Researchers at Microsoft have created software that can translate a user’s voice into a foreign languages, a solution with the potential to revolutionize communications, MIT’s Technology Review reported on Monday. “We will be able to do quite a few scenario applications,” said Microsoft researcher Frank Soong. “For a monolingual speaker traveling in a foreign country, we’ll do speech recognition followed by translation, followed by the final text to speech output [in] a different language, but still in his own voice.” Read on for more.

Along with removing the language barrier for travelers, the software could be used to help students learn a new language. Having the ability to hear one’s own voice could potentially make it a easier to imitate a new dialect. The technology could also be used to improve navigation devices, allowing a digital English voice to read text written in different languages.

The software currently has the ability to convert between 26 different languages — including Mandarin Chinese, English, Spanish and Italian — and it takes roughly an hour of training to develop a model that is capable of reading text in a user’s voice. The model is then converted, with the help of text-to-speech software, into one that can read text in another language. Sounds from the first model are then carefully tweaked to give the new text-to-speech model the full ability to sound out phrases in a new language.

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Apple’s Siri represents the birth of a new breed of voice-controlled smartphone assistant services, and it is only a matter of time before other companies begin to expand their offerings as a result. While Microsoft and Google undoubtedly work to refine their own voice command services, a new third-party app hits the Android Market on Tuesday that could represent Siri’s first real competition. Cluzee, billed as your intelligent personal assistant, offers Android users a Siri-like service that includes capabilities even more impressive than Siri in some cases. As showcased in a video provided by Tronton, the company behind the app, asking Cluzee a simple question like “what does my schedule look like today?” will yield a spoken rundown of the user’s schedule. Beyond just listing events, however, the app also includes smart tidbits from a range of data it pulls from the web. In one example, Cluzee adds “to reach the doctor’s office on time, you should avoid Main Street because of construction” following the mention of a doctor’s appointment, using traffic data to ensure the user reaches his appointment on time. Read on for more.

Cluzee can also search deals in line with the user’s buying habits, read emails and text messages aloud, research hotels and flights, find restaurants a user might enjoy based on his or her tastes, convert voice to text to send emails or SMS, and more. ”People are drowning in information overload,” Tronton CEO Ashish Patwa said in a statement. “We don’t need all of the information available, all of the time. We just need the right information at the right time, which Cluzee intelligently provides, making us more productive. Technology created the problem, but we’re using smarter technology to solve it.”

Cluzee becomes available on Tuesday for Android phones, and Tronton has plans to launch a cloud-based version in the future that will be accessible from any phone, tablet, computer or internet-connected device. We’ve spent the past day testing the app and it has worked quite well for us so far. The scope of available commands is far more narrow that Siri’s, but there is plenty of functionality in this first public build of the app and we have high hopes for future versions.

A video follows below along with another pair of screenshots and Tronton’s full press release. Android users can click this link from their devices to download the app.

Tronton Launches Talking Mobile App “Cluzee,” Your Intelligent Personal Assistant New Type of Virtual PDA Employs Conversational Interface and Machine Learning To Help Save Time/Money and Manage Information Overload

Chicago, IL – (November 29, 2011) In the Digital Age, we are inundated with so much information, many people wish they had a personal assistant tohelp them keep up with it all. Today, Tronton LLC hopes to make that dream a reality for the average person with the launch of Cluzee, a “talking” intelligent virtual personal digital assistant, available now on Android mobile devices, and coming to iPhones soon.

Billed as “Your Intelligent Personal Assistant” Cluzee utilizes cutting edge technologies like voice recognition, voice synthesis, personal analytics, smart filters and machine learning to help users manage all aspects of their personal and digital lives. Designed to save people time and money, Cluzee’s customized interface talks and responds to voice commands, providing the user with services like day planning, a health planner, personalized restaurant and retail recommendations, a trip planner, social media monitoring, and a daily briefing of personalized digital information.

Cluzee is thefirst offering from Tronton, an emerging start-up poised to become the premier vendor of Virtual Personal Digital Assistants. Founded by seasoned technology professional Ashish Patwa, Tronton designs intelligent products that help people make better decisions in real-time, and improve personal productivity.

“People are drowning in information overload,” said Patwa, CEO of Tronton. “We don’t need all of the information available, all of the time. We just need the right information at the right time, which Cluzee intelligently provides, making us more productive. Technology created the problem, but we’re using smarter technology to solve it.”

