What gadget geek doesn't want his or her own combadge? Somewhere at the intersection between virtual digital assistants and wearable hardware there's the dream of being able to access a powerful voice-controlled computer wherever you go; just ask it something, and it answers. We've already got shades of that with Android Wear and the Apple Watch, and now Microsoft may be planning its own spin on the idea, as a source discusses the company's plans for a Cortana-based wearable device. Supposedly in development under the name Clip, the unit would provide users with a dedicated path to ...

Digital assistants like Cortana, Google Now, and Siri are supposed to make accessing the world's information easier than ever before, right? You need do little more than wonder aloud, “What's icing made out of?” (the answer's “deliciousness”) for a synthesized voice to immediately start giving you your answer. At least, that's the way we expect things to work, but as some Apple users are noticing, Siri appears to be acting a little less helpful than she could be … unless you're willing to pay up, that is. Ask Google Now something about popular music charts – say, the number-one ...

The launch of the first-generation iPhone didn't just mark the reinvention of smartphones, but also a new concept for voicemail. Visual Voicemail became a thing after this launch as well, even though voicemail as a service continues to decline over the way text messaging has evolved. As such, it seems that Apple is planning another innovation in this department. Sources claim that Apple is working on marrying Siri and voicemail as a hot new feature for iOS 10. Given the fact that voicemail is on decline given its cumbersome experience when compared to text messages, it seems that Apple is ...

Hound is SoundHound's new voice assistant to compete with the likes of Google Now, Siri, and Cortana. It, like the others, can launch apps, run search queries, identify songs, and more, but one thing that's caught wide attention for this service is its ability to process complex, multi-part queries in a manner similar to Wolfram Alpha. Questions like "What is the population and capital for Japan and China?" work without a hitch, and very quickly at that. But rarely will most people ask a voice assistant such complicated questions. Instead, most people use these services for quick searches ...

A few years ago I was trying to find my way around an unfamiliar city with my friend and her husband, and I pulled out my Android phone to help us navigate the tricky terrain. Looking upon my then-new HTC Evo 4G, my friend's husband asked, "those phones are basically just iPhone ripoffs, right?" "No," I replied. "Android is totally different from iOS. In some ways it's better." "Yeah," the guy shot back, "but they're all just trying to be the iPhone, right?" If it sounds like he was trolling me, he was – but he also meant what he said. And while he was kind of a dirtbag (they later ...

Apple is famous for many things, including its flops, and a major one is definitely Apple Maps. We've seen the company try to pick up the pieces of the disaster that Apple Maps was at launch, by making it available to the Mac, but it's still not a service users trust when compared to Google Maps. A new Apple patent intends to change that though, and we hope it works this time. Apple has just been granted a patent that was filed back in October 2013 that provides users with more human-like directions to places while in navigation. For example, instead of telling you to "head north," the new ...

It seems that along with the departure of Scott Forstall as Apple's VP of iOS software, so did the company's focus on Siri. We've seen Apple launch updates to iOS 7 and iOS 8, and the most we've seen from Siri is a new "Hey Siri" function that doesn't necessarily work as current competitors like the Moto X do. Still, we do know that the Apple Watch will rely heavily on Siri, and it's only fair that Apple brings some updates. In the embedded video you'll notice two recordings of Siri, the first one with the current voice, and the second recording with a newer one that's apparently slated ...

Sometimes I ask my assistant to remind me about something, and when she's sitting in the same room as me and it's time to be reminded about something important, she claps her hands twice to get my attention. If I don't look at her right away, she won't tell me what the message is, and then she'll wait a few more seconds and then close her eyes and go to sleep. If this was a real person, that scenario would sound pretty ridiculous, but that's exactly how our smartphones behave these days. I'm sorry, I don't understand what 2 hand claps means. We're in the same room though. I can hear you. ...

The debate of which voice assistant came first is still a shady topic. While many agree that Siri was the service that made the idea mainstream, we do know that Google's Voice Search has existed for a bit longer, and even though Microsoft's Cortana is the newest in the crowd, we all remember Microsoft's Voice Command from the Pocket PC days. Still, if you leave history aside and ask yourself which service is currently better, some experts claim to have a winner. A marketing consulting firm by the name of Stone Temple claims to have found Google Now's voice search to be significantly ...

Who's your virtual assistant of choice? Are you a die-hard Siri user, running the app since even before Apple bought it up? Or have you been won over by Google Now and its tight integration with your phone's launcher? Maybe you're a new Cortana fan, eager to spend more time seeing what Microsoft can bring to this race. That last one's still a little too new to be included in this study, but a recent analyst report took a look at the performance of Google Now and Siri, evaluating a number of factors, and while both exhibit improvements, Google Now looks like it's just barely starting to ...

Ever since the launch of Siri back in 2010 on the iPhone 4s, it has set the bar for what digital assistants have become ever since, mainly because you'll remember that back then everything was just about voice command. Still, one of the biggest disappointments with Siri on its launch is that it only supported one language, and its eventual support for other languages has been quite limited when compared to how well it works in English. Apple's new Job posting hints to the company wanting to expand Siri's capabilities in foreign languages. The posting reads: Come and join the team that ...

Watch today's Pocketnow Daily as we talk about the new Google Maps update, the services included and the new lane guidance system. OnePlus is next as the company's One now seems to hit a change in plans on launch dates, but actually good ones this time. HTC follows the news as we go through the rumored specs of the One M8 Prime. Siri and Apple follow as there is this new security bug that could expose your address book to anyone. We end today's show talking about how Swatch plans to fight Apple in the iWatch trademark. All this and more after the break. Stories: - Google Maps update ...

On last week's edition of the Pocketnow Weekly (093: NEVER SETTLE), we shared with you a piece of listener mail asking us about our preferences when it comes to voice assistants - not the service itself, but the voices. Right now, there's not a lot of variety out there for our choices for how our phone sounds when it speaks to us: maybe we can select between male and female, or choose from a few accents, but even that represents more options than many users have. But this piece of listener mail wasn't about what we prefer among available options: what if we could have our phone speak to us ...