Nuance steers toward connected cars, Samsung Gear S with new apps

LAS VEGAS---For the second year running, wearables continues to dominate the conversation at the annual Consumer Electronics Show.

Nuance is hoping to get in on that conversation by serving as the voice on both connected apps and devices for the home and enterprise spaces.

On the consumer side, Nuance has tapped into the recently released Samsung Gear S smart watch with a voice-enabled app centered around health and fitness features.

For example, this particular Nuance app could be used to vocally log stats and results regarding exercise or food and drink intake versus manually typing anything in.

Another Nuance app on the way is headed to connected cars -- another trend continuing to steer the conversation at the International CES show once again.

Nuance's Dragon Drive Mobile application is designed to serve as a bridge between smartphones and "infotainment" systems built into connected cars, giving the driver (and passengers) hands-free control over these platforms.

This is fueled by the new Dragon Drive Daily Update, a virtual assistant service for infotainment systems that are optimized to the driver with news, traffic, weather, sports scores, and other suggested (and assumed to be relevant) information.

The Dragon Daily Update is programmed to automatically learn driver's preferences and patterns overtime based on previous music, navigation, and location-based selections.

Nuance is taking this one step further with the addition of voice biometrics, which should give drivers more control in personalizing and branding the experience through the security of a spoken passphrase.

Once the magic word is uttered, Dragon Drive will queue up content, such as connected music stations, navigation routes, traffic conditions, calendar, parking, and fueling options nearby.

The voice biometrics capabilities can be integrated as part of the entire Dragon Drive experience, including the mobile app and the Daily Update service.