TechBytes: New BlackBerry Next Week?
15 Minutes Of Fame, Speaking Software, Tech and Love.
July 30, 2010— -- BlackBerry is widely rumored to be gearing up for a major announcement, possibly Tuesday. Research in Motion is expected to introduce its first-ever slider phone, the Blackberry 9800. Pictures have appeared online, showing the device with a standard keyboard that would slide out from under the screen. One website has it selling for $600.
Ready for your 15 minutes of fame? YouTube is ready to help. The company announced it is increasing the time limit on uploaded videos from 10 to 15 minutes. Many users had requested the change. YouTube is also launching a 15 Minutes of Fame promotion, featuring the longer videos.
Home computers can do a lot. But one thing programmers have always had trouble with is software that can accurately take dictation. Now, Nuance, the leader in voice-recognition software, says it has it down to a tee with a program that's 99 percent accurate. It has just released Dragon Naturally Speaking 11.
USA Today's Ed Baig said he saw mistakes but is still impressed. "You can speak into a headset microphone, and microphones come with the software, you bark out what you want to say," Baig said. "You dictate what you want to say, or you bark out commands like 'open program' or, you know, something already on the screen, bolt this word to that word and guess what? Your PC obliges. It really is pretty cool."
Nuance says the software works with documents, e-mails, instant messages and virtually any Windows application.
When it comes to ending a relationship these days, texting is in, e-mail is out.
That's according to Ilana Gershon, author of a new book "The Breakup 2.0.: Disconnecting Over New Media." College students she interviewed often communicate by text, so that's how they break up. She found breaking up by e-mail was rare, and mostly done by people older than 30.
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