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AI can predict heart attacks more accurately than doctors
An estimated 20 million people die each year due to cardiovascular disease. Luckily, a team of researchers from the University of Nottingham in the UK have developed a machine-learning algorithm that can predict your likelihood of having a heart attack or stroke as well as any doctor.
Computers trump chemists by studying failed experiments
In science, the pursuit of truth requires constant experimentation and, inevitably, a few failures along the way. But that's okay, because learning from those failures is often necessary in order to uncover a new, remarkable breakthrough. Now, a team of researchers from Haverford College is trying to speed up this trial and error process with a machine-learning algorithm, capable of predicting successful chemical reactions.
Police are using software to predict where crime will happen
Police are unlikely to ever have a Minority Report-like ability to get inside would-be criminals' heads, but they may already have the next-best thing. Developers like PredPol are offering "predictive policing" software that tells cops where and when crimes are likely to happen based on the location, the nature of the crime and the time of day. The software knows that there's a good chance that a burglary or gang slaying will lead to similar activity in a given area, or that you'll see drunken fights outside of a dive bar in the early morning. Theoretically, police just have to patrol these areas more often to stop crime before it starts.
Fleksy brings a predictive messaging app to the Gear 2 smartwatch
Fleksy's already brought its intuitive touch keyboard to the Galaxy Gear, but now Samsung's smartwatches all run Tizen, it needed an upgrade to operate on the phone maker's own OS. That's exactly what the company has done with the release of a new messaging app for the Gear 2 smartwatch, which delivers a diminutive yet fully-featured predictive keyboard capable of accessing your SMS conversations and contacts. As a dedicated messaging app, it also handles all of the heavy lifting, letting you send and receive messages directly from your wrist. In order to operate, the app syncs with your Samsung smartphone, which Fleksy says "integrates all information from both devices." There's no word on whether you'll be able to load Fleksy Messenger on the original Gear, but it is now available as a free download from Samsung Apps. Hopefully an enterprising developer will port it over.
NTT DoCoMo trials Tap-de-Concier service with a Google Now flair
Japan's NTT DoCoMo isn't content waiting for Google Now to become commonplace before it gives customers a taste of predictive search. The carrier is near launching a trial for Tap-de-Concier, an Android-based service that will pop up maps, media, games and more depending on both the user's own habits, as well as usage and trends from DoCoMo's other portals. The result is a service that theoretically knows what you want, when you want it: Tap-de-Concier can tell that you're looking for train schedules before work on a Monday morning, and restaurants on Friday night. We imagine that some will like the alternative just because it won't be confined to Jelly Bean -- any DoCoMo-offered phone or tablet with at least Android 2.3 can run the service, including Raku-Raku phones. Locals will have between March 26th and September 30th to decide whether or not Tap-de-Concier is more helpful than its Google parallel.
Grokr for iOS curates the Internet so you don't have to
Grokr is an ambitious project. It's a personalized search and discovery platform that brings relevant information to your iOS device with minimal effort on your part. It's predictive like Google Now, but without the voice-driven features of the search assistant. Grokr builds a profile based on your interests, the places you go, the things you search for and the conversations on your social networks. It then uses this profile to present information that you would like to know or read. The app is built on tiles that are updated at the appropriate time of day. If it's your morning commute, then the transportation tile will show you local traffic information. If it's Sunday, then the sports tile will display the results of your favorite team's game. Grokr debuted in the iOS App Store this week and the company has big plans for improving its knowledge algorithm and expanding it to include the business and productivity part of our lives. You can download Grokr from the iOS App Store for free and check out the next wave of intelligent virtual assistants.
SwiftKey Flow keyboard takes the fight to Swype with predictive gestures (video)
SwiftKey must be keen to finish its bout with Swype, as it just went for the knockout. It's launching SwiftKey Flow, an extension of its Android keyboard that blends SwiftKey's familiar word prediction with the hold-and-swipe gestures we most commonly associate with the company's arch-rival. Speed-minded typists now just have to glide across the virtual keys and let go as soon as Flow makes a correct guess. They don't have to pick a typing mode and stick with it, either, as both gestures and the usual taps will work at the same time. Prospective testers will want to sign up today for the SwiftKey Flow beta starting in the next few weeks. Everyone else, though, might want to watch from the bleachers -- the new parallels between SwiftKey and Swype just made this fight infinitely more entertaining.