CLUZEE INTELLIGENT PERSONAL ASSISTANT CAN HELP YOU:

BE MORE PRODUCTIVE: Many of Cluzee’s features can be accessed hands-free, via voice recognition and voice interface. So you can perform tasks while you’re driving. Cluzee reads you your e-mails, replies to text messages, and gives you a daily digital briefing of whatever you care about, from local news and events, toSocially-Filtered Facebook Feeds and Tweets, plus horoscopes, calendar reminders, health and even package tracking.

SPEAK AND BE SPOKEN TO: Cluzee utilizes Conversational Interface, meaning it talks to you and responds to your commands, delegates tasks, and allows user to create and manage text memos and reminders.

MANAGE YOUR DAILY & DIGITAL LIVES: Services include a Day Planner (PDP) with calendar syncing, a Health Planner with calorie tracker, Trip Planning, Daily Brief,Friends Locator, Local Search Recommendations, and Social Filtering.

PREVENT INFORMATION OVERLOAD: Cluzee lets users set filters for social updates. Instruct Cluzee to immediately inform you if tweets/FB updates come from a group of users, and even customize what news, weather and traffic are included in your brief.

SAVE MONEY WITH CUSTOM DEALS & TRIP PLANNING: Personalized recommendations and daily deal filtering based on your personal digital profile save you money on things you love, while weeding out offers that you’re not interested in. A trip planner helps you map out your vacation and find local attractions.

Cluzee utilizes Machine Learning technology to save time, making busy people’s live more enjoyable.

Cluzee is available today as a mobile app for Android devices, for free download at www.cluzee.com.

Future generations of Cluzee will run in the Cloud and be accessible from all of a person’s devices, including mobile phones, tablets, desktops, laptops, TVs and the Web.

For more information about Cluzee, please visit www.cluzee.com.

Google’s plan to acquire ITA Software may result in an antitrust probe by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), two sources speaking to Bloomberg said Tuesday. The FTC is currently waiting for the Justice Department to render a decision on whether or not the acquisition will stifle competition among firms competing for clicks in the travel search engine market. Both the FTC and the Justice Department are capable of executing an antitrust investigation, and some pundits believe the scale of this probe could match that of the Justice Department’s antitrust investigation of Microsoft during the 1990′s. The search engine giant “could fight the FTC, but that’s going to cost a lot of money and time,” Keith Hylton, an antitrust law professor at Boston University School of Law told Bloomberg. Google also faces an antitrust probes abroad. On March 31st Microsoft filed an antitrust complaint with the European Commission in regards to Google’s search operations and practices in the European Union, alleging that Google has made it harder for other firms to compete in the search market there. Google announced that it had plans to acquire ITA Software, a firm that helps airlines manage flight times and sell tickets at the best prices, in July of 2010. Google hopes to use the acquisition to create new flight search tools that will allow consumers to find better flight options and prices.

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We met up with LG on Tuesday to check out its inductive Wireless Charging Pad, which it hopes will compete against competitors like Powermat. During our hands-on, we weren’t able to test the device — it seems someone forgot to charge the charger — but we were able to get a feel for its size, weight and some of its features. The Wireless Charging Pad has a power indicator that alerts you just how much power is left, and LG says it takes about two hours to charge itself up fully. All you have to do once it’s juiced up is pop a special back onto your smartphone and drop it onto the charging pad. In our eyes, the Wireless Charging Pad wasn’t a whole lot different than the Powermat; it’s light in the hand and can easily be packed in a briefcase, backpack or even a Florida tourist-friendly oversized fanny pack. LG hasn’t said which of its phones the Wireless Charging Pad will be compatible with just yet, but we think it’s a little counter intuitive for LG to make it only compatible with LG phones. Don’t forget to check out our photo gallery below!

If  you’re a traveling iOS or Android user out there, the new Orbitz mobile apps may help make your life a little easier. Orbitz just let us know that they have launched a dedicated app for not just Apple’s iOS platform, but for Android as well. You can search through flights, hotels, cars all from your device and even book full trips. That’s in addition to checking your flight status, finding deals, and more. Orbitz is the first major online travel agency to launch native apps to assist their customers, regardless of platform.

