qwikster concept completely, the company is taking steps to differentiate its DVD-by-mail rental business from its unlimited video streaming service.
Some customers can no longer rate and review movies and TV shows on the main Netflix listing anymore. They are instead redirected to the solely-DVD site, “dvd.netflix.com.”
The move looks to divide DVD from instant, but separates the reviews for the same movies across two different sites.
“Over the last week subscribers have also noticed that searching for titles that are only available for rental as a DVD, won’t show up in the results,” VentureBeat reports. “Instead, search results return unrelated streaming titles. The recommendation interaction between DVDs, unreleased titles, and streaming titles has apparently also been altered.”
“The market for night classes and online instruction in programming and Web construction, as well as for iPhone apps that teach, is booming,” reports The New York Times. “Those jumping on board say they are preparing for a future in which the Internet is the foundation for entertainment, education and nearly everything else.”
The article cites a number of interesting new start-ups such as Udacity, Treehouse and General Assembly (among others), that are hoping to meet this growing need.
“But at the center of the recent frenzy in this field is Codecademy, a start-up based in New York that walks site visitors through interactive lessons in various computing and Web languages, like JavaScript, and shows them how to write simple commands,” explains the article.
More than a million people have registered for Codecademy since it was first introduced last summer, and it got a big boost when Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced his New Year’s resolution to use the service to learn code. The free site, which plans to earn revenue by connecting new programmers with recruiters and start-ups, has raised close to $3 million in financing.
“Inasmuch as you need to know how to read English, you need to have some understanding of the code that builds the Web,” said Sarah Henry, an investment manager from Pennsylvania who recently took several classes through New York-based Girl Develop It. “It is fundamental to the way the world is organized and the way people think about things these days.”
Apple iPhones, which cost about one percent of a 1970s mini-cam, are being deployed by news organizations for field reporting.
Gannett, for example, has purchased over 1,000 iPhone 4S smartphones for its reporters and photographers, both at local TV stations and newspapers, which are collaborating on stories.
The iPhone was selected because there are a number of apps and accessories available including iMovie, Splice, Brightcove Mobile Upload, QIK, mCAM, Steadicam Smoothee, Camera Table Dolly, LiveAction Camera Grip, Kogeto Dot and Manfrotto Pro Monopod.
“During a recent Florida State-Duke basketball game, Gannett’s Tallahassee Democrat switched live between nine different video streams, highlighting on-court strategy with Telestrator-style graphics,” reports TVNewsCheck.
The iPad is also being deployed for news production both in the field and in the studio. Some of the more popular iPad apps being used include OradControl, VizReporter and Avid Studio.
Best Buy’s $1.7 billion loss for the last quarter of its fiscal year will lead it to close 50 “big-box” stores, cut 400 corporate jobs, and reduce infrastructure and non-product costs.
“The retail chain hadn’t named the stores in question, but expected these and other cost savings to cut $250 million in 2013 and $300 million just for retail by the 2015 target,” reports Electronista.
The company, however, is still moving ahead with 100 Best Buy Mobile stores, some 50 of which will open in China.
Best Buy notes that pressure from Internet sales and less focus on TV affected their results. It is responding by introducing a Connected Store concept where customers can get price comparisons via Web kiosks, staff will be trained in product integration and there will be instant checkout similar to an Apple Store.
Verizon is seeking a partnership with Comcast, Time Warner, Bright House Networks and Cox Communications. The $3.9 billion deal to buy spectrum licenses would also allow Verizon and the cable companies to sell each other’s products.
One such product would include a mobile TV service that could be offered by the end of the year.
Lowell McAdam, Verizon Communications CEO, is hoping to offer a mobile service where consumers could pick the content they want rather than paying for bundles of channels. McAdam says media companies have acknowledged the need to offer consumers more choice like an a la carte service.
Verizon is looking to have content providers pay for the amount of data consumed by streaming video.
“Critics have called the deals anti-competitive, charging that they signal a truce between longtime rivals,” reports the Wall Street Journal.
Comcast may be ignoring the concept of net neutrality as it looks to make its Xfinity TV app more competitive on Xbox Live.
Going up against top streaming services like Netflix, Hulu Plus, HBO Go and Vudu, the Comcast app is setting itself apart by offering free data usage when streaming via Xbox 360.
