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Honda will show off its in-car AI assistant at CES
At CES 2020, Honda says it will finally show off its long-promised in-car personal assistant. The automaker has been working on its own digital helper since 2018 when it announced a partnership with SoundHound. Aside from the usual claims of "unprecedented" speed and accuracy, the company doesn't say too much about how the tool compares to AI like Google Assistant and Siri. It does note you'll be able to wake it by saying "OK Honda," and that it'll be able to infer context about a question based on your current location, as well as any previous queries.
Honda taps SoundHound to help make an in-car AI assistant
Honda hasn't been shy about wanting an AI assistant in its cars, and it's bringing in a partner to ensure that this assistant is one you'll want to use. The automaker has tapped SoundHound to speed up the development of its AI companion. Thanks to the Houndify platform, your ride should understand natural, conversational voice commands, including ones that depend on contextual details like your location or past requests.
Hyundai and Kia will offer AI assistants in 2019 cars
Hyundai and Kia both have reputations as early adopters of in-car tech, and that's truer than ever now that voice assistants are becoming a practical reality on the road. The Korean automakers have revealed that they plan to include AI assistants in their new cars starting from 2019, with every vehicle being 'connected' by 2025. As Hyundai explained, they've been working with SoundHound to create an Intelligent Personal Agent (based on Houndify) that both makes proactive suggestions (such as reminding you of a meeting) and offers remote control of both your car and your home.
SoundHound wants to take on Google and Amazon in voice AI
When it comes to voice recognition software, SoundHound is definitely not as big a name as Google or Amazon -- yet. SoundHound has raised $75 million in support of its efforts to create artificial intelligence systems capable of recognizing complex human voices and commands, Bloomberg reports. Samsung and Nvidia, two companies that have previously partnered with SoundHound, were among the investors.
SoundHound's voice assistant lives inside its own speaker
Alexa and Google Home aren't the only pieces of voice-controlled assistant hardware available this holiday season. Today SoundHound announced the first third-party speaker to harness the power of its Hound platform. Built by Boombotix, the stand-alone device will not only play your music, but can answer your questions about the weather, flights, news, sports scores and more.
SoundHound adds voice search to its music discovery app
Last June, SoundHound revealed its plan to provide answers to more than just your music queries. It did just that with a universal search app called Hound, software with a feature that aimed to take on the likes of Siri and Google: voice commands. However, that handy tool didn't hadn't made the leap to the company's flagship app, but that changes today. The SoundHound software that finds music answers will now let you ask those questions with your voice.
Hound's voice-recognition technology books an Uber for you
Virtual assistants are getting better at their jobs. With Siri, Cortana or Google Now on your smartphone, it's not hard to pin down the closest artisanal coffee shop, set up a reminder to water your plants or calculate the quickest commute. But in this race for personal assistance, the service that requires the fewest steps can be expected to win. Hound, the latest natural language voice-recognition entrant, comes with the promise of a hands-free experience.
SoundHound takes on Siri and Google with new voice search app
While SoundHound hasn't seen the tune-searching success as Shazam, the company behind it is taking a similar stance as the competition. Like Shazam's recent addition of product queries, SoundHound is looking to tackle more than songs too, and it'll do so with a new app called Hound. It's more like Siri or Google Now (taking some design cues from the latter), handling searches for weather, directions, hotels, stocks and much more. And yes, the know-how from SoundHound is baked in as well, so you won't have to wield two apps just in case you need to identify a track by humming.
Casio's newest G-Shock has a giant dial for (complicated) music control
Casio continues to inch its G-Shock series toward something a little smarter, while holding onto a simple monochrome LCD display and that distinctly G-Shock styling. The "G'Mix" GBA-400 improves on the typical digital watch feature list through Bluetooth, a pair of dedicated apps (one for the watch part, one for the music-playing part) and your smartphone, whether it's iOS or Android. Oh and there's a giant dial control on the side and it's really satisfying to play with.
