Google Announced New Feature “Now on Tap” For Google Now in I/O Conference

There are a lot of new feature of Google which is announced in the Google I/O Conference this year. One of them is the enhancement for Google Now.  Since the launching of Google Now, the company is always coming up with ideas on how it can help and do more work for the users. With the upcoming release of Android M, Google Now is improved such that users can ask for whatever they want even though they are opening other apps to do something else, all in one device.

The new feature for Google Now which is designed to do the above is “Now on Tap”. To activate it, users can simply tap and hold the home button and ask whatever they want to know and Google will show you the results. For example, if your friend emailed you to ask you to watch movie, let’s say “Hunger Games”, you can just say “Ok Google, Hunger games” then Google will display everything in the internet about Hunger Games, from the ratings, trailer and even the website where you can buy the tickets or just to see the show timings. All these can be done without having to leave whatever you are doing.

Based on this example, it seems like the enhancement for Google Now is that it is able to show the information based on the context of your question. The best of all is that, the other app developer does not need to make changes on their app to integrate with “Now on tap” feature. It is able to work as long as they have their apps indexed by Google.

Google Announced New Feature “Now on Tap” For Google Now in I/O Conference

Commandr app enhances the power of Google Now by adding many useful voice commands

Many of us are used to saying ‘Ok Google’ and command Google Now to do so many cool things for us like checking a flight, setting alarm, initiating calls, sending messages or asking any questions for which we want to know the answers. Well, the Commandr app makes it even better.

Commandr does not use any advanced algorithms but it simply adds several triggers or commands to Google Now. Ryan Senanayake, a 16 year old developer has created the Commandr app which when installed, toggles several commands. These include Wi-Fi on/off, GPS on/off, flashlight on/off, Bluetooth on/off, Wireless Hotspot on/off, Play/Resume music, Previous/Next song, Raise/Lower Volume, Silence/Unsilence ringer, Lock/Unlock phone, take a photo/Selfie, enable/Disable rotation lock, sync, Airplane mode or car mode, and many more such functions that are useful to us in our day to day life.

Commandr is integrated with the Tasker which enables you to add the custom commands you want.  All you need to do is turn Commandr into the default note-taking app so that when you say “Ok Google” and then “note to self”, you will be giving a command to the Commander.For example, if you say “note to self, turn on the WiFi”, your WiFi will turn on. The commands also work offline but for that you have to type them out.

You can also use this app on Android Wear smartwatches as they support Google Now. You can either say “ok Google” and the command which you want executed or you can open the full Android Wear app and tap the command.

You can download the free Commandr app from the Google Play Store.

Commandr app enhances the power of Google Now by adding many useful voice commands

Reuters: Microsoft Cortana to arrive as a standalone app on iOS and Android

Based on the recent reports published by Reuters, Microsoft seems to be planning to bring its digital private virtual assistance Cortana on iOS and Android platforms. For the moment, this is available only as a beta version of Windows Phone 8.1 devices in few selected regions and a global roll-out can be expected later in 2015. The reason behind this rumor that Cortana could feature on Apple and Google platforms is basically due to the fact that Microsoft seems to be planning to expand the user base for its software products.

In this field of digital personal assistance, three big tech giant namely Apple, Google and Microsoft have tried their hands with their own Siri, Google Now and Cortana. However, Cortana seems to be having an edge over its other two rivals and is surely ahead of the pack. Once Cortana would find its way to Apple and Google platforms the competition is going to get even more stronger and Apple and Google will really have to work-out to put in line its Siri and Google Now respectively to be equally competent enough with Cortana.

source: Reuters

Reuters: Microsoft Cortana to arrive as a standalone app on iOS and Android

Android 5.0 Lollipop allows users to turn off Wi-Fi, flashlight and Bluetooth via Google Now commands

Most of the Android phone users today turn of the phone’s flashlight either with a torch button offered by the phone’s manufacturer or by downloading an app from the Play Store. Now, if you are lucky to get the Android 5.0 update for your handset, things will turn out to pretty much easy for you. With the Android 5.0, a Google Now command would be enough for you to turn on the flashlight by simply saying “Turn on flashlight“. Similarly, you can turn it off by saying “Turn off flashlight.” The Google Now will also help you for other commands like “Turn on (and off) Wi-Fi” and “Turn on (and off) Bluetooth.”

