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voice recognition

The Popinator Takes the Finger Out of Finger Food

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Popcorn launcher

The Popinator

How many times have you played the game of “throw popcorn at me, and I’ll catch it with my wide open mouth” with your friends or siblings? I have not done it in a while, but there it is hard to think of a silly activity that can offer so much fun. Well, unless you count throwing peanuts, and other similar finger food.

All that is fun if you have a throwing partner whose aim is ace, but what if you’re alone? Or what if you simply don’t feel like expending much energy but want to eat some popcorn. Yeah, sometimes you can’t believe how lazy people get, huh?

Enter the Popinator. The machine that takes away the need to use your hands to have some popcorn fun.[Read More]

Yahoo Upgrades oneSearch

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At CTIA Yahoo upgraded its oneSearch mobile search to include features such as voice enabled search, predictive text search assist and will also make the oneSearch platform available to third party publishers for better integration with the mobile web.

An excerpt from TechNewsWorld:

Yahoo’s oneSearch 2.0, the new iteration of the company’s year-old mobile search service, will deliver a number of improvements that will allow users to perform quicker, more comprehensive searches through text and voice-based activation, the company said Wednesday.

“With the launch of Yahoo oneSearch in 2007, we revolutionized mobile search by re-creating search specifically for the mobile phone, focusing on answers, not just Web links,” said Marco Boerries, executive vice president of Yahoo’s connected life business. “With Yahoo oneSearch 2.0, we are fundamentally changing the way consumers use the Internet on their mobile phones.”

While the oneSearch feature is only available for BlackBerry Curve, Pearl and 8800-series, the roll out internationally for other handsets will take place in coming months. The search feature uses technology from vLingo, a voice recognition technology that gets better with usage.

Yahoo is continuing with the roll-out of its products and plans uninterrupted by the Microsoft’s take-over bid. While the products are not anything new compared to the features offered by its competitors ( Google and Microsoft), there is an advantage that Yahoo has in the mobile front and it wants to keep up with its competitors and even go further ( as in opening the platform for oneSearch).

Voice based technologies are gaining momentum since they make navigating mobile devices simple and easy. Microsoft’s acquisition of tellme last year sent definite signals that voice navigation was seen as a major part of mobile applications.

Zimbra, a Yahoo company has also released its ZimbraME mobile messaging platform.

An excerpt from TMCNet:

“ZimbraME is key to delivering on our strategy and commitment to provide the best experience and widest range of desktop and mobile support of any messaging platform in the market today,” said Satish Dharmaraj, Zimbra co-founder and Yahoo! vice president. “In an increasingly mobile world, a large percentage of people use mass-market handsets and expect to have access to information without needing a smartphone.”

Its good to see that the take-over bid is not halting innovation at the tech giant. Well, not so far.