SoundHound now lets you make Spotify playlists from discovered music, but only on iOS
Generally speaking, getting an earworm out of your head is a two-step process: figure out what the song is (if you don't know already), and then listen to it over and over until you never want to hear it again. Apps like Shazam and SoundHound are great at that first bit: identifying songs whose title you may have forgotten. But once you figure out that "do do do do" was from "Tom's Diner" and not "Semi-Charmed Kind of Life," you're on your own in terms of finding a way to actually listen. SoundHound is trying to make that a bit easier: it just announced an "Add to Spotify" button that allows you to create playlists from songs you've discovered. Unfortunately, the feature is iOS-only for now, though we can only hope SoundHound will one day add it to its Android and BlackBerry 10 apps as well. If this is all intriguing enough to make you want to try SoundHound for the first time, you'll be able to link your SoundHound and Spotify accounts when you're getting set up for the first time. And if you already do use SoundHound, you'll just want to update to version 5.8, at which point you'll have the option of logging into Spotify. Enjoy-- and whatever you do, don't click that Tom's Diner link. Trust us.
SoundHound's music search app turns its focus to the Grammys with real-time updates and more
Awards nights tend to give rise to slews of app tie-ins, and for this year's Grammys, SoundHound's tossing its hat in the ring. In addition to being able to recognize songs by "listening" to them, the refreshed app comes with a dedicated page for the event that currently lists performers and nominees. Anyone who clicks SoundHound's orange button during the live broadcast on Sunday night, though, will see real-time info, the list of winners and relevant Twitter posts instead. Chances are, music lovers don't exactly need SoundHound to identify "Just Give Me A Reason" and other nominated songs. Those who find these special features useful, however, can download the app from the source links below.
Hyundai and Kia tap SoundHound to help you identify music in your car
Always pulling out your smartphone to identify a song you've heard on your car radio? You'll no longer need to if you buy a new Hyundai or Kia model in the coming year. The Korean automakers have teamed up with sound-recognition specialist SoundHound to bring its music-discovery tools to select 2014 models in North America, Korea and China. The partnership will see Hyundai and Kia integrate music tagging directly into their infotainment systems, letting you pull up information on a song or artist with a press of the SoundHound icon. If you so choose, the app can keep a record of your searches, giving you the option to pull them up on a mobile device at a more suitable time. One model that will definitely get SoundHound's music-discovery feature is Hyundai's 2015 Genesis sedan, which is already set to let owners remotely lock their cars, perform maintenance updates and send Google Maps directions to the car with Google Glass. Not content with that, the car maker is also one of the six founding members of the Open Automotive Alliance. As part of the alliance, Hyundai worked with Google to develop an Android-based version of its custom infotainment system, helping the search giant expand further into the world of connected cars.
SoundHound now scavenging tunes in more tablet-friendly Android version
If you've ever had an earworm you just can't put a name to, the SoundHound music recognition app -- that even translates your humming -- can be just the sorcery you need. There's now an Android version with a more tablet-centric design and tighter Google integration that brings "streamlined sharing to Facebook, Twitter and more," according to the company. It also trumpeted a stronger relationship with digital music service Rdio, which added interactive music mapping to its SoundHounded track-linking abilities, letting you see others across the globe with the same musical tastes and bad memory. You can grab it at Google Play or Amazon's Appstore for Kindle, but if you're as tone deaf as some of us, don't forget the auto-tune.
Jelly Bean's Sound Search feature now available root-free on ICS
Did you know you can get a little squirt of Jelly Bean flavor in your Ice Cream Sandwich right now? It's nothing mega -- just a non-root APK for Google Sound Search, the new in-house rival to Shazam and SoundHound, courtesy of user "asdfzz" over at XDA. The widget, which is also known as "Google Ears," currently works in a similar way to third-party apps, analyzing a track via remote servers and bringing up the result within Google Play, but in the future -- according to Mobile Phones Fan -- it could achieve faster speeds and better integration with other Google services by running natively within the OS. Of course, if you're up for flashing a whole ROM, then Jelly Bean can already be had in its entirety.