SwiftKey 3.0.1 brings new themes, languages and bug fixes
Rejoice, Android keyboard enthusiasts! SwiftKey announced today that it's pushing out an update to its popular virtual keyboard that brings new themes, languages and bug fixes. Version 3.0.1 incorporates two new summer themes -- Sky blue and Fuchsia -- and bumps the language count to 44 with the addition of Malay and Urdu. The keyboard now also supports continuous dictation with Google voice typing on Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean. Most important, however, are a plethora of tweaks, performance improvements and bug fixes designed to further improve the SwiftKey user experience. We've been using the update for a few hours now on AT&T's red Galaxy S III and it definitely makes our favorite Android virtual keyboard even better. Hit the break for screenshots of the new themes plus the full PR.
Theory of cliodynamics uses science to predict history, sees violence erupt in cycles
Ever get the feeling that you've seen it all before? University of Connecticut researcher Peter Turchin has, and he (along with Russian partners Sergey Nefedov and Andrey Korotayev) has even crafted an entire scientific theory around the idea. Cliodynamics, as it's called, works on the view that broad trends of history occur in predictable patterns based on common factors like government strength, population size and social inequality. The surprise to Turchin is that violence outside of wars, at least in the US, triggers roughly every 50 years like clockwork: people rebel against a social crisis, but their children stay out of the fray and lead to the conditions that ultimately trigger another outbreak, like the 1970s civil rights and peace movements. Don't set your watch to cliodynamics just yet. Many historians are still skeptical, and even supporters note that one-off events or major wars fall through the cracks. If the theory pans out, however, science could be used to help governments do the right thing before they're made to do it at gunpoint. [Image credit: Steve Wilson, Flickr]
Nokia Drive 3.0 arrives with My Commute, your Lumia is no excuse for being late (video)
Nokia gave us a hint of Nokia Drive 3.0's commuter-friendly additions all the way back at Mobile World Congress in February. It's been quite the wait, but the update is at last lurking in the Windows Phone Marketplace. Although developed at the same time as Google Now, the Drive update will feel like a small slice of Android 4.1 for Lumia owners through its predictive routing: it can learn when you leave for work and how driving habits will affect the trip, giving a heads-up about traffic jams before you turn the ignition. Windows Phone reasserts itself through the option of pinning favorite destinations as tiles on the home screen, and an automatic switch between day and night modes is just as new. Drive's My Commute feature will initially work only in the US, but it should be available within the next day or two for any Lumia owner -- so those being denied Windows Phone 8 still won't have any justification for being late to the office.
SwiftKey 3 Beta launches, no space bar required (video)
Just when we thought our favorite Android virtual keyboard couldn't get much better, TouchType decided to prove us wrong by launching SwiftKey 3 Beta. If you're one of the product's 30,000+ VIP users, you'll want to get your hands on the company's newest creation right now, for free. What's new? The space bar is no longer required, for one -- Smart Space detects and corrects "miss-typed or omitted spaces across whole phrases." Paradoxically, that same space bar is now wider, just in case you're feeling nostalgic. Smart punctuation further enhances the UI, with language-specific improvements in tow. In fact, SwiftKey 3 offers support for seven new languages -- Korean, Estonian, Farsi, Icelandic, Latvian, Lithuanian and Serbian (for a total of 42). Finally, you'll find two lovely new themes, Cobalt and the Ice Cream Sandwich-inspired Holo. We've been playing with TouchType's latest and greatest for a few hours now on both our HTC One X and our Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 and we've stopped using the space bar completely. Did you notice? Wedidn'tthinkso. Check out the gallery of screenshots below, hit the break for a demo video and the full PR, then follow the More Coverage link to sign up as a VIP.
SwiftKey X for Android hits v2.1, fingers party everywhere
Rejoice, virtual keyboard aficionados! SwiftKey X 2.1 for Android tablets and smartphones just became available today, and brings a bunch of new features and bug fixes to your favorite touchscreen device. Since our hands-on with v2.0, TouchType has updated its on-screen keyboard using the feedback it gathered from its 25,000+ VIP members. The new version of SwiftKey X adds blog personalization, insights about your typing (shareable with friends), heat-map visualization (see screenshot above), localization / language enhancements, and an auto caps toggle. We've been using the final build of SwiftKey X 2.1 on our Nexus S for the past couple of days and noticed some improvements in terms of typing speed and accuracy. Pricing remains $4.99 for SwiftKey Tablet X and $3.99 for SwiftKey X. Full PR after the break.
