Keeping Your Voice On The Cloud

Swiftkey cloud, a new feature for the Swiftkey keyboard replacement app, has officially entered into beta.

The line-up of new features includes dictionary backups, the ability to sync devices, and a feature that provides access to trending phrases.

The more you use Swiftkey, the more the app learns about your particular writing style. Acting as your own personal writing analyst, the app looks back at past communications in texts, emails and social media, in order to predict your words as you write them. Once Swiftkey knows enough about you, it saves your personal dictionary to the cloud, making the process of moving your personal dictionary across multiple devices as easy as downloading the app.

The trending phrases feature analyzes Twitter and other news sources to sift out the most relevant daily discussions and trending topics. Trending names, places and phrases will automatically show up in the suggestion bar as soon as you begin typing, helping those active social media users to stay on top of trends as they happen.

All of the newly announced features are currently available with the purchased version of the app.

iOS Dominates The Tablet

Since their last study on the tablet market, advertising network Chitika Insights recorded an increase in the iPad web traffic share, which has gone up by nearly two percentage points in just one month.

According to their study, North American iPad traffic makes up just shy of eighty-five percent of the web traffic used by all tablets. Amazon’s Kindle Fire, and Samsung’s Galaxy Tablets came in at a distant second and third place, respectively.

The study sampled the data use of tens of millions of Americans and Canadians through ad impressions running through Chitka’s Ad Network, so it provides insights into what devices people are using on a daily basis.

Things are looking great for Apple, but the upcoming release of the new Nexus 7 could have a dramatic effect on these numbers as more competition changes the market landscape.

Facebook Almost Adds A Dislike

It’s not exactly a dislike button, but a new addition to Facebook will soon help the social network better understand what you don’t like in your news feed, and why.

The current method of dealing with unwanted posts is to simply hide them, and Facebook responds by feeding you less content from that particular person or page. Unfortunately, this doesn’t explain why you don’t like something.

In an effort to try and answer that question, the company has begun testing new menus and options that users can expect to see integrated over the next three to four months. With the additions, users will be able to tell Facebook if something is offensive, or just uninteresting, directly on the news stream.

Speaking about the changes, Facebook’s Project Manager Ads Simo commented, “If a lot of people start reporting that something is offensive, it’s something we would probably not show to a lot more users. If you tell us that something is uninteresting we would show you less about that, but we wouldn’t use that signal with other users.”

This Is Literally Cool News

A new chip coming from Intel is so thin that the design could be one of the first consumer chips in decades that won’t require a fan to stay cool.

Intel first showed off the experimental chip at last month’s Computex Tech Show in Taiwan, with the unveiling of a fanless tablet, but little attention was given to the components that made such a feat possible. The new chip manages to beat the heat by running what they call a “scenario design point” of just 4.5 watts. It’s slow enough to be cooled off by a specially designed chassis capable of radiating the heat away from the chip’s core.

Though the chip actually has the ability to boost its speed for short periods of time, giving the silicon an electronic speed-limit gives manufacturers the flexibility to plug the processor into smaller and smaller devices.

The fanless processor is slated for a very limited release. It could end up being a powerful alternative to the company’s upcoming Silvermont Atom core.

Geeks & Youtube – A Match Made In Heaven

Calling all nerds – it’s time to get ready for YouTube’s Geek Week!

Starting on August fourth, the entire site will spotlight more than a hundred channels with highlights and new videos made exclusively for Geek Week.

Each day of the week will come with one of six unique themes, covering topics such as gaming and superheros. The GeekWeek lineup includes channels like Geek and Sundry, Machinima, and Guinness World Records. Schmidt and Co will be hiding Easter eggs in their videos all week, giving viewers the chance to collect badges when they spot them.

YouTube went so far as to partner with Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures for a GeekWeek exclusive. They’ll be broadcasting the new trailer for Thor: The Dark World, which is slated to be first shown during the event live next Wednesday.

And that’s all the news we have for today. If you want to keep up with these stories and more, be sure to join us every weekday morning on NewsDesk with Kristin Feledy.

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