Switched On: When the smartphone giveth, Part 1
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology. Part II of this article will be coming next week -- stay tuned! The rise of smartphones hasn't been kind to makers of devices such as digital cameras, digital music players and portable GPS devices. Handsets with a rich selection of apps have been increasingly cannibalizing sales of these products, leaving few ways for these once hot holiday gift items to compete. In some cases, though, they have enabled functionality that was once envisioned for standalone products that either failed in the market or never went much beyond a niche audience. Here are five examples of failed devices that never made much headway. The concepts behind them, though, ultimately found acceptance on smartphones.
Daily Update for January 9, 2012
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen.
SoundHound's most ID'd songs in 2011
SoundHound is a music search and discovery tool for the iPhone, iPad and Android devices. The app has 50 million worldwide users and boasts of over four million music searches per day. The company recently released its Top Ten Identified songs and at the top of the charts was Pumped Up Kicks by Foster the People. The sleeper hit from the Indie band mixes sullen lyrics about teenage homicide with an upbeat, bouncy music track. Following behind Pumped Up Kicks is Someone Like You by Adele, a ballad about a broken relationship from the English singer-songwriter. You can check out the remaining top ten in the press release below, and grab SoundHound's free app or ad-free paid version (US$6.99) from the iOS App store to start contributing to the best of 2012 list. Show full PR text SoundHound's Top 10 Most ID'd Songs in 2011 As we welcome 2012 and all the fantastic new music it will bring, we at SoundHound thought we'd take a moment to reflect on the musical highlights of 2011-by compiling a list of the top 10 songs that you, our users, most frequently identified using SoundHound's blazing fast music recognition. SoundHound users ID'd well over 1 billion songs in 2011! The most ID'd song was-drum roll, please-"Pumped Up Kicks," by indie pop band Foster the People. This track alone was ID'd 1.25 million times in 2011. Here's the Top 10: 1. "Pumped Up Kicks" by Foster the People 2. "Someone Like You" by Adele 3. "Party Rock Anthem" by LMFAO 4. "Just Can't Get Enough" by Black Eyed Peas 5. "Rolling in the Deep" by Adele 6. "Mr. Saxobeat" by Alexandra Stan 7. "Danza Kuduro" by Don Omar & Lucenzo 8. "The Lazy Song" by Bruno Mars 9. "Hello" (Single Edit) by Martin Solveig & Dragonette 10. "Down On Me" (featuring 50 Cent) by Jeremih Thank you to our users who ID'd these and millions of other great songs in 2011. We look forward to helping you ID many, many more in 2012.
Get your Doodle Jump and Flight Control on as the Android Market sale continues into day 7
On the seventh day of the Android Market sale, your true love should give you Super KO Boxing 2. Or Flight Control, or Flick Soccer, or any of the other seven apps available today for ten cents. If you haven't been following along the past week, Google's been celebrating its ten billionth Android app download by offering a ten-day sale, and today's offerings -- ten in total -- are rife with games and a couple returning favorites. Everything you see in the above screenshot is available for a dime, so head over to the source link if there's something you've been pining for, or if you're just trying to collect the whole set.
Android Market reaches ten billionth download, sells Minecraft, Swiftkey X, others for a dime
Happy milestone, Android Market! It's a busy place, full of hustle and bustle -- so much so, in fact, that the applications plaza for Google's mobile OS just had its ten billionth app downloaded. In honor of hitting this mark, it's passing the savings on to you, placing (at least) ten apps on sale for ten cents. The sale will last for ten days (notice a theme?), so procrastinators will have a little extra time to decide which ones are worth a dime. There's a few classics on the list, such as SwiftKey X, Minecraft, Asphalt 6 and SoundHound. Check the source link (or glance at the screenshot above) to see what else is available, as well as a press release straight from SwiftKey below the break. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
My top 3 iPhone apps: Sam Levin of AppMinute
As a guy who regularly checks apps for a living (on AppMinute), Sam Levin knows which apps work and which ones don't so when he recommends and app, you know he's using it. This week Sam tells us his ever-rotating list of top 3 apps (again, called his favorites, but they happen to be often-used). The apps discussed are: Say it and mail it recorder SoundHound Photogene