In addition to receiving the audio feedback for these commands, a Google Now card would appear with a toggle switch allowing users to quickly change the action they have requested. Note that this will not work for other commands like adjusting brightness or volume. In case requested, you will be navigated to the settings tab to change it manually.

So if you are lucky enough to have the Android 5.0 Lollipop update, enjoy this facility from Google and free yourself from sharing your data to any apps from Google Play Store. Check out the images below.

source: AndroidPolice

via PhoneArena

Android 5.0 Lollipop allows users to turn off Wi-Fi, flashlight and Bluetooth via Google Now commands

Siri beats Google Now and Cortana in multiple language test

Apple’s Siri started the trend for voice-activated personal assistant and now has two major competitors – Microsoft’s Cortana for Windows Phone and Google Now for Android. There are many reviews comparing the three services trying to judge which among them is the best.

Venturebeat tested Siri, Cortana and Google Now for 5 languages to check which multilingual voice-activated personal assistant is the best. Their team asked 18 questions to each of the three assistants in 5 languages – English, Italian, Mandarin, French and German. A quick and correct response was awarded the score of 1.0, answers that were not straightforward but the correct answer appeared somewhere in the clutter of a list of search results got a score of 0.5. Responses that didn’t understand the question or gave irrelevant answers or admitted that they couldn’t complete the job were given 0.0.

In case of English, all the three voice-enabled assistants were highly accurate with only a little difference in their scores. Siri topped with 15.5 out of 18, Cortana got 12.5 while Google Now scored 11.5. For Italian, Siri was undoubtedly the leader scoring the same as in English – 14.5 out of 18. Results for others were quite unimpressive with 8.5/18 for Google Now and 6/18 for Cortana.

The results for French and German were quite similar to those of Italian, although Siri dropped marginally while Cortana and Google Now fared slightly better. The last language tested was Mandarin. In this Siri again topped with 13.5/18, Cortana scored only 5/18 while Google Now got a meager 1.5/18.

Google Now offers more than 50 languages and dialects, a lot many compared to Siri and Cortana but most languages seem to be set up only for voice search and not as a full fledged voice assistant. Cortana was found to respond to a query most likely with a web search.

All in all, Siri won the contest hands down, scoring 76% for accuracy in all languages followed by Google Now with 46% and Cortana with 42%.

Check out the infographic below:

 

Source VentureBeat

Via PhoneArena

Siri beats Google Now and Cortana in multiple language test

Google’s short film explains about Talking with Computers

Computers have come a long way since the first basic computer was developed in the 19th century. Now computers play and win games such as Chess or Jeopardy against humans. Intelligent personal assistants like Google Now, Apple Siri and Microsoft Cortana have been developed that are capable of voice recognition and can answer questions which would have seemed quite impossible a few decades ago.

The day is not far when we can talk to computers like we do with other human beings. Google’s short film ‘Behind the Mic: The Science of Talking with Computers’ explores man’s dream of talking with machines and the challenges involved in developing algorithms for this. It traces the history of development of speech recognition systems. We have made a lot of progress till date and speech recognition can now transcribe what we have said, but we need to improve it still further if we want it to understand  a spoken sentence.

We are still a long way off from making computers understand language as we speak it. We need to exactly replicate the language algorithms of the human brain and to make computers understand language and speech. Researchers are trying to develop a neuron net that is very similar to the neurons in the human brain and hope that it will help the computers to recognize speech and understand the language.

You can have a look at the said Google’s short film about Talking with Computers:

 

Google’s short film explains about Talking with Computers