Apple’s latest acquisition could help you talk with Siri better

If you’ve been wanting to have a more natural, human-like conversation with Siri, that might be in the cards for you. Apple just bought VocalQ, a company that works on letting voice assistants comprehend natural dialog. The technology they developed allows the voice assistants to ask follow up questions if they misunderstand your command. This is already miles away from the current digital assistants, such as Google Now, Siri, and Cortana, which can’t even remember your last question and ask you to incessantly repeat a misheard command. Apple won’t say what they plan to use the technology for but it wouldn’t be a surprise if they leverage it for Siri. Or at least we hope they do.

Source: The Next Web

Skype adds Split View support for iOS app

Skype is taking advantage of some of the new iOS features with its latest update. iPad users, at least those who use last year’s iPad Air 2 and those getting the iPad Mini 4 and iPad Pro, can use the Split View feature with the Skype app. You can have the app run side-by-side with another app, making it easier to copy and paste content to a chat you’re having. It can also use Slide Over feature, which is rather similar to Split View but it has one app occupying larger screen real estate on the left and another takes up smaller space on the screen.

iPhone users won’t be able to take advantage of these features. But you can now reply to Skype notifications right from the lock screen. You can start a Skype chat from the Spotlight screen and even make calls from there by looking up a contact.

Source: Skype | Via: CNET | Download: iPhone - iTunes App Store (Free) + iPad – iTunes App Store (Free)

Amazon to stop selling Apple and Google streaming devices

This could raise flags with regulators as Amazon decides to stop selling Apple TV and Google Chromecast on its site by October 29^th. Their reason? From the looks of it, to get more people to use their Prime Video service. According to Amazon, “Over the last three years, Prime Video has become an important part of Prime. It’s important that the streaming media players we sell interact well with Prime Video in order to avoid customer confusion.”

But are they breaching any anti-trust laws? By stopping sale of items by their competitors, are they stifling competition? Do they have that big of a market to make this move illegal? Let’s see if this raises any flags. For now, you still have until the end of the month to shop for these items on Amazon.

Source: Slate

Google Drive wants to back up your photos in iOS

Google Drive for iOS gets an update to make it easier to back up your iPhone photos. The latest update from lets you back up and share photos and videos from the iOS Photos app. You can now use Drive as an extension for the share sheet in iOS. It’s still a manual process to upload photos to Drive but it’s much easier. The update also now lets you open, edit, and save back to Google Drive using other apps.

Source: The Next Web | Download: iTunes App Store (Free)