Stuart Dredge of The Guardian writes, “Google has launched its Google Now service for iOS devices, as an update to its existing Google Search app. Accessed by swiping upwards from the bottom of the app’s homescreen, Google Now learns about its user through their activities and their history in various Google services. It then serves up weather forecasts, traffic reports, boarding passes, sports scores and other information when they may be relevant. On iOS, it’s the sole new feature in version 3.0.0 of the Google Search app. Available for Android devices since the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean software was released in 2012, Google Now’s iOS incarnation has been subject to speculation this year.” Read more

Rip Empson of TechCrunch reports, “Ginger Software is on a mission to become the go-to spell-checking tool for Android. This week, the Israeli makers of natural language technology designed to help native and ESL speakers better express themselves, released its latest free mobile app for Android, called the Ginger Keyboard.  Simply put, the Keyboard is a straightforward, easy-to-use proofreading app that allows users to correct full texts with one click. While there are plenty of proofreading and grammar apps to be found in Google Play, most of them are educational apps, grammar exercises and dictionaries. However, Ginger’s new app is meant to your cross-app proofreading tool, as it integrates with any and all Android apps you have installed on your phone, whether it be SMS, email, Twitter or Facebook.” Read more

Ed Hayward of Boston College reports, “Say au revoir to the concierge. The proliferation of technology focused on finding the best tickets, the hottest restaurants or the next flight out of town may mean it’s time to bid adieu to the concierge and other traditional service information gatekeepers, according to new research. Face-to-face interactions with front desk clerks and concierges are not essential for personalized service, and increasingly these encounters are being substituted with Smartphone apps and other automated service systems, according to a study in the current edition of the Journal of Service Research. Business travelers who frequent the same hotels time and again may develop personal relationships with certain concierges over time, but a ‘smart digital assistant’ app can provide consistent personalized recommendations for every customer, every time, no matter where they are, the researchers report.” Read more

Following the news earlier this month that CollabRX has released a semantic clinical support tool for oncologists, CollabRX has formed a new editorial board for prostate cancer. According to the article, “CollabRx, Inc. [yesterday] announced the formation of an editorial board for prostate cancer to be led by E. David Crawford, M.D. who will serve as Chief Editor. Dr. Crawford is the distinguished Professor of Surgery, Urology, and Radiation Oncology, and head of the Section of Urologic Oncology at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. He is an active clinician, researcher, and teacher who has been recognized as one of the Best Doctors in America, one of the Best Cancer Doctors, and one of the Top 20 Urologists in the country by Men’s Health Magazine. Dr. Crawford will lead a distinguished group of physicians from leading institutions such as Yale University, University of Michigan, Cleveland Clinic, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and others.” Read more

Devindra Hardawar of Venture Beat reports, “Like one part Siri and one part morning news update, a new app called Winston could change the way you consume news online. Launching today on the iPhone for free, Winston reads aloud recent news and social media updates through a distinguished electronic English accent. The app summarizes news to highlight the juicy bits, and it also translates your Twitter and Facebook updates into easily absorbed nuggets (ignoring hashtags, abbreviations, and the usual social media mess).” Read more

Nuance has upped their game, reports Kevin Fitchard of GigaOM. He writes, “Nuance Communications has been trying to recreate its incredibly useful  — but rather one-trick — Dragon Go semantic search app as a full-fledged mobile voice assistant on par with Siri and the new Google Now. It renamed it Dragon Go as Dragon Mobile Assistant in October and expanded its voice command capabilities beyond search into the application stack of the Android phone, where it could compose texts, make calls, set appointments and fetch directions. On Thursday, Nuance updated Mobile Assistant’s feature set. You can now play music by telling Dragon you want to listen to a particular artist or track in your song library. You can also open third-party apps with a voice command. Another small but highly useful enhancement is the ability to set an alarm with a simple spoken command.” Read more

Ken Yeung of The Next Web writes, “Kickvox, a company that dedicates itself to ‘reengineering’ mobile search, has launched its iOS and Android applications in an attempt to show smartphone users what it thinks mobile search should look and act like. Alan Nowogrodski, the company’s co-founder and CEO says that it’s a broken feature: ‘the search industry is conceivably the only industry that looks virtually the same as it did a decade ago, yet the platforms that we use to search the web have changed significantly.’ To that end, what Kickvox is offering is an app that has a ‘visually stunning’ interface that was created specifically for the mobile device. Through its development, the company says that results will be displayed faster allowing for easier browsing and better navigation.” Read more

News360 recently launched a “reimagined edition of its popular free newsreading app to iPhones everywhere. First unveiled for iPads and Android tablets in July, the new edition of News360 boasts a completely redesigned interface that’s as beautiful as it is smart, revamped personalization technology that learns from your every move online and in the app, and deeper customization options that empower you to make the newsreading experience your own. These overhauls have earned high marks from users, reviewers and publishers alike and have delivered on the promise of keeping you well-informed about the most important, personally relevant news of the day.” Read more

Xen has announced that the company is launching a new interest engine as well as a suite of products “including its online site (xen.com) and three apps (Interesting, Meedar and TalkTopic), to illustrate how fluidly your interest graph can travel with you.  Xen enables you to take control of your online persona and take it wherever you go online. Interests connect everybody and everything across the open web.  Today’s announcement is the first of a multi-part strategy to turn interests into a currency that engages people, developers, publishers and brands. By creating a standard for expressing interests and a platform to take ownership of them, the Xen interest exchange becomes a standard for personalization across applications, sites and social networks.” Read more

According to a new release from the company, “Trapit, the AI-powered, personalized discovery engine, today announced the early availability of the Trapit Platform. After successfully launching Trapit for iPad in July, Trapit is productizing the underlying technology and offering it to 3rd parties to build their own highly-personalized content discovery experiences and applications. The company also announced that they have closed their first platform partnership agreement with Astro, Malaysia’s leading consumer media entertainment group.” Read more