Today we're getting news of a pretty big hire for Apple - the iPhone maker has managed to pull William Stasior away from Amazon and has put him in charge of Siri. Stasior had been working at Amazon since 2003, and during his 9-year tenure there, he served as the head of search and navigation. More specifically, he was in charge of Amazon A9, which handles search and search advertising for the company.
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‘siri’ Stories
Apple pulls William Stasior away from Amazon to head up Siri
iPhone 5 Consumer Reports touts “best [camera] we’ve seen on a smartphone”
It would appear that Consumer Reports' look at the iPhone 5 has yielded a favorable collection of feedback bits, especially in the camera department. Though they do admit that the "phenomenal" 41-megapixel camera they tested on the Nokia 808 had a bit of an edge when it comes to delivering the highest quality shots, the iPhone 5's 8-megapixel camera was called "the best [they'd] seen on a smart phone." Consumer Reports also noted that the iPhone 5 "move[s] up the ranks, surpassing not only the previous iPhone 4S but also a number of other new Android-based smart phones."
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iOS 6 and iPhone 5 features availability listed by region
The iPhone 5 will be the first device to bring on iOS 6, the system from Apple that'll have the company's first mobile turn-by-turn navigation system as well as 3D mapping, and today Apple has listed the regions where each feature will be appearing. Traffic, 3D buildings (aka Flyover), and turn-by-turn navigation are limited to a certain set of countries at the launch of iOS 6 for not only iPhone 5 but the rest of the compatible list of Apple mobile devices as well. While 3D buildings is limited at the moment to the USA, traffic is open to a much larger list - and turn-by-turn navigation is ready for almost everywhere.
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iPhone 5 full details official as device hits Apple Store online
It's time to take a peek at the entirety of the iPhone 5's specifications, top to bottom, as the device hits the Apple Store online and we get our first full taste of Apple's new smartphone hero (be sure to have a look at our wrap-up of Apple's big event). This device is the thinnest and lightest iPhone yet with a 4-inch Retina quality display up front and a new A6 chip under the hood. The iPhone 5 works with 4G LTE on a variety of networks both here in the USA and abroad and works with what Apple calls Ultrafast wireless or "LTE. The right way." The iPhone 5 has a new set of earbuds called EarPods, a new dock connector called Lightning, and a boosted 8-megapixel "iSight" camera as well.
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iPod touch refresh gains Siri and color collection
The iPhone 5 may have been the groundbreaking announcement at today's Apple event, but the iPod Touch is also getting a refresh, and it comes with a number of improvements over the iPod Touch that we're familiar with. For example, Apple is making some big changes to the camera, with Apple including a new iSight camera on the back of this bad boy. This new camera comes complete with autofocus, LED flash, a 5 megapixel sensor, backside illumination, and a five-element lens.
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Google voice search heads to iPhone to take on Siri
Apple has agreed with Google that their Google Now voice search engine will be allowed on the iPhone in the very near future. This announcement comes this week as Google also revamps the rest of their search abilities with a new initiative for "one million users" to join in and allow the company to integrate their Gmail search results with their regular worldwide search results - this doesn't mean your Gmail account it out for everyone to see, but does mean that you'll soon have one integrated system for yourself. As for the mobile version of voice search, Google's working with iPhone will make a huge splash on the Siri-loving fans across the globe soon, and very soon.
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Nuance’s Nina brings Siri’s smarts to customer service apps
Personal voice assistants such as Siri and S-Voice certainly help shift handsets, but their functions are limited in scope to what Apple and Samsung implement. That issue can be sidestepped thanks to Nuance, who have today introduced Nina, a voice recognition service designed to be implemented directly into customer service apps for iOS and Android. The service combines multiple technologies such as text-to-speech, voice biometrics, and natural language understanding, all processed in the cloud that helps carries out commands.
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Saga takes on Siri and Google Now in mobile context
Siri, Google Now and other digital personal assistants have a new rival in the shape of Saga, a mobile app that uses learns from users to provide contextual help, suggestions and more. A free app, currently iPhone-only, Saga pulls in data from Facebook, Twitter and other apps to build an understanding of the individual user, and then crunches that with schedules and preferences to produce suggestions as to nearby restaurants, when would be a good time in the day to run, where friends are (and who users might actually like to hang out with), and other recommendations. However, Saga’s future is most definitely in wearables like Google’s Glass.
Apple sued for Siri tech by Taiwan University
It appears that Apple is not safe from the continual downpour of patent cases as this week the National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan is readied and filed an infringement case against Apple's use of Siri on the iPhone and iPad. The patents in question here have to do with speech recognition which the plaintiffs suggest was filed by them in 2005 as a "Method and system for matching speech data." This patent is available under patent number 7,707,032 in the United States.
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Nuance borrows Siri tech for mobile helpdesk assistant
Nuance isn't content to let Apple's Siri and Jelly Bean's Google Now grab the voice interface spotlight; the company has a voice-controlled personal assistant of its own in the pipeline, Nina. Billed as having the potential to "change the face of mobile customer service forever," Nina isn't targeted at harried users wanting to set calendar appointments and call their spouses, but at companies hoping to put a more friendly, intuitive face on their product support.
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RIM’s BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha adds Siri-like voice command
After years of believing that it didn't need to follow in the footsteps of the iPhone or Android (because people obviously prefer mobile operating systems based on a 20-year-old platform), it looks like RIM is now going after the most talked-about feature of the iPhone - Siri. The new alpha version of BlackBerry 10 contains a similar voice-controlled assistant.
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Apple sued in China over voice recognition patents
Apple’s legal troubles in China continue. This time Cupertino is being sued by a company called Zhi Zhen Internet Technology over voice recognition patents. Zhi Zhen claims it holds patents for a Chinese voice language assistant used for its Xiao i Robot service, and that Siri infringes those patents. There's quite a big gap between Siri's introduction in October and the lawsuit that's just been filed, although the company says it reached out to Apple back in May and heard no response.
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