CEVA, Inc., licensor of wireless connectivity and smart sensing technologies, and Fluent.ai, a provider of on-device, small footprint and multilingual speech understanding solutions, announced that the companies have partnered to offer ultra-low power speech-to-intent solutions for intelligent edge devices. Fluent.ai’s suite of speech-to-intent technologies has been ported and optimized for CEVA’s low power audio and sensor hub DSPs, providing a high performance solution for OEMs and ODMs looking to integrate intelligent voice activation and control into their wearables, consumer devices and IoT products. Fluent.ai provides embedded, noise robust and multilingual speech understanding solutions capable of running offline on small footprint and low power devices. Fluent.ai technology can support any language and accent, enabling users to speak to their devices in their native language, naturally, and without sacrificing their privacy. CEVA’s audio and sensor hub DSPs, including the CEVA-X2, CEVA-BX1, CEVA-BX2 and SensPro family, enable the full suite of speech-to-intent technologies to run in always-on mode.
Category: Content creation and design (Page 35 of 60)
Technologies and strategies for authoring and editing, including word processors, structured editors, web and page layout and formatting, content conversion and migration, multichannel content, structured and unstructured data integration, and metadata creation.
Nuance Communications Inc. and Microsoft Corp. announced Nuance Dragon Ambient eXperience (DAX), an ambient clinical intelligence (ACI) solution, is now integrated into Microsoft Teams to broadly scale virtual consults aimed at increasing physician wellness and providing better patient health outcomes. As a Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare partner and part of a broader partnership between the two companies, the integration enables physicians to activate Nuance DAX from within their Microsoft Teams workflows, so they can focus on the patient while the AI securely captures the details of the virtual visit in context — creating clinical documentation that writes itself. This telehealth workflow solution built on Microsoft Teams:
- Synthesizes physician-patient conversations during virtual visits through Microsoft Teams, allowing physicians to remain focused on the patient instead of taking notes on the computer.
- Incorporates patient data securely with contextual information from the electronic health record (EHR) to auto-populate a complete and accurate clinical note for physicians to review directly within the patient’s medical record. The physician always remains in control.
https://www.nuance.com/healthcare/ambient-clinical-intelligence.html
The boards of RWS and SDL announced they “have reached agreement on the terms of a recommended all-share merger of RWS and SDL,” in a deal that sees RWS buy SDL outright. The transaction values SDL shares at a 52% premium over SDL’s most recent share price. SDL shareholders will own approximately 29.5% of the combined group, with RWS shareholders owning 70.5%. The SDL brand will disappear, and all SDL units rebranded as RWS over time. The combined company will remain listed on London’s AIM market and keep its HQ in Chalfont St Peter (UK). The deal is expected to be completed in Q4 2020, and RWS said they expect the transaction to result in double-digit earnings per share accretion. With pro forma FY2019 revenues of GBP 732m (USD 967m) and adjusted operating profit of GBP 116m, the combined organization will become the largest language service provider by revenue.
RWS emphasized the two businesses’ highly complementary nature as well as combining its services business with SDL’s proprietary technology and translation workflow software as key drivers of the deal. RWS said that after consulting with SDL management they expect at least GBP 15m in annualized cost savings from the deal. Andrew Brode, Chairman of RWS, will become Chairman of the Board of the Combined Group. Richard Thompson, CEO of RWS, will become CEO of the Combined Group. Desmond Glass, CFO of RWS, will become CFO of the Combined Group. From SDL, Azad Ootam, CTO of SDL, will become CTO of the Combined Group. Current SDL CEO Adolfo Hernandez and SDL CFO Xenia Walters will leave the company, but RWS said they “will enter into a new service or consultancy agreement with RWS.”
https://slator.com/ma-and-funding/rws-to-buy-sdl-in-transformative-deal-for-the-language-industry/
Microsoft announced the general availability of Immersive Reader and new improvements to Azure Cognitive Services. Immersive Reader is an Azure Cognitive Service within the Azure AI platform that helps readers read and comprehend text. Through today’s general availability, developers and partners can add Immersive Reader right into their products, enabling students of all abilities to translate in over 70 languages, read text aloud, focus attention through highlighting, other design elements, and more. With the general availability of Immersive Reader, we are also rolling out the following enhancements:
- Immersive Reader SDK 1.1: Updates include support to have a page read aloud automatically, pre-translating content, and more.
- New Neural Text-to-Speech (TTS) languages: Immersive Reader is adding 15 new Neural Text to Speech voices.
- New Translator languages: Translator is adding five new languages that will also be available in Immersive Reader—Odia, Kurdish (Northern), Kurdish (Central), Pashto, and Dari.
