Alec Baldwin has everything it takes to run for mayor -- except, perhaps, a filter. On Wednesday, the 30 Rock actor announced that he won't be pursuing his New York City mayoral run after all. And his reason is, well, colorful.
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As Siri continues making headlines and Google is hoping to turns heads with its Android Iris, Nuance Communications is making a bet of its own. Nuance has announced plans to acquire its archrival Vlingo. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Vlingo is a virtual assistant that promises to turn your words into action by combining voice to text technology, natural language processing, and Vlingo's Intent Engine to understand the user's intent and take the appropriate action. Founded in 2006, Vlingo is backed by Charles River Ventures, Sigma Partners, Yahoo and AT&T.
"Inspired by the introduction of services such as Apple's Siri and our own Dragon Go!, virtually every mobile and consumer electronics company on the planet is looking for ways to integrate natural, conversational voice interactions into their mobile products, applications and services," said Mike Thompson, senior vice president and general manager of Nuance Mobile. "By acquiring Vlingo, we are able to accelerate the pace of innovation to meet this demand."
A $5 Billion Opportunity
Nuance pointed to an unprecedented demand for intelligent voice interfaces that combine voice, language understanding and semantic processing as its reason to make the acquisition. Nuance and Vlingo plan to combine their innovation and R&D skills to deliver next-generation natural language interfaces across markets and industries.
What's at stake? Nuance has pegged the virtual assistant and voice-enabled capabilities market as a $5 billion opportunity that spans phones, tablets, cars, televisions, navigation devices, music players, PCs and more. Apple's Siri has proven the point, and Google is entering the market with Iris.
Iris promises to make your phone talk on topics ranging from Mozart to stock prices. The name is no coincidence: Iris is Siri in reverse and was inspired by the iPhone feature. But just because two heavy hitters are in the mix doesn't mean Nuance is ceding the market to the household brand names.
Noteworthy is the fact that the new bedmates were once enemies, as recently as August, in fact. Nuance accused Vlingo of infringing on its patent for speech recognition systems. A jury in August found that Vlingo did not infringe on any of the 30 patent claims.
"It's distasteful that Nuance engages in this abuse of the legal system because it clogs our courts and stifles innovation," Mike Phillips, chief technology officer of Vlingo, said in August. "We hope this ruling demonstrates to the market and our customers that Vlingo won't be bullied by these tactics and will continue to deliver on innovation."
Joining Forces Against Apple
Bullied, no. Bought, yes. Who can afford to be enemies when you have Apple and Google to chase? Rob Enderle, principal analyst at Enderle Group, said anything Apple pursues becomes hot. Under the leadership of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, the company had the ability to turn the market by focusing on a particular technology or area.
"When you have a lot of buyers that are swarming around an idea, that provides an opportunity for companies to deliver that idea outside of the company that created the storm. That's what's happening here," Enderle said.
"This idea of taking the next step beyond voice command to a much stronger voice response technology in portable devices has proven to be compelling. Now we have a race as folks who aren't Apple try to build up their Siri-like products."
Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/personaltech/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nf/20111220/bs_nf/81464
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(Reuters) ? Congress, after months of bitter fighting, is poised on Friday to pass a payroll tax cut extension that President Barack Obama argues is vital to the health of the economy.
The legislation would continue for two months a 4.2 percent payroll tax rate that otherwise would expire on December 31 and ratchet up to 6.2 percent for 160 million American workers.
"I congratulate members of Congress for ending the partisan stalemate," said Obama.
House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner yielded to pressure from Democrats and his party and agreed, with minor changes, to allow a vote on a bill passed by the Senate last week with bipartisan support.
Boehner acknowledged the opposition that he faced in initially opposing the measure.
"It may not have been politically the smartest thing in the world," Boehner told reporters late on Thursday. But he said his fellow House Republicans "waged a good fight."
Obama said: "Because of this agreement, every working American will keep his or her tax cut - about $1,000 for the average family" over the course of a year.
The two-month deal between Democrats and Republicans in the Senate and House comes after they were unable to agree on ways to offset the costs of a full-year extension.
If both chambers approve the two-month extension on Friday, a new round of negotiations would begin in January to add 10 more months to the measure.
Some last-minute roadblocks could still occur. If any member of Congress objects to a fast vote on Friday, passage of the two-month extension would be delayed, probably until next week.
It was unclear whether any restive conservative Republicans in the House might object to a voice vote, forcing Boehner to schedule a roll-call vote in coming days.
