Volvo Turns iPad Into X-Ray Scanner

Volvo launched an x-ray app at the Geneva Auto Show that allows users to turn their iPhones and iPads into handheld x-ray scanners.

Digital agency La Comunidad Miami created the app. Users can walk around a Volvo and see a full 360-degree x-ray view beneath its skin, with callouts to the patented, world’s first Volvo innovations inside. The augmented reality technology behind it fuels the app, enabling devices to read markers that are placed around the car.

A huge success at the Geneva Auto Show, the app will be used in other Auto Shows around the world, as well as Volvo dealers. Take a look at the video below showing how this innovative technology works.

Siri Rival Google Voice Search Coming to the iPad

Watch out Siri, Google is bringing its Voice Search app to the iPhone and iPad.

As with the Android version, the app taps into Google’s Knowledge Graph function to consider the user’s location and the context of what is being searched.

This means that the app can suggest films at nearby cinemas when users ask “What movies are playing this weekend?” or understand that a search for ‘Rio’ could mean a city, movie or casino.

Comparisons with Apple’s Siri are bound to be made — not least because both apps can respond to direct questions — but in reality Google Voice Search is someway off its Apple rival. After all, Siri is able to search and carry out other functions across the Internet, apps, calendar entries and messages.

The free Google Voice Search app is currently available for Android on the Google Play store but will come to Apple’s App Store in the coming weeks.

Meet Nina: Siri’s Cousin for Apps

Siri may have her critics, but Apple’s talkative virtual assistant is definitely useful for some functions, like checking the weather and texting. Nuance, which works with Apple on voice control, now plans to take Siri-like abilities to more apps.

The product is called Nina, and it’ll let businesses build voice capabilities right into their apps — iOS or Android — via a software development kit (SDK). Nuance says it’s the first voice assistant with an SDK (Siri still doesn’t have one), and Nina obviously has access to all of Nuance’s data on the industries that use its tech: banks, airlines, hotels, retailers and more.

Nina is aimed at the enterprise, essentially taking the automated call center functions you might encounter when calling an 800 number, and putting it into an app.

“Nina takes natural-language understanding, and it provides a way for a developer to add that into an app,” says Robert Weideman, executive vice president of Nuance’s enterprise division.

In a demo at Mashable‘s offices, Nuance reps showed us a mock banking app equipped with Nina. Responding to commands like “Pay my bill,” or even “Pay the full balance on my Visa bill on August first,” Nina performed tasks that would probably take complex navigation in one step.

Nina is dependent on Nuance’s Voice Assistant Cloud, so she won’t work without a network connection. And as we discovered in the demo, her speed and ability to parse longer phrases depend on the quality of that connection. Using a Verizon 3G modem, Nina had trouble figuring out the longer bill-paying command above, but on Wi-Fi she executed it almost instantly.

Nina also happens to sound almost exactly like Siri, though Nuance says businesses will be able to choose from 40 different voices, and even be able to customize it with their own voice “persona,” if they have one.

One of the major differences between Nina and Siri is voice biometrics, which means Nina can actually tell that it’s you talking, and not someone who just picked up your phone. This can act as both a security and convenience feature — after all, passwords become redundant if the app can tell it’s the right person speaking just by voice.

“For the first time on a mobile device, our virtual assistant doesn’t just understand what you said and what you want, we can actually understand who said it,” says Weideman.

Nuance is releasing the SDK for Nina today, and the company says the first crop of apps incorporating the service should arrive in the fall.

What apps would you like to see Nina built into? Share your ideas in the comments. (Mashable.com)

Justin Bieber, New York Times Invest in Revamped Recommendations App Stamped

Stamped is rolling out on Thursday a dynamic new version of its recommendations app for iPhone and iPod touch devices. The company has also announced a web companion and a new round of financing from some noteworthy names, including singer Justin Bieber, comedian Ellen DeGeneres and The New York Times Company.

Stamped, which is staffed primarily by former Google employees, first launched on the iPhone in November. The app allows you keep track of and share the things you like with your friends, such as restaurants, books, films and other apps. You can also tap into your friends’ recommendations and those of well-known tastemakers, from chef Mario Batali (an advisor to the startup) to Rolling Stones film critic Peter Travers. (For more on how the app works, read our initial review here.)

The startup released an update to the app in March that enabled users to view the recommendations of not only their friends and tastemakers, but also friends of friends and the entire Stamped network. It was designed to provide a better on-boarding experience for first-time users whose friends are not — and might never become — active users of the app.

Shortly after releasing that update, Stamped’s team decided to scrap the entire app and “build something bigger,” Robby Stein, one of Stamped’s three co-founders, told Mashable in an interview at Stamped’s New York office earlier this week. “There’s not one piece of [old] code in the new version,” he said.

The app’s function and aesthetic is essentially the same, but it’s much more dynamic. Previously, recommendations from all of your friends were organized by recency; now they’re categorized and contextualized under “The Guide,” a new vertical that lets you quickly surface suggestions by activity: eat/drink, watch, listen, read and download.

Each recommendation comes with a useful third-party integration: When you explore your friends’ music recommendations, you can play the entire album by logging in with your Spotify or Rdio account. Come across a good restaurant recommendation? Check out the menu, view photos from Instagram (Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom is an advisor to the startup) and book it on OpenTable. You can also add movie and TV shows to your Netflix queue, buy movie tickets through Fandango and purchase books on Amazon.