With Immersive Reader, all it takes is a single API call to help users boost literacy. Learn more at:
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/empowering-remote-learning-with-azure-cognitive-services/
Otter.ai announced the launch of Otter for Events – a new collaboration service. With Otter Live Notes’ AI technology capturing event conversations and turning them into interactive, collaborative transcripts in real-time. It is targeted at any organization hosting a virtual, live, or in-person event – no matter the audience size. Otter for Events is now included as a feature for Otter for Teams customers, at no additional cost. A premium version of Otter for Events is available for much larger enterprise-level virtual or in-person events. Features include:
- Public and private group: Organizers can create a branded one-stop-shop hub of recordings and content for their event that can be shared both during or after the event.
- Zoom Webinars: Otter for Teams subscribers will be able to launch Otter Live Notes directly from the Zoom webinar.
- Live transcription: Event hosts can transcribe multiple sessions at once, enabling attendees to access Otter Live Notes from all sessions.
- Live collaboration: Attendees can view a live interactive transcript and can raise questions during an ongoing virtual event or webinar.
- Embedded Otter.ai player: Otter.ai’s embedded player means virtual event organizers can share a live stream of a transcript as it is captured in real-time.
Absorb Software, provider of the Absorb Learning Management System (LMS) and Absorb Infuse, announced the acquisition of Koantic, a cloud-based course authoring tool. The demand for engaging, interactive eLearning content that can be created quickly continues to grow. Unlike complicated desktop solutions or overly simplified cloud-based solutions, Koantic is a combination of a web-based interface and full-featured course authoring. Absorb plans to integrate the course builder with its LMS while continuing to offer it as stand-alone product—which will soon be renamed Absorb Create.
Automattic released WordPress 5.5, “Eckstine”, in honor of jazz musician Billy Eckstine. This latest version focuses on three major areas: speed, search, and security, as well as block editor enhancements, accessibility, and developer features:
Speed. In WordPress 5.5, images wait to load until they’re just about to scroll into view. The technical term is ‘lazy loading.’ On mobile, lazy loading can also keep browsers from loading files meant for other devices. That can save your readers money on data — and help preserve battery life.
Search. Now, by default, WordPress 5.5 includes an XML sitemap that helps search engines discover your most important pages from the very minute you go live.
Security. Now you can set plugins and themes to update automatically, or not, in the WordPress admin. So you always know your site is running the latest code available. You can also turn auto-updates on or off for each plugin or theme you have installed on the same screens you’ve always used.
Block patterns. New block patterns make it simple to create complex layouts, using combinations of text and media that you can mix and match to fit your story. You will also find block patterns in a wide variety of plugins and themes, with more added all the time.
The new block directory. The new block directory is built right into the block editor, so you can install new block types to your site without ever leaving the editor.
Inline image editing. Crop, rotate, and zoom your photos right from the image block.
Accessibility. Now you can copy links in media screens and modal dialogs with a button, instead of trying to highlight a line of text. You can also move meta boxes with the keyboard, and edit images in WordPress with your assistive device, as it can read you the instructions in the image editor.
Server-side registered blocks in the REST API. The addition of block types endpoints means that JavaScript apps (like the block editor) can retrieve definitions for any blocks registered on the server.
Defining environments. WordPress now has a standardized way to define a site’s environment type (staging, production, etc). Retrieve that type with wp_get_environment_type() and execute only the appropriate code.
Dashicons. The Dashicons library has received its final update in 5.5. It adds 39 block editor icons along with 26 others.
Passing data to template files. The template loading functions (get_header(), get_template_part(), etc.) have a new $args argument. So now you can pass an entire array’s worth of data to those templates.
Arria NLG, provider of Natural Language Generation (NLG) technology, has announced the release of Arria Connect, which allows companies to embed Arria’s natural language technology into their dashboards and product offerings. Arria Connect puts the integration capabilities into the hands of developers who want to build NLG into their own Business Intelligence (BI) tool, analytics application, website, or process-automation workflow. Arria’s API-based architecture allows for a connection to other technology platforms in two ways:
- make a direct API call from any application that can communicate via HTTP; data is ingested and narrative is automatically returned; or,
- use the Arria Connect Integration Accelerator Kit to embed NLG inside software platforms for incorporating narrative. Users also have the ability to work with Arria’s prebuilt NLG solutions and configure them.
Developers with no NLG experience can leverage Arria Connect’s prebuilt libraries for integration rather than building from scratch. In addition to Arria’s prebuilt NLG solutions, Arria Connect also comes with a sample NLG implementation, sample code, and a complete documentation set.
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