Co-founder of voice assistant feature Siri leaves Apple

Co-founder of the impressive iPhone 4S voice control feature Siri, Dag Kittlaus, has left Apple.

Kittlaus is someone who’s likely to go down in Apple’s history as having made a big impact on the company and its products. Siri is easily the most recognizable addition to Apple’s latest iPhone. The feature allows users to ask the phone questions, alter personal calendars and even search for nearby restaurants — it’s basically a personal voice assistant you … Continue Reading

Dylan’s Desk: Siri is the grandmother of Marvin the Paranoid Android

EDITOR’S NOTE: Each week, I’m writing a column on business and technology called Dylan’s Desk, while Dean Takahashi is writing a column on video games called The DeanBeat. They are available to newsletter subscribers a whole day before they appear on the VentureBeat website.

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In Star Trek IV, Scotty picks up a computer mouse and speaks into it, trying to get the machine’s attention. “Computer! Computer!” When nothing happens, someone tells him to use … Continue Reading

Apple debuts Siri, a voice assistant for iOS

Apple showed off its new voice assistant, Siri, a voice control feature available on its mobile operating system iOS, today at a special press event in Cupertino, Calif.

From what I can tell from the demo, Siri is the equivalent of handing your phone to another person sitting beside you and instructing them on what you want to do with it — sort of like many people have experienced when driving and trying to find … Continue Reading

iPhone 5′s killer feature: powerful Assistant voice commands

The coolest feature in Apple’s upcoming iPhone 5 may be something unexpected: a smart, voice-operated virtual assistant — simply called Assistant — that sounds like an evolutionary upgrade over the iPhone’s current voice commands.

We’ve been hearing for some time that Apple will integrate technology from Siri, a virtual assistant mobile application company it purchased last year, into the next iPhone. But new reports today from 9to5Mac and the Unofficial Apple Weblog make Assistant sound … Continue Reading

Hands on with Microsoft’s slick speech-powered Xbox 360, Windows Phone 7 (video)

Microsoft is rolling out a whole host of speech recognition features for its Windows Phone 7 devices and Kinect-enabled Xbox 360 consoles in a move to make the gaming experience more immersive. The new features are part of what the company refers to as the “natural user interface” (NUI).

The company acquired speech recognition software developer Tellme in 2007. But there wasn’t whole lot of interest in the speech recognition sector until Apple stunned the … Continue Reading