You can also see how your friends are interacting with your stamps — whether they’re listening to that album you recommended, or checked out the menu for the bakery you stamped last week. That may not sound like much, but it gives the app a lively, social flavor it lacked previously. It’s also easy to spot when a number of your friends want to do the same thing, so that you can suggest you all check it out together.

Stamped has also released a read-only web app that makes it easy for users to share recommendations with friends who don’t use Stamped. Eventually, Stein says, they’d like Stamped users to be able to do everything on the web they can do with the mobile app.

If that’s not enough news for you, the startup is also announcing that it has raised a round of funding from a roster of notable names: Bain Capital Ventures, Google Ventures, Metamorphic Ventures, singer Justin Bieber, comedian Ellen DeGeneres, American Idol host Ryan Seacrest, The New York Times Company and Columbia Records, among others.

What’s next for this red-hot startup? The team is waiting on feedback from its users to determine the next steps, but did indicate an interest in deepening integration with third-party services like Spotify and Netflix in the future. There’s “no timeline” for an Android app, says Stein, but he imagines it will appear “sometime next year.” The ultimate goal? To become “the central place for reviews,” a service Stein believes could attract 100 million users. How’s that for ambition? (Mashable.com)

Viber Gets Group Messaging and Two Other Stories You Need to Know

Welcome to this morning’s edition of “First To Know,” a series in which we keep you in the know on what’s happening in the digital world. Today, we’re looking at three particularly interesting stories.

Viber Gets Group Messaging, Hits 90 Million Users

Mobile messaging application Viber has released version 2.2, introducing group messaging as well as improved call quality and several user interface enhancements.

The company also said it has reached 90 million users, with users making over 1.5 billion minutes of calls each month. This is a jump of 20 million users in just over two months.

Apple Wins One, Loses One in Patent Battle With Samsung

Apple has won a preliminary ban of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 across the European Union. Samsung said it is “disappointed” with the court’s ruling, though the company “welcomes” another court decision, which states that the company’s Galaxy Tab 10.1N does not infringe Apple’s intellectual property.

ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity Comes to UK on August 31

ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity will become available in the UK through Amazon on August 31 for £599, the company has announced.

The device features a 1920 x 1200 Super IPS+ display, Android 4.0 and a detachable Mobile Dock accessory which turns it from a tablet into a laptop.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, mattjeacock

Mormons Use Facebook, Apps to Increase Political Outreach

Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints have begun leveraging their evangelizing networks through smartphone apps to help draw support for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign. By employing specialized apps like LDS Tools to gather phone numbers and addresses of Mormon church members, political supporters can cross-check the contact info with voter registration data to contact other Romney backers.

However, Mormon church rules forbid the use of LDS resources for political purposes. Dave Isbell, a Nevada Mormon, tells CNN, the apps are being used despite official church policy.

“The church makes it really easy for you to get a hold of anyone in your ward,” Isbell says. “If you are a Romney supporter in the church, you have an opportunity to talk to everyone in your ward that already has a relationship of trust with you.”

LDS Tools, available for free in the App Store, offers full directories of church members including that of stake and district presidencies. The app even offers event calendar listings and a “birthday list.”

Isbell adds, “I’m sure the campaigns and the church are saying ‘you can’t do that,’ but people will fall on their sword for Mitt Romney and some people will justify the means.”

The Mormon church has also expanded traditional pavement-pounding evangelizing with a virtual experience, now reaching out to people more through social networks, like Facebook and Twitter, than in person.

Traditionally, Mormon church members are expected to spend one to two years of their lives going door-to-door spreading the Gospel. But Elder Erich Kopischke, the head of the Church’s European operation, told The Times that the Internet is proving more effective in getting converts.

“One post on Facebook could reach 900,000 people in an instant,” Kopischke says, arguing it would take many months, if not years, to knock on that many doors.

About half a million people have liked the church’s official Facebook page. The account displays photos and videos of Mormon families and practicing members of the community, as well as polls like, “Why is Jesus Christ Important to You?” and scripture passages as status messages. The official Mormon Twitter account has around 13,000 followers.

The somewhat young religion (founded less than 200 years ago) has seen a dramatic increase in recent years. The census reported 6.1 million Mormons in the U.S. in 2010 — a 45% growth since 2009.

Kopischke adds the practice of “door-knocking” has often been regarded as “aggressive proselytizing” and the web gives believers a more unassuming space to share their religious views.

“If I want to share with you what is really on my heart or that I have observed something, [social networking] is easier than to make the trip,” he says.

This isn’t the first time the Mormon Church has used digital means to connect with others. In 2011, the church launched a multimillion-dollar TV, print and Internet advertising campaign using the tagline, “I’m a Mormon.”

The ads featured people of different races, cultures and lifestyles discussing their personal stories and declaring their faith. The purpose was to help negate prevalent stereotypes of Mormons in America. The ads also encouraged people to go to the official website and share their own stories about being a practicing Mormon.

Since the launch of the campaign and the subsequent website, more than 1 million people have had online conversations with Mormons, the New York Times reports.

Do you think Facebook and Twitter are good forums for discussing religion? Tell us in the comments.

Image courtesy of Flickr, peasap. Source: Mashable