Nuance offers mobile users non-typing choices
Dragon Dictation software maker Nuance launched a mobile application in Europe on Monday that lets users speak, trace or handwrite instructions to their phone instead of typing.
Nuance, the market leader in speech-to-text software, can turn spoken instructions into emails, SMS text messages, Facebook and Twitter updates, web searches, instant messages or anything traditionally done by typing on a keypad or keyboard.
Its FlexT9 mobile application, launched in the United States last month, adds the possibility of tracing continuously from one letter to the next on a touchscreen keyboard without lifting one's finger between letters. Read more...
Apple developing smaller, cheaper iPhones
Apple is developing a new lines of smaller and cheaper iPhones and overhauling its software to facilitate users' access to entertainment, photos and video, The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday.
The new device -- code-named "N97" -- will be about half the size of the iPhone 4 and cost about half as much as Apple's main line of iPhones, the Journal said, citing a person who saw a prototype of the new gadget several months ago. Read more...
Linux group hopes to gain from Nokia-Microsoft pact
BARCELONA (Reuters) – Wireless Linux group LiMo hopes to benefit from a tie-up between Microsoft and Nokia as this should push smaller phone makers to seek alternative software platforms, its head said on Monday.
Computer operating system Linux has started to win traction in mobile with Google Inc's Android rising to the No. 1 spot in global smartphone rankings last quarter, helped by a wide array of models from many vendors.
"With Microsoft and Nokia now in lockstep and the Android arena rapidly becoming commoditized, other handset vendors must look elsewhere to avoid the irreversible margin collapse that befell PC manufacturers," Morgan Gillis, head of LiMo, told Reuters. Read more...