Tag: technology news

BlackbBerry announces its first digital assistant.

The wireless and telecommunication equipment company has unveiled its new mobile technology, Blackberry Assistant, which is its first digital assistant designed to carry out tasks through voice command and the feature could be new competition for Microsoft’s Cortana, Google Now and Apple’s Siri.

The voice-activated personal digital assistant will allow users to perform daily tasks with ease.

Blackberry’s assistant has been developed to perform simple tasks. For instance, it can complete an email search, discover the latest trends on Twitter, send texts and set reminders. In addition it has been designed to adapt to the behavior of the user. Its Bluetooth capabilities enable users to activate and use it without them having to touch it. According to BlackBerry, its assistant recognizes user’s requests with accuracy.

In a blog post, Donni Halliwell, a social media marketing lead and editor for the official Inside BlackBerry blogs, provided details about the many capabilities the assistant will include. Halliwell said that “It is voice activated when I need it to be, and helps manage simple tasks on my device from searching my email and calendar, finding out what’s trending on Twitter, to sending trivia night invitations.” He added that the more he uses it, “the more it learns and adapts” to him and that the more he speaks with it, the “more tuned-in” it becomes to his queries.

Although Halliwell described the mobile technology to be “hands-free” it is unknown whether it can be activated exclusively through voice prompt, as is the case with certain Android smartphones. However, it will work though Bluetooth. That said, just like other digital assistants, users can directly type their requests into the app, if this is their preference.

The mobile technology will be part of the BlackBerry Passport.

Despite the mobile technology appearing to be a step in the right direction for the company, the digital assistant does seem to lack certain capabilities when compared to its competition. Nonetheless, Blackberry Assistant could prove to be quite popular among mobile users. It will ship as part of the BlackBerry 10 smartphone, the square-shaped mobile device which is BlackBerry’s next big release, for which a price or ship date has not been released.

The company has announced its intentions to combine its service expertise with location based tech.

Nokia has now announced that bringing its existing services expertise with the latest in 3D geolocation technology will bring the company the capability for offering profound insight into the performance and traffic trends being experienced over mobile networks.

This move will be the outcome of a number of different acquisitions that Nokia has recently made.

Over the last few months, Nokia Corporation has absorbed a number of different companies, among which the most recent was the 3D geolocation technology company called Nice Systems Ltd. That business provides surveillance and security and is based in Israel. Nokia, based in Finland, has stated that this acquisition would help them to better the optimization and planning of mobile networks.

The purchase of the 3D geolocation technology could also help to enhance the tools and expertise of Nokia Networks.

By obtaining this location based technology, the company feels that its Nokia Networks business will be able to build on its technical expertise and tools as well as to dive much more deeply into the development of capabilities within that ecosystem.

According to the Nokia Networks head of network planning and optimization of global services, Dennis Lorenzin, “Advanced network planning and optimization services are at the forefront of Nokia Networks’ strategic services to mobile operators. The evolution of small cells and LTE necessitates more accurate 3D geolocation capabilities. Nokia Networks intends to enhance this unique solution in order to offer superior services to our customers, regardless of which network gear they use.

Dror Nemirovsky, the head of ecosystem venture at Nokia Networks, explained that the company intends to create an Israeli competence center and will further grow its future portfolio based on 3D modeling while it boosts its automation services.

Recently, the Finnish company also took in SAC wireless, which was a network deployment and infrastructure solutions provider based in the U.S. This move was made to help to enhance Nokia Networks’ market share within the network implementation space. It was meant as a complement to the company’s existing expertise held in-house.