UPDATE: Nuance Announces Dragon Assistant Beta for Intel Ultrabooks

Nuance Communications NUAN today announced the availability of Nuance's Dragon Assistant Beta, a voice assistant application for the Intel-inspired INTC Ultrabook, the first offering resulting from the two companies' strategic collaboration announcement at CES 2012. Dadi Perlmutter, Intel chief product officer, demonstrated Dragon Assistant Beta today at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco. The Dell® XPS13 Ultrabook will be among the first PCs to ship with Dragon Assistant Beta in Q4 2012. Dragon Assistant uses Nuance's core Dragon voice technology and innovative natural language understanding capabilities to provide people with an easy and intuitive way to engage and interact with their devices. Simply say “Hello Dragon” to awaken Dragon Assistant, and from there, just speak to search the web for content, information and shopping; access, discover and play music; check and reply to email; and, listen to and update social media statuses. Dragon Assistant also provides direct access to the most popular content providers for content on the web. For instance, people can say “Search YouTube for Justin Bieber.” When finished using Dragon Assistant, simply say “Go to sleep” for the application to stop listening. Intel also today announced the availability of the Intel Perceptual Computing SDK 2013 Beta, which includes the voice SDK components from Nuance, giving developers the ability to leverage the power of Dragon to create applications and experiences that drive natural, intuitive voice interactions. “Dragon Assistant is a direct result of Nuance and Intel's vision for a more human, natural interaction between people and their technology. You speak and the Ultrabook responds. Working closely with Intel, we've created a voice assistant experience optimized for the Ultrabook – incredibly fast, reliable, and with the performance you expect from a combined Nuance-Intel innovation. Dragon Assistant drives productivity, creativity and simply a PC experience that fits today's busy lifestyle,” said Peter Mahoney, Chief Marketing Officer, Nuance Communications.