Telecommunications
Samsung launches Galaxy S III with voice and face recognition
Samsung on Thursday unveiled a larger Galaxy S III smartphone in London, and said the phone would be sold in the U.S. this summer after launching in Europe on May 29. Samsung didn't name a U.S. wireless carrier or the price for the smartphone, but said the U.S. version will run over LTE and HSPA, an indication it could run on AT&T's or T-Mobile's network. A white version of the Galaxy S III was unveiled by Samsung's president of mobile communications, J.K. Shin, at a crowded London media event that featured a live orchestra and was also webcast. The Galaxy S III, will run Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) and will have a 4.8-in. It includes an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera and a 1.9-megapixel front-facing camera.
Meet Pepper, a robot who can read your emotions
A cooing, gesturing humanoid on wheels that can decipher emotions has been unveiled in Japan by billionaire Masayoshi Son who says robots should be tender and make people smile. Son's mobile phone company Softbank said Thursday that the robot it has dubbed Pepper will go on sale in Japan in February for 198,000 yen ($2,100). Overseas sales plans are under consideration but undecided. The machine, which has no legs, but has gently gesticulating hands appeared on a stage in a Tokyo suburb, cooing and humming. It dramatically touched hands with Son in a Genesis or "E.T." moment.
Phone call translator app to be offered by NTT Docomo - BBC News
An app offering real-time translations is to allow people in Japan to speak to foreigners over the phone with both parties using their native tongue. NTT Docomo - the country's biggest mobile network - will initially convert Japanese to English, Mandarin and Korean, with other languages to follow. It is the latest in a series of telephone conversation translators to launch in recent months. Alcatel-Lucent and Microsoft are among those working on other solutions. The products have the potential to let companies avoid having to use specially trained multilingual staff, helping them cut costs. They could also aid tourism.
A faster Internet -- designed by computers?
TCP, the transmission control protocol, is one of the core protocols governing the Internet: If counted as a computer program, it's the most widely used program in the world. One of TCP's main functions is to prevent network congestion by regulating the rate at which computers send data. In the last 25 years, engineers have made steady improvements to TCP's congestion-control algorithms, resulting in several competing versions of the protocol: Many Windows computers, for instance, run a version called Compound TCP, while Linux machines run a version called TCP Cubic. At the annual conference of the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Data Communication this summer, researchers from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and Center for Wireless Networks and Mobile Computing will present a computer system, dubbed Remy, that automatically generates TCP congestion-control algorithms. In the researchers' simulations, algorithms produced by Remy significantly outperformed algorithms devised by human engineers.
Japan Mobile Company Debuts Real-Time Voice Translation App
Language barriers are starting to crumble. This month Japan's dominant mobile phone operator, NTT DoCoMo, introduced the world's first app for real-time voice translation. When a user with a DoCoMo smartphone places a call through the app, he speaks in Japanese and his words are promptly translated into English, Mandarin, or Korean. To complete the conversational circuit, the other person's words are translated from any of those languages back into Japanese. With this debut we've taken one step closer to building a mechanical Babel fish, the extraordinarily useful creature imagined by Douglas Adams in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Ask Ziggy for Windows Phone to Rival Apple's Siri
An independent Windows Phone developer has created an app for Microsoft's mobile platform that will attempt to outmatch Apple's intelligent voice-controlled assistant Siri. Ask Ziggy for Windows Phone is a free ad-free mobile app that can perform similar tasks to the iOS 5 voice assistant. "Ask Ziggy uses Speech Recognition to translate human speech into transcribed text, which is displayed in a speech bubble. The transcribed text is analyzed for patterns to detect commands or general queries. Commands are interpreted and routed to routine phone tasks such as emailing, texting, calling, social network updates, and getting directions," said Shai Leib, the app's developer, told WPcentral.
Soon that cell will be all ears / Voice-recognition technology will cut out the wait time
Two weeks ago, Janna Van Hoven tried to download "The Golden Girls" theme song as a ring tone for her new cell phone. After an hour of fiddling with her phone, she gave up, unsure if the ring tone was even available. She wanted it as a reminder of her college days, when she sat around with her friend watching the television show. "I wanted that ring tone so it would play when my friend called me. But I had to go through different menus and search through all the songs and sometimes it was hard to find the search option," said Van Hoven, 26, of San Francisco.
Chat Translation: NTT Docomo Debuts First Speech-to-Speech Translation App
If you've ever been struggling with a foreign language dictionary abroad, wishing that you could simply speak into a machine and have your chat translated for you, NTT (News - Alert) Docomo may be ready to make your wish come true. The company, which is Japan's number one cell phone carrier is about to begin offering a new real-time speech-to-speech translation service that you can use both in person and over the phone during a call, according to Geek.com According to Japanese news services, the solution is the first automated chat translation service in the world that is available on a standard cell phone. The new product combines several cutting-edge technologies: advanced speech recognition, machine translation and text-to-speech conversion of the translated results, says Geek.com. The services to power the solution will be cloud-based, says NTT Docomo.
Everything we think we know about the Samsung Galaxy S8
Samsung's next flagship phone, the Galaxy S8, will be arriving very soon. The pressure is on for the Korean electronics giant to deliver a flagship phone that not only improves on the specs of last year's Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge, but also kicks the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus' butt. SEE ALSO: Samsung's foldable phone could transform into a 7-inch tablet Adding more features has always been Samsung's approach with new flagships, but as the company is no doubt aware after the Galaxy Note7 literally burned out, everyone will be watching closely to see what new safety measures it includes on the S8. What exactly can we expect from the S8? Here's what we're hearing from the rumor mill. The Samsung Galaxy S7 has a Quad HD screen.
Amazon Alexa Smartphone In The Works? Company Seeks FCC Approval For Mobile Bands Based Technology
An Amazon application to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) emerged Saturday. The original application, which was first revealed in a Business Insider report, requests the FCC for a five-month experimental Special Temporary Authority to operate on selected channels on some mobile bands. This is the first time that news has emerged about Amazon working on mobile technology. Could it be that the company is secretly working on an Amazon Alexa smartphone? It wouldn't be a completely outlandish notion, even if it's true.