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Google Assistant continues to mean well with socially relevant, utterly cringeworthy songs
I'll take it if you promise never to never sing again, Google
The Google Assistant team seems to enjoy coming up with little ditties that its AI voice helper can sing to you, whether it's about washing your hands, Halloween, New Year, or wearing a mask. This latest number is all about encouraging us to take the vaccine — an important topic, but it's not Google's best musical work, I must say.
Samsung's got a fresh new ditty just in time for its next big launch
The new corporate brand sound is called The Voyage
Samsung has a new brand sound, introduced at CES 2021, and it's called The Voyage. Brand sounds probably aren't something you've ever thought about, but these sounds are intended to keep sound effects consistent among different products. I haven't owned a Samsung phone in years, but I can still recall the previous brand sound from the default ringtone. Samsung's hoping you'll remember The Voyage just as well.
Google Assistant has come a long way from its early days of answering simple questions about the weather. Unfortunately, it's got some way to go before it can be described as a competent singer, and I don't want you to take my word for it. Go ask it to sing you a New Year song and you'll see what I mean.
Google Assistant is full of features you might not know about, including a few songs performed by the digitized voice. Google recently added songs about washing your hands and wearing masks, and now the company is adding a Halloween song to the mix.
Google Assistant sings a song to remind you of the benefits of wearing a mask
Your favorite pop girl is delaying her new single because of this
Google has always been interested in making Assistant more than just a task-completing robot, even recruiting writers from companies like Pixar and the Onion to work on it. Earlier this year, the Assistant learned a new song to help people wash their hands for the recommended 40 seconds. It looks like somebody's been at it again, because you can now listen to your digital Assistant sing about the benefits of wearing a mask.
Despite how much we know about Google Home, every day brings a little nugget of information that we may have missed before. Take for example playing a "radio" of songs similar to an artist or title. When Google Home launched, I could have sworn there was a support page that explained how to do that, but for the past few months I have looked and looked and didn't find anything. I also tried several commands that I thought would work, to no avail. I gave up, blaming it on the fact that I have a Spotify premium subscription and thinking the radio feature might be available to free users or to Google Play Music subscribers. However, today one of Google's support pages added a mention of just what I wanted, and it works.
We've all played the "Wait, who is that guy again?" or "What song is that?" while watching a movie. Now, with the latest update to the Play Movies app, if you want to get the answer to that question, all you have to do is press pause. Info cards will then pop up with face recognition of actors on screen, what other movies they're in, and what music you're hearing.
[Download] "What's This Song?" Sound Search Widget From Jelly Bean (No Root Needed)
One of the new features that ships with Jelly Bean is Google's Sound Search widget that helps identify songs after listening to short samples. If you've
One of the new features that ships with Jelly Bean is Google's Sound Search widget that helps identify songs after listening to short samples. If you've ever used SoundHound or Shazam, you know exactly what this does. The difference is this widget is pre-installed on Jelly Bean, comes directly from Google, and hooks right into Google Play.