Voice Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

AppleScripting Microsoft Outlook > Announce New Emails By Voice

by Ben Waldie (Apr 1st, 2013)

In my last post, I demonstrated how to write an AppleScript that verbally announces when new emails arrive in Mail. Some readers asked whether the same thing could be accomplished with Microsoft Outlook. It certainly can. Here's how... Creating and Installing the Script 1. Launch AppleScript ...

Facebook Messenger gets voice features, more coming

by Mike Schramm (Jan 3rd, 2013)

Facebook has updated its Messenger app (which allows iOS and Android users to chat with the site's messenging service) with some interesting VoIP features. Users can now save and send voice messages between Facebook accounts, meaning that if you don't want to bother typing a long message out, ...

YouMail updates, now allows 'numberless messaging'

by Mike Schramm (Oct 2nd, 2012)

We covered YouMail back in February of last year -- it's a voicemail replacement app for iOS, which allows you to access and send voicemails completely outside of the standard voicemail interface. If you use voicemail a lot, YouMail features a lot of extra options and ways to handle all of ...

Review: Dragon Dictate 3 for Mac delivers reliable dictation

by Mel Martin (Oct 1st, 2012)

I was anxious to test the updated Dragon Dictate, now at version 3, as I had been a steady user of the Dragon products over the years and watched them improve. The new version offers performance boosts for legacy users, along with some attractive new features that might entice customers. Dragon ...

Apple files patent application for 'intelligent automated assistant'

by Mike Schramm (Sep 28th, 2012)

Engadget caught wind of the fact that Apple has filed a patent for an "intelligent automated assistant," which sounds like the nice lady (or man) in your iPhone (or, as of iOS 6, iPad 3) called Siri. The application talks at length about a digital assistant controlled using speech (it's Siri), ...

Guess the secret word by video: Clucks for iPhone

by Michael Rose (Sep 27th, 2012)

Fans of the party game Taboo know how tricky (and hilarious) it can be. Players are presented with a "target word" and five no-go descriptor words; then they have to get their partner or team to figure out the target without using any of the five forbidden words. Similar word-guess games can be ...

Nuance's 'Nina' vocal assistant SDK may voiceprint users for authentication

by Mike Schramm (Aug 6th, 2012)

Nuance has introduced a brand-new voice interface for smartphones that it's calling Nina -- you can see it in action in a video just posted online. Nina is a mobile OS interface that's open to third-party developers, so it's essentially a Siri that any app developer (willing to read through the ...

Mountain Lion 101: Updated high-quality voice synthesis

by Michael Rose (Jul 28th, 2012)

Most of the speech hubbub around Mountain Lion has centered on the OS's marquee Dictation feature, which happily accepts your spoken words as a substitute for typing them in. Dictation works in almost any text entry field, and it's surprisingly effective; Steve even dictated his entire post about ...

Nuance's Dragon ID voice login could leap from Android to iOS

by Michael Rose (Jun 5th, 2012)

As jailbreak aficionados are quick to point out, the stock version of iOS isn't the most customizable mobile platform out there. Certain hooks are simply unavailable to App Store applications, while users of Brand X phones can take advantage of third-party tools to enable face unlock (or, if ...

Rumor: Google working on Siri competitor codenamed "Majel"

by Mike Schramm (Dec 14th, 2011)

Android and Me has reportedly come across some secret details regarding "Majel," which is Google's voice control project that sounds very similar to the popular Siri. Before you start crying foul that Google is jumping on the voice control bandwagon, don't forget that Google actually included ...

Dragon adds Recorder app for time-shifted desktop dictation

by Michael Rose (Oct 19th, 2011)

It's all about speech on the iPhone 4S, from the systemwide dictation features to the inscrutable but very helpful Siri assistant. The fine folks at Nuance (suppliers of some of the underlying IP that powers the 4S voice savvy) have made a big move into the mobile space; the company already has a ...

What is your favorite Siri command?

by Erica Sadun (Oct 19th, 2011)

Siri, Apple's beta voice recognition assistant for iPhone 4S, has gotten a lot of press recently about its snark and humor, but that's not why a lot of us are growing to love this clever bot. For many of us at TUAW, Siri provides a really simple way to accomplish tasks on our iPhones. Here's ...

Apple (re)introduces Siri as iPhone voice control assistant for iPhone 4S

by Mike Schramm (Oct 4th, 2011)

Apple picked up mobile assistant app Siri quite a while ago, but only at today's event did we finally see why. The company is relaunching the app as official, though it will keep the name Siri. To access it, all you'll have to do is hold down the home button, and then a little purple mic will ...

OS X Lion introduces new, multilingual, high-quality text-to-speech voices

by Chris Rawson (Jul 24th, 2011)

First announced in March, then found in developer previews, one of the little-heralded new features of OS X Lion is its inclusion of several high-quality text-to-speech voices in 22 different languages. The last major addition to Apple's built-in OS X voices was Alex, a higher-quality voice ...

iOS 5's final release may include "Assistant" speech-to-text feature

by Chris Rawson (Jul 23rd, 2011)

Apple has included limited voice control functionality in the iPhone since the debut of the iPhone 3GS, but the company's plans for voice control in iOS 5 are reportedly far broader in application according to 9to5 Mac. While no such feature was announced at WWDC and it has yet to show up in the ...