There are two porgs from Star Wars running around a living room. One waddles near my feet while the other is out of my sightline behind a small bookshelf. Things are getting chaotic, but also really fun. To get them to behave, a hologram of C-3PO advises I gain their trust by offering the porg …
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When it announced its new augmented reality platform with a set of prototype AR glasses back in March, Bose said that a commercial version of the product was coming. Now it’s here: Bose Frames, a set of sunglasses with built-in microspeakers and microphones, will be available in the US in January for $199. Preorders start today at bose.com, and Bose …
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When it comes to AI, Qualcomm’s betting big. The company said on Wednesday that it plans to start a venture fund that will invest at least $100 million in early stage startups working on artificial intelligence. In particular, the fund will look at companies finding ways to do intensive data processing on devices like smartphones and security cameras instead of …
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Talking to Google Assistant on an iPhone is hardly new — Google released its Assistant app in 2017. But the process for getting to Google Assistant didn’t involve its typical “OK Google” or “Hey Google” command. Instead, you had to manually open the app or launch it using a widget. It worked, but only if you really liked Google Assistant. Now …
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Podcast app Pocket Casts relaunched Wednesday with an overhauled app and a mission to make podcasts less awful to discover. It’s a coming-out party for the podcast app taken over by a group of public radio giants earlier this year. In recent months, podcasting as a format has seemed like a bubble that may have popped. In a string of …
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Yesterday, we got a foldable phone. But Samsung’s Developer Conference is only half over. In addition to the very intriguing foldable Infinity Flex Display, the Korean electronics giant gave a big shot in the arm to Bixby, its voice assistant competitor to the likes of Alexa, Google Assistant and Siri. It opened Bixby up to third-party developers (the core audience at its …
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Samsung’s Bixby digital assistant is getting a boost in capabilities — but the question is whether it’s too late. The South Korean company on Wednesday will kick off its two-day developer conference in San Francisco, an annual event that reflects the company’s big push to get developers to make software specifically for its devices. In the past, that’s meant making …
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Samsung’s voice assistant is reportedly about to learn new tricks. The mobile giant plans to open its Bixby voice assistant to third-party developers in an effort to compete with Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri and Google Assistant, according to The Wall Street Journal. At an event in San Francisco next week, Samsung will reportedly detail how developers can create “capsules,” which …
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Editors’ note, Nov. 1: We’ve added hands-on impressions of the new MacBook Air, which starts at $1,199 and features a Retina display, Touch ID and USB-C ports. Apple announced an update to its most popular laptop, the MacBook Air, at a special event in Brooklyn, New York, on Tuesday. The 13.3-inch laptop now has a Retina display with four times the …
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Mozilla has given its read-it-later Pocket app the ability to read text out loud with human-sounding voices so you can turn a website into an instant podcast. The new feature, released Thursday, spotlights the growing competence of computers to change text into speech. Other high-profile examples include Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri. But perhaps the closest to an actual human …
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