Language Technology News for 2011

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New Google Smart Phone recognizes your Face
2011/10/19

http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/38934/?nlid=nldly&nld=2011-1(...)
The Galaxy Nexus phone includes face unlocking, improved voice recognition, and touch-sharing. In Hong Kong, Google and Samsung introduced a new smart phone and operating system that could represent a potential rival for Apple's new iPhone 4S. Samsung's Galaxy Nexus, which will go on sale next month, will be the most advanced smart phone from the Korean giant. It will also be the first phone to run Google's latest operating system, Android 4.0, also known as "Ice Cream Sandwich," following alphabetically from the earlier Gingerbread and Honeycomb.

Kinect turns any surface into a Touch Screen
2011/10/18

http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/38933/?nlid=nldly&nld=2011-1(...)
Researchers combine a Kinect sensor with a pico projector to expand the possibilities for interactive screens. A new prototype can transform a notebook into a notebook computer, a wall into an interactive display, and the palm of your hand into a smart phone display. In fact, researchers at Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University say their new shoulder-mounted device, called OmniTouch, can turn any nearby surface into an ad hoc interactive touch screen.

Top EU firms increase investment in innovation, but lag behind global competitors
2011/10/18

http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/11/1205&for(...)
The European Commission's 2011 "EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard" shows that R&D investment by top EU companies recovered strongly in 2010, with a 6.1% rise following a 2.6% decrease in 2009. However, data for the world's top 1400 companies show EU companies as a whole lagging behind major competitors from the US and some Asian economies on R&D growth. There was a general positive trend in 2010, as global R&D investment increased by 4%, a robust up-turn after the 1.9% drop observed in 2009. The global top 50 in terms of total R&D investment includes 15 EU companies, 18 US firms and 13 from Japan. Two pharmaceutical companies occupied the top spots: Roche from Switzerland (€7.2bn) followed by Pfizer from the US (€7bn). Volkswagen (€6.3bn), in sixth place, is the biggest EU investor in R&D, followed by Nokia (11th with €4.9bn), Daimler (13th with €4.8bn) and Sanofi-Aventis (14th with €4.4bn).

Sajan aquires New Global Group for increased presence in Canada and Europe
2011/10/17

http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/news.html?d=235026
Sajan, Inc., one of the 50 largest global providers of language services and translation management software in the world, announced the completion of an acquisition of the New-Global Group of companies. This strategic acquisition gives Sajan a more formal presence in Canada and expanded capabilities in Europe, two of the largest translation markets in the world. Included in the acquisition will be a number of advanced technology assets from New-Global's U.S. operations. The acquisition also gives Sajan a strategic entry point and leading technology platform in the rapidly growing, high margin phone interpreting market.

Adobe hires Globalization Architect
2011/10/15

http://www.multilingual.com/newsDetail.php?id=8075
Adobe Systems Incorporated, a provider of content authoring solutions, has hired John O'Conner as a globalization architect. O'Conner is a software engineer with over 15 years' experience promoting, teaching, designing, and implementing software engineering practices and methodologies that create global software systems.

PhD student experiments with music generation
2011/10/15

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700188463/BYU-PhD-student-creates-c(...)
When BYU PhD candidate Kristine Monteith was sitting in natural language processing class, it wasn't letter sequences going through her head but music notes. The class was talking about probability in language that helps with speech recognition of knowing what words would come up next. When she did the experiment, "It made me think, oh, you could do the same thing with music," Monteith said. The Utah State graduate in music therapy pursuing her PhD in computer at BYU decided to apply her right and left brain abilities to combine music and computer science. She invented a computer program that can compose original music that evokes emotions humans can relate with, even though it was generated from a machine. She explained the program follows random notes and plugs in which notes would fit the best.

DARPA awards Language Translation Contract to IBM
2011/10/14

http://www.afcea.org/signal/signalscape/index.php/2011/10/14/14185/
IBM is being awarded a $6,576,024 cost contract for the Broad Operational Language Technology Program. The program has a goal of creating technology capable of translating multiple foreign languages in all genres, retrieving information from the translated material, and enabling bilingual communication via speech or text. Specifically, this contractor will conduct work for activity A, “Genre-Independent Translation and Information Retrieval System,” and activity C, “Human-Human Dialogue System.” The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is the contracting activity.

