Assistant

According to a new study, most people who have access to Apple's Siri voice assistant think she's just fine -- they just don't want her around all that much.

As part of its quarterly "Market Focus" report, Parks Associates today said that in a polling of 482 iPhone 4S owners in the U.S., more than 50 percent of respondents said they were "very satisfied" with Siri. About a fifth of the group said that they were simply "satisfied," and some 9 percent said they were "unsatisfied."

According to … Read more

The current highest-capacity internal hard drive that you can buy offers 3TB of storage space, which is huge. Soon you'll be able to put even more data on one, thanks toSeagate's recent achievement in data density.

The hard-drive maker announced today that it has become the first company to achieve the milestone storage density of 1 terabit (1 trillion bits) per square inch, promising to double the current hard-drive's capacity before the end of this decade. The company says its new storage technology will also allow hard drives to reach 60TB capacity within the next decade. … Read more

When migrating or restoring your Mac using Apple's Migration Assistant utility, if you have cancelled the migration operation or experienced an error such as a power outage or crash, then you may find some odd behavior. Changes made to some system resources might not be recognized.

For instance, if you have third-party utilities installed on your system that use launch agents or daemons to keep them running, if you decide to disable these agents by removing them from your system, you might find the programs continue to launch.

Recently I ran into such a situation. When migrating to a … Read more

Google could be cooking up a new voice assistant designed to out-Siri Siri.

The company is said to have a new system in the works dubbed "Assistant" designed to help people complete tasks by voice. And if Google's plans come together, Assistant could debut in the fourth quarter, according to TechCrunch.

Citing information from a source, TechCrunch said on Friday that the search giant would control all of the layers involved in Assistant. But Google would let third-party developers tap into the system to create their own unique apps, a marked contrast from Apple's Siri, which … Read more

Microsoft is enhancing some of the accessibility features in Windows 8 to make the new OS easier for people with disabilities.

Certain "assistive technologies" have long been a part of Windows. The built-in Narrator can read text aloud to people who are blind. The Magnifier can zoom in to display content for people who have trouble seeing. Speech recognition allows people who are unable to type to navigate via voice.

But as described in the latest Building Windows 8 blog by Jennifer Norberg, a senior program manager on Microsoft's Human Interaction Platform team, Windows 8 is taking those features a few steps further.… Read more

There may come a time when Siri can help you buy a new flat-screen TV from the comfort of your bed, but for now the gal's capabilities are limited.

For the misfits and troublemakers who have jailbroken their iPhone 4S, there's a new app that promises to change that. It's called MyAssistant, and for 99 cents on third-party app market Cydia, it gives Siri much deeper access to your system settings and software than Apple offers out of the box.

How deep you might be wondering? Once installed it lets you do things like reboot your phone, … Read more

Last time, we took a look at how cars protect their passengers in the event of a crash. This week, we're taking a look at a few high-tech ways that modern vehicles can help prevent accidents in the first place.

Modern tech cars can be equipped with a host of driver aid systems that help make driving easier for your average commuter. From road-aware cruise control systems to self-aware headlight systems, cars are getting smarter every day.

Adaptive cruise control If the standard cruise control system was the first step toward vehicular autonomy, then adaptive cruise control system is … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Vlingo, the virtual assistant app for all major mobile platforms, today announced that it's making its way into televisions.

Not just a voice-controlled remote for changing channels and volume, "Vlingo for Smarter TVs" can help you browse and discover new content by simply talking into your mobile device. For instance, you could ask Vlingo something like, "what comedies are playing tonight?" Then, the app would trigger your TV to pull up a listing using the database of programming made available by cable providers. Or, you could simply tell Vlingo, "watch 'The Price is … Read more

Move over Siri. Windows Phone now has its own voice assistant, dubbed Ask Ziggy, and it seems to be a hit.

Except for some negative comments here and there, many reviewers on the MarketPlace page for the free app christened it with 4- and 5-star ratings, resulting in an average of 3.5 stars.

"Off to a great start," said one commenter. "As a proof of concept it's funny to see how Apple's 'amazing' interface can be rivaled by a single developer. Looking forward to future updates."

I ran a quick, informal competition between … Read more