Customer support conversations often require the caller to provide inputs such as first name and account ID so the agent can verify the information before handling customer requests. Starting today, you can configure your Amazon Lex bots to capture the spelling (e.g., “Z A C”) or the phonetic description (e.g., Z as in Zebra, A as in Apple, C as in Cat) for the first name, last name, email address, alphanumeric and UK postal code built-in slot types. Callers can use the spelling support to provide names with difficult or alternative spellings (e.g., “Chris” vs. “Kris”). They can disambiguate confusable letters such as “N” vs. “M” by using phonetic descriptions (e.g., to spell the name, Min: “M as in Mary, I as in Idea, N as in Nancy”). The spelling capability expands on the built-in slot types so you can simplify the dialog management and improve the end-user experience.

Elon Musk may solve the growing world hunger problem. David Beasley, director of the U.N.’s World Food Programme, asked Elon for $6.6 billion which is the cost of the programme. Elon replied that if the program could explain in detail how his donation would solve world hunger, he would give it. Now the World Food …

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It looks as if the French got some mud in their eye yesterday at the EC’s meeting to discuss chip subsidies. The French Commissioner Thierry Breton had been arguing for unlimited subsidies for bleeding edge  fabs owned by foreign companies. What the EC decided was a trifle more restrained. “The Commission may consider approving public …

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In 1969 two semiconductor companies were merged into one under a large holding company. There was speculation at the time over the future of the holding company’s 49% stake in Westinghouse Brake-English Electric Semiconductors. Those who speculated didn’t have long to wait: the merged company was shuttered two years later and the 49% stake flogged off. Moral: …

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SureCore, the Sheffield low-power memory IP house, has designed a power and area efficient, high performance, multi-port, embedded memory solution for Semidynamics’ new RISC-V-based, tensor processing chip. Semidynamics is developing a high bandwidth, vector processing unit optimised for tensor processing aimed at AI applications. In order for AI to realise its full performance potential, the …

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Battery start-up LionVolt, a spin-off from Imec affiliate Holst Centre, has closed a seed round of €4 million, bringing its total funding this year to more than €5 million. The round was led by the VC  Innovation Industries and joined by Brabantse Ontwikkelingsmaatschappij (Brabant Development Agency, BOM) and  Sake Bosch. LionVolt spun off last year …

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Farnell has launched an Industrial Embedded Computers online hub. The hub will provide design engineers with the latest information on industrial single board computers (SBCs). The hub  includes articles, application notes, guides, projects and training modules, videos and eBooks. The hub also provides access for Farnell’s range of online calculators, conversion charts and component selection …

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In the US state of Illionois, nine coal power stations are being converted into batteries, some with local solar generation. The sites were aquired by a Texas company called Vistra in 2018, and coal burning is being terminated for a variety of reasons including running costs and legal decision over pollution. Power station  Net coal …

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Isotropic Systems, the Reading-based specialist in satellite connectivity, has joined a UK Government and European Space Agency (ESA) consortium to test hybrid satellite communications for trains. The project will demonstrate the use of 5G in the area of transport and logistics. Specifically, it will explore how hybrid networks, based on multi-bearer 5G technology, could improve …

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NGK Insulators,  Torex Semiconductor and Ossia have started working together to spread the use of wireless power transmission/transfer (WPT) systems. The companies have developed a WPT power receiver development kit using a combination of NGK’s lithium-ion rechargeable batteries EnerCera, TOREX’s low-current-consumption power supply ICs and Ossia’s WPT technologies. Conventionally, powering IoT devices involved power cables …

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