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Google announced on Thursday that it is acquiring flight information software company ITA for $700 million in cash. Based in Cambridge, ITA mines flight data and presents it in a polished form suitable for online viewing. Google will add to its repertoire of services by integrating this flight data into its online search engine. Google also states that it will honor all service agreements with ITA’s current customers which include Kayak, Orbitz, and Bing. Despite this assurance of openness, Google now owns a big chunk of the online travel business, so expect the deal to get a close look from regulators.

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Ok, so not everyone on your holiday shopping list warrants spending a fair amount of cash on something like the Epson Artisan 700 we showed you earlier this month. It’s never easy to figure out what to get for that friend, distant relative or coworker via secret santa that is cool, useful and isn’t going to cost an arm and a leg. Here at BGR we feel for you and seeing as time is running out, quickly, we thought we’d give you a cool idea that definitely won’t be duped at your office’s white elephant no matter how many people participate: The OnBoard Travel Keyboard by Atek.

In this day and age, the trend with just about everything in the world of gadgets is smaller. Mobile phones are shrinking, televisions are getting thinner, digital cameras are getting tinier and so on, and the same can be said for travel keyboards. Foldable, rollable, stuffable – pretty soon there will be a keyboard that will fold up to fit in your laptop’s PCMCIA slot. This is all fine and good but there’s a major problem with this trend; as travel keyboards get smaller and more flimsy, they also get less usable. Enter the OnBoard Travel Keyboard by Atek. As is the case in many industries, sometimes the best option completely discounts trends and fashion in favor of build and usability. It might not be razor-thin or have sexy aluminum accents, but it also definitely isn’t going to flap around under your fingers while you frantically bang out that last revision in your hotel room at 3am.

Atek’s design is great. Picture a standard desktop keyboard, flatten it out and remove everything other than the keys themselves and area immediately surrounding them. Then add sliding cover and you’ve got the OnBoard. It has a 99-key layout which retains the 1-9 keypad and omits only the Print Screen, Scroll Lock, Pause/Break, right side Ctrl and Windows keys from the standard 104-key layout. In case you missed that, along with the image at the top of this post, the OnBoard has a full numerical keypad! In other words, all you Excel-hounds can ditch the annoying little USB keypad you’ve been carrying around and use a real one.

As you can see, this is not a wireless keyboard. There are definitely pros and cons when it comes to wired keyboards but for the most part, we see this as a big pro for two main reasons: First off, there are no batteries required which means you don’t have to pack extras or freak out when your keyboard runs out of juice after all the local stores have closed. Also, the keyboard is much lighter as a result. The second major reason is the lack of extra tiny pieces. Unless your wireless keyboard makes use of Bluetooth and your laptop has integrated Bluetooth, wireless means there is an extra dongle involved that we inevitably lose or snap off.

In terms of size, while it might not fit in some man-purse like carry on, it will absolutely fit in any standard computer bag. It measures 14 3/4-inches long so it might even be longer than your laptop but trust us when we tell you, this translates to an infinitely more usable experience. Nothing is cramped, key-size is not compromised and like we said before, it has a full number pad! Here are a few shots of the OnBoard in our laptop bag with a MacBook:

On to operation and feel, Atek likes to compare the OnBoard to a laptop keyboard but we won’t even bother because there really isn’t any comparison. We, like most people, hate laptop keyboards. The positioning requires an unnatural reach, the keys never have enough resistance and the hand travel from the keyboard to an external mouse is way too far. Laptop keyboards are fine if you’re on the move and have no other choice, but once stationary we always prefer an alternative. The OnBoard has the look and feel of a desktop keyboard. The keys are tall and have a good amount of travel, though the actual amount of travel required to register a key press is minimal – a very good thing. We can honestly say that this is the only travel keyboard we’ve tried that hasn’t slowed our WPM at all; try saying that about a flimsy rollable keyboard.

Our only qualm in terms of operation is that the key resistance is a bit high. We wouldn’t say that the keys are hard to press but they do require an above-average actuation force. After a bit of use however, this complaint is essentially negated by the fact that the keys require such little travel to register a press. You can fly across them with ease and even the most minimal depression will be recognized. As such, it might be good that the actuation force needed is high because it prevents miss-strokes — it just takes a day or two to get used to.

In the end, Atek’s OnBoard is without a doubt the sturdiest and most usable travel keyboard we’ve ever come across. To make that claim about a keyboard that costs – get ready for this – a whopping $29.95, was staggering even to us. You know your pals at BGR are always looking for the sexiest new gadgets out there but sometimes you just have to slow down and admit that a comparatively bulky $30 accessory might simply make more sleek and compact competitive products seem bush league. We’re not saying the OnBoard is ugly by the way, we’re just saying it’s plain and simple compared to the general direction many accessories are moving in today. But then you have to ask yourself: Do you want a keyboard that looks sleek while you sit alone in your hotel room typing away, or do you want one that works as well as possible?

