XM Satellite Radio and VoiceBox Technologies announced a multiyear
alliance Thursday to bring voice control to the satellite broadcast
service.
The partnership will let drivers issue voice commands to search through
XM Satellite
Radio's 160 channels of music, talk radio and other stations
and to find personalized information such as stock prices, traffic and
weather. The technology is planned to be available to automakers and to
those producing aftermarket products in mid-2006, the companies said.
The companies will demonstrate the technology at the Consumer
Electronics show next week.
XM competes with conventional broadcast radio and with another
satellite-based subscription service, Sirius Satellite Radio.
This week, Sirius announced it has accumulated 3 million subscribers. XM
has more than 5 million subscribers.
XM announced that it had chosen VoiceBox's technology because it worked accurately in noisy environments. The technology is designed to let users control electronics with free-form conversational language, the companies said.
On Wednesday, XM announced it will use technology from Neural Audio to broadcast some digital radio signals using 5.1 surround sound, which employs five speakers and a low-frequency subwoofer instead of the conventional two speakers.
Denon, Onkyo, Pioneer, and Yamaha will introduce home audio systems that support the feature, which XM calls XM HD Surround. XM will demonstrate the technology at the electronics show.
When will we be able to use audio mining functionalities ACTNow offers (www.compure.com) to search for any words or phrases in stored broadcast news? The technology is there so you can simply say what you are interested in and it offers (via voice or screen) the movies that contain these words (Google-like search).
Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon--all are targets for Mozilla's plan to use Web apps to free people from ecosystem lock-in. Also: new Firefox features aplenty.
The rise of Apple's stores is one of the past decade's great retail stories. So, why then does the company continue to creep back into the big-box outlets and will this hurt the brand?
The company helps small businesses with little tech savvy build apps easily, and now its partner Constant Contact will email-blast prospective users, too.
The Samsung Galaxy Mini 2 S6500 could make its debut at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona later this month, according to a leaked promotional image.
Web giant is spending $120 million to beef up its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters, according to filings with the city reviewed by the San Jose Mercury News.