But either way, the legislation is expected to eventually be approved by Congress and sent to Obama to sign into law before the December 31 deadline.
Last Saturday, the Senate approved the two-month extension in a strong, bipartisan vote. But House conservatives, challenging Boehner, said they would not go along. Instead, they pushed for a year-long extension, despite earlier opposition to any renewal of the payroll tax cut.
Their maneuvers led some Democrats to suspect that Republicans were simply trying to kill the measure.
House Republicans all week insisted on a 12-month payroll tax extension. But Democrats did not budge, arguing that the two-month compromise hammered out in the Senate must first be approved to ensure no lapse in the lower rate. Then, they said, negotiations could continue.
But with opposition to the House Republicans mounting every day - from Senate Republicans lawmakers to conservative commentators and outside political advisors, Boehner saw no alternative but to relent.
Besides extending the payroll tax cut for two months, the legislation also temporarily continues some unemployment benefits that were set to expire in coming weeks and avoids a cut in payments to doctors who treat elderly patients in the government-backed Medicare health insurance program.
In one victory for Republicans, the legislation has a provision aimed at forcing a quick decision by Obama on the Keystone XL pipeline project that would run from Canada to the Texas coast.
(Editing by Paul Simao)
Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/obama/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111223/ts_nm/us_usa_taxes
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WASHINGTON (AP) ? Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney says rival Newt Gingrich's idea to send Capitol Police or U.S. marshals to bring judges before lawmakers to explain their decisions is neither practical nor constitutional.
Romney says the answer to out-of-control judges is not to tear up the Constitution and say that Congress is the ultimate power in the country. Instead, he says the Constitution should be followed when it comes to removing judges or reversing judicial decisions.
Romney made the comments Monday night on the Fox News Channel.
Over the weekend, Gingrich leveled wide-ranging criticism at the judicial system and suggested that as president he could ignore some Supreme Court decisions and would seek to abolish left-leaning courts. He also said Congress should subpoena judges to explain their decisions to lawmakers.
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The role of social structure in animal communication is hotly debated. Non-human primates seem to be born with a range of calls and sounds which is dependent upon their species. But overlying this there seems to be some flexibility - you can tell where a gibbon lives by its accent. New research published in Biomed Central's open access journal BMC Evolutionary Biology used Campbell's monkeys to look in detail at the nature versus nurture question and showed that non-human primate 'language', like humans, is learnt.
Researchers studied free-living Campbell's monkeys (Cercopithecus campbelli campbelli) from the Ta? National Park, Ivory Coast. They observed social interactions (time spent grooming) and recorded 'contact calls' made while the females were travelling, foraging or resting. Genetic similarity (family relationships) was determined by microsatellite analysis of DNA isolated from droppings. These monkeys have lived close to the Ta? Monkey Project Research Station for more than 10 years so their social structure and family groups are well known. Groups consisted of one male, four or six females, along with their offspring.
Dr Alban Lemasson who led the multi centre team explained, "Each female has its own distinctive vocalisation but they appear to pick up habits from each other. Similarities between 'contact calls' were dependent on the length of time adult females spent grooming each other (and who their grooming partner was) rather than genetic relatedness. This means that while the general call repertoire of non-human primates is dependent on genetic factors, the fine structure within this is influenced by the company they kept. This behaviour also fits with the theory that human speech has evolved gradually from ancestral primate vocalisations and social patterns."
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Social learning of vocal structure in a nonhuman primate?
Alban Lemasson, Karim Ouattara, Eric J Petit and Klaus Zuberb?hler
BMC Evolutionary Biology (in press)
BioMed Central: http://www.biomedcentral.com
Thanks to BioMed Central for this article.
This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.
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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/116104/I_wanna_talk_like_you__oo_
In our previous post, we listed the top 20 iPhone and iPad apps of the year. But games are in a class by themselves, often pushing the limits of the hardware, software, and graphics capabilities of Apple's iOS devices. Instead of combining the platform's great games with all of the other apps you should know about, here are our picks for the top 20 iOS games of the year:Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/Mi6W4hq77UQ/
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Here 'tis, folks. The final day of Google's 10-cent app promotion, celebrating (more than) 10 billion downloads from the Android Market. The final day sadly has a couple more repeat apps, but we're not about to turn down a 10-cent app. Here you go:
Also: Day 1 apps, Day 2 apps, Day 3 apps, Day 4 apps,
Day 5 apps, Day 6 apps, Day 7 apps, Day 8 apps, Day 9 apps
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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/RK4TGKK5E6s/story01.htm
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