In the end, Atek’s OnBoard makes a great gift for anyone who travels for business. A keyboard that rolls up and flops around might be fine for some light surfing but if your giftees have some real work to get done, you’ll want to give them the right tool for the job – especially when it’ll only cost you $30 to snag it.

Click on over to our Atek OnBoard gallery!

Atek OnBoard Travel Keyboard product page

We’re sure there are a few more handsets to come from T-Mobile this holiday season, but we just got word that the boys in pink have special promotion planned as well. Dubbed Free Companion Flight 2008, T-Mobile has a special treat in store for new and existing customers alike. Here’s how it works:

When someone activates, renews or migrates to a new 2-year service agreement between November 19th and December 24th, he or she will be eligible to receive a Free Companion Flight, ie one free round trip flight, when an additional ticket is purchased at the full fare price through a special T-Mobile website (www.FlyWithT-Mobile.com – not yet live). 112 origins and 110 destinations will be covered by the promotion and they will be spread throughout the cities detailed on the image seen above.

Of course there are some restrictions involved but nothing too crazy. Essentially everyone is eligible as long as they’re not on a business / corporate account. Postpaid, FlexPay Annual Contract, Take Control, SmartAccess and KidConnect accounts are all fair game and each account is eligible for up to five free companion flights. Sweet!

Thanks Gman!

For better or for worse, the Australian Communications and Media Authority is proposing an amendment to the Mobile Phone Jammer Prohibition that would permit cell phone use on domestic and international flights. An 18-month long trial of the pico cell technology used for in-flight cellular communications was deemed successful with no reported complaints of interference to either the plane’s avionics system or ground cellular networks. Both Qantas and V Australia have each announced plans to offer in-flight SMS and GPRS services and are anxiously awaiting these rule changes so they can expand the technology from a single test airplane to fleet-wide deployment. Bravo to Australia for pushing this technology forward and kudos to Qantas and V Australia for offering only SMS and data services. We like getting SMS and GPRS but don’t fancy listening to the bloke next to us telling his mate how he was as full as a boot while watching some aerial ping pong and spent the whole night liquid laughing. What a dill!

[via IntoMobile]

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Now is most definitely not a good time to run a US (or any) airline. People are traveling less, the economy is basically in the toilet and fuel is incredibly expensive which means that everything else is more expensive. On top of everything else we just entered a historically slow time of the year in terms of air travel as summer draws to a close and kids return to school. We’re not sure how far this tactic will go, but JetBlue is trying to ease the pain a bit by auctioning off a handful of flights on eBay. This doesn’t mark the first time an airline has turned to eBay but in the past, official eBay ticket auctions have been used to raise money for charity. JetBlue apparently isn’t quite concerned with humanitarianism at the moment as the airline has listed over 300 round-trip packages including single tickets, two-ticket packages and even a few mystery auctions that include hotel stays. All auctions were listed last night with varying durations and with opening prices of between 5¢ and 10¢. The auctions are expected to close between 85% and 90% of retail value, which means that travelers will indeed get a nice discount. To those interested, all flights depart on a Thursday or Friday and return on a Sunday or Monday. Travel resulting from the auctioned tickets must be completed by October 6th.

[Via ABC]

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Welcome to the future that should have been here years ago. Why airlines haven’t been doing this for years is beyond us but kudos to those who have finally started to get moving. Delta is by no means the first airline to play with the idea of mobiles to be used as boarding passes, but it has caught on. Starting with domestic flights at LaGuardia, Delta’s handset boarding pass trial is already launched and we can only hope that the practice spreads sooner rather than later. Delta passengers can now go to the company’s website on their mobile devices and download a digital boarding pass directly. The TSA can then scan the digital bar codes contained within the passes and no physical printout is required. The concept is forward-thinking in several respects. First of all, it makes travel easier; there is no longer a need need to print anything out and no more frantic searching through carry ons to find misplaced documentation. Secondly, it’s good for the environment of course. Digital passes mean less paper being printed and wasted. Honestly, who recycles their boarding passes? Good stuff Delta, now if we can only work on those delays…

[Via IntoMobile]

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