Google Launches New Recorder App with Realtime Offline Transcription Support

After announcing the latest iteration of its flagship Android phone the Pixel 4 recently, Google introduces a new voice recorder app for Android with built-in offline speech recognition support. Well, thanks to AI.

The new Recorder app uses speech recognition and AI to transcribe lectures, meetings, interviews and more—and makes them easy for you to find later. (English only right now, with more languages to come.) #madebygoogle pic.twitter.com/fdKRItuS4b

— Google (@Google) October 15, 2019

The voice recorder app, as seen on the above demo, can transcribe audio recordings in real-time with utmost accuracy. And the best part: it works offline. You can transcribe whatever is being spoken during meetings, lectures or interviews even without internet connectivity.

YouTube Introduces AR Beauty Try-On, A Virtual Makeup Experience that Lets Viewers Try On Makeup Within YouTube App

Google’s newest voice recorder app is a massive upgrade from traditional audio recorder apps, which require decent internet connectivity to enable real-time transcription. And in most cases, the experience can be a bit clunky, unpleasant. That’s because your speech is being processed on a remote server before finally returning the transcribed text.

Search Parts of Recorded Audio by Sounds

The new voice recorder app comes with impressive search functionality too. Imagine you have this 2-hours long recorded lecture and wanted to re-visit that part of the lecture but all you can remember is a phrase or word? You can search by voice and the app will automatically highlight playback bar where those spoken phrases or words are mentioned. No more horizontal scrolling.

Google’s offline transcription technology is made possible by combining the power of real-time speech recognition and AI. And with the company’s unlimited resources being pumped in their Machine Learning department, we can expect a better and heaps clever AI-assisted voice processing in the future.

Google Maps Now Predicts Bus Traffic Delays and Crowdedness in 200+ Cities

So, next time you’re in a meeting or lecture, you can pretty much ditch writing notes and just intently listen to whoever is speaking. Let your Android phone do the note-taking.

Again, the app is initially being rolled out on the new Pixel 4, and the offline speech recognition is currently available in English. But with Google’s intention to reach as many users as possible, we can expect it to support other devices and other languages.

Freshly-Minted Google Maps Now Predicts Bus Traffic Delays and Crowdedness in 200+ Cities

Google introduces a few updates to its Google Maps iOS and Android apps that give commuters live traffic delays updates for buses as well as predictions how crowded your bus or train will be all in real-time.

The updates are welcome addition to Google Maps app that proves useful if you constantly commute your way around the city, helping you see the bus delays and how long it will be as well the recalculated time it takes to get from point A to B. With those live information at your fingertips, you can manage and plan ahead your trip; whether it’s a simple trip to your workplace or back to your apartment.

Using Machine Learning to Generate Bus Delays Forecasts

To produce the most accurate bus delays predictions, Google cannot solely rely on transit agencies real-time data. Google combines data syndicated from transit agencies all around the globe and anonymized data collected from commuters who consented to share their data.

Back in October last year, Google Maps began to ask its users who commute during peak hours and prompt them to rate their experience within the app. Relevant transit information such as travel time, distance, and the total number of available seats were also collected.

Long Commute? Get Power Naps and Get A Phone Call When You Arrive At Your Destination

These information collected are all valuable training data that help Google develop a model that predicts crowdedness and delays with increased accuracy, thanks to AI.

If you're curious about the technology behind all this, check this out.

So next time you’re about to leave from work, pull your Google Maps app and see if you should wait a few minutes or squeeze on a crowded ride like a packed of sardines on a hot bus or train.

Be sure to update your app to get this juicy addition from Google Maps.

YouTube Introduces AR Beauty Try-On, A Virtual Makeup Experience that Lets Viewers Try On Makeup Within YouTube App

There's no way to protest that beauty regimen tutorials and makeup reviews are increasingly becoming more popular content on YouTube. Ask any of your girlfriends who are into beauty fad and you'll immediately get a nod they get most of their makeup skills from YouTube.

Thanks to thousands of YouTube content creators who regularly feed viewers with tutorials and beauty products reviews for their millions of followers.

Now, in another Augmented Reality (AR) initiative from Google, the company seeks to give YouTubers a notch higher experience when watching makeup tutorials on its YouTube app. With the launch of AR Beauty Try-On, viewers can now virtually try on makeup within the YouTube app.

Here's How YouTube's AR Beauty Try-On Works

Once available, your iOS YouTube screen will be split into two: makeup tutorial actively playing at the top, a stream from your own front camera at the bottom. And right within that screen, a palate of colors (maybe a shade of lipstick) can be tapped and virtually applied to your own lips and you'll immediately see how it looks on your lips in real-time.

It's really one powerful feature that should help you as a consumer decide what to buy next.

How YouTube's AR Beauty Try-On Benefits Brands

Other than casual customers who turn to YouTube for beauty tips and reviews, there's another real winner here: brands. Brands including M·A·C Cosmetics can easily tap YouTube's pool of influencers and launch AR Beauty Try-On campaigns to promote their products to over two billion monthly viewers.

This Augmented Reality App Lets You Create Your Own Portal, Teleport to New Places (iOS)

Google says it already tested this new, immersive YouTube experience and revealed that 30 percent of viewers activated the AR experience in the YouTube iOS app, spending over 80 seconds on average trying on lipstick virtually.

Source: Google

Excel Gets OCR Support, Lets You Snap Tables and Convert Into Editable Spreadsheet

Microsoft just rolled out an update to their spreadsheet editing app Excel that allows you to point your phone's camera into printed tables and turn them into editable spreadsheets.

The update is made possible by artificial intelligence (AI) trained to recognize characters and detect datasets inside printed tables before finally importing them as spreadsheets. If you're familiar with how Google Translate app works that translates words in realtime when you point your camera to a foreign text, you can expect the same capability with this update but for printed tables.

The update is first available on Android, but iOS should expect the roll out in the coming days.

How Apple Watch's Fall Detection Saves One's Life and How It Can Save Yours

Excel is not the first app that gets AI treatment from Microsoft. A few weeks ago, Microsoft-owned Skype also gets AI-assisted background-blur support that smartly obscures your often messy, distracting background.

Satya Nadella's helm at Microsoft continues to deliver the much-needed disruptions and innovations. And with its billions of cash being pumped into their Machine Learning (ML) department, we can expect few more nifty advancements in AI in the next few years.