BlackBerry joining the Personal Assistant fray with "Intelligent Assistant" feature

Siri, Google Now and Cortana are going to be getting competition in the voice activated personal assistant fray from BlackBerry. A recent leak shows videos a test build of  10.3.0.140 version of the BlackBerry OS that features an apparent Personal Assistant app. The leaked images of the BB 10.3 OS show revised and flatter looking icons as well as functionality that may make it to the final release of this particular update.

Source: Engadget

Google Now coming to Chrome browser

Google Now is the de facto personal assistant and notification service running on Android smartphones and tablets. The latest build of the Chrome browser is going to start featuring this location-based feature. This means PCs and Macs running Chrome should soon get the option to get voice search, reminders for flights, sports events movie times as well as commute times. The service is tied into users who already enable Google Now on their mobile devices.

Twitter aims to drive engagement with view counts

Twitter is known to conduct trials of new features that may or may not be made available publicly. The latest experiment is adding view counts to tweets to let you know how many people saw a particular tweet. This will come in handy for businesses who want to see if their tweets are getting as much mileage as they assume. Advertisers were given first access to this but now it has gone live to other users. Twitter hasn’t indicated if they plan to roll this out for the entire user base.

Source: Ubergizmo

Onkyo refreshes Android app for new receivers

Onkyo updates its Android application to make sure the app works with the 2014 receivers. While it is a bit late in the year, the update is still very much welcomed. Onkyo also improved the cursor and volume controls on the app. If you don’t have it yet, you can download the app here.

Source: Android Central