Cyber :: Google Now assistant knows what you need, right now

Yesterday's Google I/O event saw the company make a big push into hardware with the announcement of a new tablet, media player and a sky-diving demonstration of its augmented reality glasses, but the search giant also leveraged its software chops and massive piles of user data to cook up a rival to Apple's Siri: Google Now.

While the iPhone's personal assistant is designed to listen to and answer your queries, Google Now supposedly knows what you want before you even ask. Coming as part of the latest Android 4.1 update, it uses everything Google knows about you to provide relevant information at all times - a vision that Google engineers first outlined in 2010.

For example, if you've got an appointment entered into Google Calendar, Now will use your transport preferences in combination with your current location and local traffic conditions to let you know when to leave so you arrive on time. Or, if you are scheduled to take a flight that has since been delayed, Google Now will tell you there is enough time for your regular lunchtime gym workout.

Of course, for Google Now to work you have to be prepared to hand over your entire life to Google's services, but many Android users have already done so. Google also says that users will be able to opt-in to the level of personalization they prefer, meaning it should be possible to avoid any embarrassing notifications based on your late-night web searches.

In one month's time, millions of tourists from across the world will descend on London for the 2012 Olympics, creating the perfect test bed for a new speech translation iPhone app.

The app, dubbed VoiceTra4U-M, is a bit of a mouthful to say, but lets people converse with foreigners in their own language. It was developed by the Universal Speech Translation Advanced Research Consortium (U-STAR), which is made up of researchers from 23 different countries, and supports full voice translation for 13 different languages, with text translation for a further 10.

Users can share a single iPhone to speak face-to-face or make phone calls to anyone else using the app. In both cases the translation takes place on remote servers, introducing a slight delay to the conversation.