Quora, a question-and-answer website created, edited and organized by its community of users, launched its first Android app today. The site’s iPhone App allows answers to common questions and already draw 25 percent of its traffic exclusively from mobile, says The Verge.
Quora’s engineers say Android’s “high fidelity” voice recognition, Voice Assistant, is a great way to search in the new app.
Google’s “Assistant” allows users to perform actions in natural language, similar to Apple’s Siri. “Assistant” uses Google Now, a mobile personalized search application created by Google and powered by the Knowledge Graph. It is built into version 4.1 of the Android mobile operating system.
According to search engineer Mike Cohen, the “Assistant” project has three parts: “getting the world’s knowledge into a format a computer can understand, creating a personalization layer; building a mobile, voice-centered “Do engine” (‘Assistant’) that’s less about returning search results and more about accomplishing real-life goals”.
Siri is an integral part of iOS 6, and available on the iPhone 4S and the iPad (3rd generation).
Google’s Voice assistant is available on Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) on the latest Nexus phones and tablets. It’s similar to the S Voice feature used in phones like the Samsung S3.
Google Now combines two existing Google technologies: Google Voice Actions and Google Knowledge Graph.
Vinod Khosla says technology will replace 80 percent of the world’s doctors, creating a wrath of indignation from some in the medical profession. Khosla said that machines, driven by large data sets and computations power, not only would be cheaper, more accurate and objective, but better than the average doctor.