One Smart Phone, Two Personalities
2011/10/13

http://www.technologyreview.com/communications/38865/?nlid=nldly&nld=2(...)
Several companies are working on technology that would separate your personal stuff from your work data.

Semantic Content Enrichment Goes Mainstream with Newest Version of Luxid
2011/10/13

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/semantic-content-enrichment-goes-main(...)
TEMIS, the leading provider of Text Analytics Solutions for the Enterprise, today announced the launch of the next generation of Luxid®, its flagship semantic content enrichment solution. Luxid® 6 is a powerful and robust semantic tagging platform which automatically extracts relevant information (entities, topics, events, sentiments), identifies relationships residing in unstructured data and facilitates links between similar and related documents.

Cadillac updates car controls with Touch, Vouce
2011/10/12

http://www.pcworld.com/article/241777/cadillac_updates_car_controls_wi(...)
Cadillac wants to let drivers have natural conversations with their cars and get physical feedback from a touchscreen in some models coming as soon as next year. At the CTIA Enterprise & Applications mobile trade show this week, General Motors' top luxury brand is showing off Cue, a new set of car control and entertainment options built around technology familiar to users of mobile phones. Elements of Cue will be available as standard features or options in Cadillac XTS, ATS and SRX models starting next year. Cadillac has used touchscreen technology for many years, and rival Ford has made many functions controllable through voice commands. But Cue is designed to take both technologies to new levels.

Acquisition Activity heats up in Spain and Elsewhere
2011/10/12

http://www.commonsenseadvisory.com/Default.aspx?Contenttype=ArticleDet(...)
In a highly fragmented industry like the language services space, mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are common, and consolidation is a longstanding trend. However, many of these transactions go unnoticed, especially when they involve companies outside of the list of the Top 50 global suppliers. Two Spanish language service providers (LSPs), Mondragón Lingua and Ofilingua, are recent examples of such activities.

Wired: Siri is iPhone 4S-only today - where will it be tomorrow?
2011/10/11

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/10/siri-is-iphone-4s-only-today-bu(...)
Apple is launching the iPhone 4S this week with the recently unveiled integration of Siri, a voice activated “assistant.” Siri accepts voice input and can perform a range of actions on your iPhone, including looking up information, adding calendar events, and even composing short texts and e-mails. Siri shows a lot of promise in realizing human computer interaction using natural language. Right now, however, Apple seems to be wisely keeping the feature firmly in the “beta” stage even as it seeks to popularize talking to your cell phone to get things done.

Apple's Siri is the fulfillment of a dream from 1987
2011/10/11

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/8808962/Apples-Siri-is-the(...)
Some people have pointed out that the iPhone, along with a lot of other phones, has had voice recognition for some time, but Siri appears to go much further than that, interpreting and acting on your natural voice commands depending on the context. It still isn’t new, though. Apple released a video in 1987, dramatising something they called ‘Knowledge Navigator’ that shows a tablet device reacting to its user just as Siri promises to. The similarities are incredible. The agent lists messages and appointments which the user replies to and rearranges by speaking in normal english. He then searches for information, extracts graphs from a large data store (just as Siri will connect to Wolfram Alpha) and contacts a colleague by saying her name aloud.

Why Siri is a big deal
2011/10/10

http://www.gottabemobile.com/2011/10/10/why-siri-is-a-big-deal/
New to the iPhone 4S will be a software personal assistant named Siri. Simply by speaking a request in natural language, Siri will perform a task to the best of its ability. This is a big deal. If you don’t believe me, just ask Bill Gates. No, that wasn’t a typo. Siri may be rolling out on an Apple product, but through the years, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has been a persistent advocate of natural user interface, including voice and speech.

Google introduces Dart for Structured Web Programming
2011/10/10

http://www.zdnet.co.uk/blogs/mixed-signals-10000051/google-makes-dart-(...)
Google has begun to give details of Dart, a new language that the company says is intended for structured web coding. The designers of the language say that their aims were to make a familiar, natural language for web programming that has high performance, is flexible yet encourages structure. Talking at the Goto conference in Denmark on Monday, project leader Lars Bak said that "If we want to focus on making the Web better over time, we have to innovate," also saying on a related blog post that "We look forward to rapidly evolving Dart into a solid platform for structured web programming." Recognisable to anyone who has experience of C-type procedural languages, Dart includes support for concurrent programming, a DOM library for working with HTML5 documents, and various Web-centred data types.