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Windows 8.1 apps are about to get a lot more chatty

Published Oct 23rd, 2013 9:45PM EDT
Windows 8.1 Voice Recognition Apps

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Steve Ballmer has long been enthusiastic about developers and now developers have another reason to be enthusiastic about Windows 8.1. ZDNet reports that Microsoft has added a new speech recognition tool to its Bing developer toolkit that developers can use to “build Windows 8, Windows 8.1 and Windows RT Metro-Style/Windows Store apps that include speech-recognition as one of their inputs.” ZDNet says that adding speech recognition is part of a broader effort by Microsoft to move Bing from being primarily a search engine toward being an app development platform. This way, even if Bing never catches up to Google as the world’s go-to search engine it will still be a vital asset for creating Windows apps.

Brad Reed
Brad Reed Staff Writer

Brad Reed has written about technology for over eight years at BGR.com and Network World. Prior to that, he wrote freelance stories for political publications such as AlterNet and the American Prospect. He has a Master's Degree in Business and Economics Journalism from Boston University.