SwiftKey X virtual keyboard launches for Android tablets, we go hands-on (video)
We're no strangers to SwiftKey here at Engadget HQ, and today TouchType is launching a major new version of everyone's favorite Android virtual keyboard -- SwiftKey Tablet X for devices running Honeycomb, and SwiftKey X for devices running Android 2.x. Both applications improve upon the original by using TouchType's Fluency 2.0 artificial intelligence engine, a unique predictive phrase system which learns how you write. New features include cloud learning, which analyzes how you type in Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, and text messages to predict phrases in your style, plus keypress technology which continually monitors your typing precision and adapts the touch-sensitive area for each key to improve prediction accuracy. SwiftKey now supports 17 languages (with more coming soon) and is smart enough to interpret three languages at once. There's also a handful of other enhancements, including support for themes which allow users to customize the look and feel of the keyboard. And that split keyboard option we first encountered at CES? It's there of course, in the tablet version. We've been testing SwiftKey Tablet X on the Galaxy Tab 10.1 for a few days now, alongside SwiftKey X on a handful of phones (including the Nexus S and the EVO 3D), and it's probably the best virtual keyboard we've used on Android yet. In fact, it's now replacing the stock keyboard on all our HTC Sense-equipped handsets. Prediction accuracy improves quickly after you start using the keyboard, and we liked having the option to turn off the spacebar-triggered auto-completion of words and phrases. Another useful feature is the ability to display arrow / cursor keys on the phone version. The supplied themes are attractive (especially Neon), and the layouts are intuitive -- although we'd have preferred the numbers to be arranged in a row instead of mimicking a numpad. Both applications are available today only for $1.99 in the Android Market. Regular pricing is $4.99 for SwiftKey Tablet X, and $3.99 for SwiftKey X. Take a look at our screenshot galleries below, and hit the break for our hands-on videos and more. %Gallery-128376%%Gallery-128378%
Shocker! Gamer behavior is actually quite predictable
Isn't it curious how you always crack open a beer before settling in for some GTA? Or how you tend to put an anxious hand over your wallet when logging onto PSN? No soldier, it is not curious. Not at all. But this is: Researchers at North Carolina State University claim they've found a way to predict your in-game behavior with "up to 80 percent accuracy." After analyzing the decision-making of 14,000 World of Warcraft players, they noticed that different players prefer different types of achievements. These preferred achievements clump together into statistically significant groups, known as "cliques", even if they have nothing obvious in common. So a WoW player who likes to improve their unarmed combat skills also, for some psychological reason, tends to want points for world travel. What's more, the researchers believe that clique-spotting can be exploited outside the rather specific world of WoW, in which case their method could prove lucrative to game designers, online retailers and pretty much anyone with an interest in predicting your next move. Want to know more? Then we predict you'll click the PR after the break.
World's fastest texter gets pwned by voice recognition
A young lad by the name of Ben Cook might be able to school his pals with his lightning-quick text messaging skillz (he even prefers plain ol' multi-tapping to predictive text) but one company set out to prove that the world's fastest texter is still no match for voice recognition. Nuance Communications is gearing up to release its Mobile Speech Platform to carriers -- a system that'll ultimately allow users to dictate SMSes, among other tasks -- and they obviously needed some high-profile way to get the word out, like picking on Ben Cook, for example. For the contest, Nuance pitted its software against Mr. Cook and two Nuance employees packing QWERTY and T9 devices, throwing them each this little tidbit of everyday conversation: "The razor toothed piranhas of the genera Serrasalmus and Pygo centrus are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. In reality they seldom attack a human." Our world record holder finished in 48 seconds -- not bad, considering he was doing it without any predictive assistance -- but the software spanked everyone with just 16 seconds on the clock. Now we just need to take a hard look at why one would dictate an SMS (versus, say, placing a phone call) and we'll be jumping right on the bandwagon.