Comcast allows its customers 250GB of data per month before they charge overage fees. VentureBeat says this cap is “generous,” enabling about 80 hours of content on streaming services as well as regular Internet use. While using Xfinity on other devices or Xfinity.com will still use up the allotted monthly data, the Xbox Live app doesn’t contribute to the data cap.
Comcast has said that “since the content is being delivered over our private IP network and not the public Internet, it does not count against a customer’s bandwidth cap,” differentiating it from other usage that relies on “public” Internet.
VentureBeat writer Tom Cheredar suggests the move “takes the concept of net neutrality, and throws it right out of the window,” and that the private network justification seems like a bit of a stretch.
“I’m not sure I buy this logic. Arguably, Netflix also has its own ‘private’ network that is only accessible through the ‘public’ Internet,” he said.
As Universal Music prepares its acquisition of EMI, the group is selling three music-publishing catalogs as well as real estate holdings in France and Germany.
The catalogs — classical, Christian and German schlager — have already attracted 12 bidders and may draw up to $200 million, according to a person with knowledge of the situation.
The proposed acquisition is still under investigation for antitrust concerns by the European Commission, which extended its decision deadline until August to allow for a more in-depth analysis.
“The commission’s initial investigation into the merger showed that the combined firm would be ‘almost twice the size of the next largest player’ on the EU market, the regulator said March 23,” reports Bloomberg.
As the Kinect for Windows hardware rolls out in the coming months, its SDK is already getting an update.
Microsoft’s Craig Eisler offered a sneak peek of the SDK in a blog post this week.
“The Kinect for Windows 1.5 SDK, due in late May, will see the release of Kinect Studio — a new app that allows developers to record, playback, and debug clips of users interacting with applications,” reports The Verge. “Microsoft is also planning to support a new ‘seated’ 10-joint skeletal tracking system, which lets developers track the head, neck, and arms of seated and standing users in default and near mode.”
The update will also include new support for French, Spanish, Italian, and Japanese speech recognition in addition to new language packs from Microsoft that enable regional speech detection.
According to the new Mobile Games Trend Report from research firm Newzoo, “the number of Americans who play video games on their smartphone, tablet, or iPod Touch has surpassed 100 million,” reports VentureBeat.
The report indicates that 69 percent play games on their smartphones, 21 percent play on tablets, and 18 percent opt for the iPod Touch.
“The firm also estimates that 9 percent of total game spending last year was on mobile titles and says the free-to-play (F2P) business model is increasingly converting players into continuous payers,” explains the article. “F2P games already account for 90 percent of mobile game spending in the U.S., Newzoo says.”
VentureBeat suggests there is a potentially significant business opportunity in this space: “Although smartphones and tablets are often seen as ‘casual’ platforms, Newzoo says there is major opportunity for ‘core’ games to be offered as full titles or game extensions, as 62 percent of core gamers in the U.S. also play on mobile devices. Developers that can combine core genres with the games-as-a-service business model on mobile platforms will be the ones that reap the most benefit from what Newzoo is dubbing ‘mid-core’ games.”
Jason Perlow, a technology editor at ZDNet and a long-time Android user, airs the platform’s dirty laundry.
While he praises the open source smartphone and tablet OS, the independence the users have and the variety of devices available — he suggests that issues regarding Android’s stability, the platform standardization and maintenance all combine for a frustrating experience.
“I’ve spent over two years as an Android user,” he writes. “The next time around, I’m going elsewhere unless substantial changes take place in how Google manages its ecosystem and OEM/Carrier partners.”
Google has failed to manage its ecosystem and the carriers who use it resulting in fragmentation and carrier bloatware, according to Perlow. If the issues persist, he says he will stop recommending Android and point people toward iOS and Windows Phone instead.
A study from market research firm Distimo notes that News Corp.’s The Daily, The New York Times and The New Yorker magazine are currently the top titles on Apple’s Newsstand app.
According to the report, which tracked Apple’s App Store for iPad during February, the leading 100 publications account for more than $70,000 per day in the U.S.
“Apple launched Newsstand as part of iOS 5 in October, providing a way for users to view newspapers and magazines they’ve purchased or subscribed to,” reports CNET. “The app also doubles as its own storefront, where users can browse and purchase content, similar to Apple’s App Store, iBooks, and iTunes apps.”
Distimo also says that China has surpassed the U.S. in free app downloads, but the U.S. is the global leader in iPad app spending.