‘Tis the season. If you haven’t finished buying all your holiday gifts, don’t fret, there’s still time. Of course, searching for the right gift for a friend or loved one can always be a challenge — and we’re here to help.

Below you’ll find a few gift ideas for technology enthusiasts, both young and old, ranging from a speech-enabled smart home device to the latest in intelligent assistant technology.

Ubi
Ubi, a WiFi-connected, speech-enabled smart device for the home, was launched by a Toronto, Canada-based startup long before Amazon’s own version, Echo, hit the news about a month ago. And while prospective Echo buyers need to be added to a waiting list to request purchase, Ubi can be had today for $299, plus shipping.

Ubi is a perfect gift for that technology savvy friend of yours who is always one step ahead of the latest trend. It’s an especially great fit for do-it-yourself types who like tinkering with gadgets, setting them up, and making them work. Ubi is a voice-enabled box that plugs into an outlet in your home and connects to the Internet via your home WiFi. You can talk to Ubi to ask it questions, have it set reminders or play music, send text messages for you, control your smart appliances, and more.

Ubi is an especially great choice for the software developer on your list, because the open APIs allow developers to create their own functions that can be accessed from Ubi. A friend of mine and I are working on creating little stories for Ubi to narrate, for example. The possibilities with Ubi are endless.

ToyTalk’s SpeakaLegend app
SpeakaLegend is a speech recognition iOS app that creates an immersive, interactive experience encouraging children to have conversations with characters in the app. Developed by ToyTalk, a company founded by two former Pixar executives that specializes in educational apps for children, the team has mastered voice recognition and natural language processing technology so that it can better understand the voices of children. Standard out-of-the-box speech recognition systems have a hard time figuring out what kids are saying, but ToyTalk claims to have fixed that problem.

SpeakaLegend features characters that talk back and engage in dialog with the children to keep them engaged in the story. According to a recent article, ToyTalk claims that the average engagement time for the app is around 35 minutes a week.

SpeakaLegend combines speech with touch, so that young users can both talk to the characters and touch the screen to engage with the story world. For some fun, check out the real recordings on the ToyTalk blog of children’s conversations with the app characters.

EasilyDo
Who couldn’t use a little help organizing their life and staying in touch with people who matter most? I installed the free version of the EasilyDo smart productivity app a couple of months ago and I’ve been using it ever since.

EasilyDo keeps me on top of lots of important things including: email notifications of bills, flight updates for myself or friends, and a feature that I really like – “top pictures” from my Facebook friends — saving me from having to log into Facebook, but still keeps me current on what’s going on. The app is available on both iOS and Android platforms.

There’s also a premium version of EasilyDo ($49.99/year) making a great gift for busy professionals on your shopping list, or for anyone who travels a lot and likes to keep up with what’s going on in their social network. Features of the premium version include powerful tools for managing contacts, configuring real-time alerts and integrating Salesforce.

Keep the Conversation Going
Have ideas on voice-enabled gadgets or other intelligent assistant apps to recommend as gifts? Feel free to add them in the comments section.

Here’s wishing everyone a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and joyous holiday season. Conversational technology is great, but don’t forget that the best conversations are the ones we have with people, especially friends and family!

Categories: Conversational Intelligence, Intelligent Assistants, Articles

Tags: Speech recognition, Natural language processing, intelligent assistant, EasilyDo, smart home