voice control

Apple's HomePod smart speaker released earlier this year with impressive audio quality and Apple Music integration, but there's no denying that the tech powering the device, Siri, still lags behind virtual assistant rivals like Amazon's Alexa and Google Assistant. While Siri handles music playback requests with ease, it still struggles with general knowledge questions that the others have no problem with. It seems Apple is in a hurry to address this shortcoming, however, as indicated by a big increase in Siri-related hiring.

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Today we're having a peek at the latest way to delete all the Alexa voice recordings Amazon has for a single user. When you speak with Alexa, Amazon uses your voice to improve the service you receive from said Alexa - your unique Alexa. To do this, Amazon keeps a recording of your voice each time you summon Alexa. You may find that nefarious, or maybe you find it entirely reasonable - either way, you might want to know how to delete those recordings of your voice.

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Alexa is easily the current leader of the growing virtual assistant market, and Amazon is keen to stay ahead of competition from Google and Apple. The company's newest feature for Alexa is dubbed "follow-up mode," and it makes it easier for users to ask multiple questions in succession by dropping the need to repeat the wake-up command.

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Voice control is the latest fad in consumer tech and that reality is underscored by a new announcement from HP: it will soon offer voice-activated home printers. By doing so, the company explains, it will be the first printer business to offer "intuitive voice commands" via major smart speaker products, namely through Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, and Microsoft's Cortana.

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Like just about every big tech company these days, Chinese web giant Baidu is getting in on the smart speaker game. But the company is doing things noticeably different from Amazon or Google, despite selling its new Raven H speaker device. Instead the key product is the assistant software itself, the DuerOS AI platform, and Baidu's goal is to have it used in hardware from other manufacturers.

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Amazon's smart assistance service, Alexa, has already made the jump from connected speaker to a number of different smart home products, but its next location will be portable devices. The company has announced a new "Alexa Mobile Accessory Kit" that will allow hardware manufacturers to integrate Alexa with wearable products like headphones and smartwatches.

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Paper Signals from Google controls tiny paper contraptions with Google Assistant. This set of experiments is not something completely inaccessible by the average user. Instead, it's a super-inexpensive (or super free) set of instructions for creating moving objects that are controlled by a set of equations, activated by Google Assistant.

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If manufacturers and tech companies are to have their say, everything will be controlled by voice in the not so distant future. And not just simple voice commands, mind, but smart voice recognition backed by natural language processing and machine learning. But as easy as simply uttering your command may be, there are still some things done faster with a single press of a button. That’s why DISH’s second gen voice remote for Hopper DVRs brings the best of both worlds together for the ultimate user experience convenience.

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TiVo can perhaps be considered the granddaddy of modern-day DVRs and set-top boxes, but it has been shoved to the sidelines by numerous rivals, including those from big names in the tech industry. Not one to go down without a fight, the company was rumored to be working on not just a more modern box but also a remote control with voice support. Those are no longer rumors now that the TiVo BOLT VOX has appeared, disappeared, and now reappeared on Amazon, ahead of whatever announcement TiVo may have in store.

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Though it's arguably a niche issue, it is frustrating for Google Voice users: an issue that causes texts to be sent using one's regular phone number in certain cases. One of those instances is when using Hangouts as a default SMS app with a Google Voice number as the default SMS number. Many users report that, in this case, sending a text results in Hangouts sending the text with the user's regular phone number instead of Google Voice.

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Voice is becoming a major form of communication, not between humans but between man and machine. From personal assistants on your phone to smart speakers in your house to the smart TV in your living room. OK, you don’t actually speak to your TV directly. You do so via a handy dandy remote control. Not one to buck the trend, TiVo, the granddaddy of DVR and streaming set-top boxes, will have a voice-enabled remote control soon. How soon? FCC-soon, by the looks of it.

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This week Samsung's Bixby Voice feature begins to roll out to users everywhere - here's how to get it. This system is a relative long-time-coming, when we consider how long it was since Samsung revealed the feature for the phone. Just as the phone itself was first announced, so too was Bixby's ability to speak with its master - you, the owner of the Galaxy S8.

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