Kings Guard Gaming and IOGEAR Gear Up for 2021 NBA 2K League Season
Sacramento, Calif. – Kings Guard Gaming, the official NBA 2K League affiliate of the Sacramento Kings, announced today the renewal of the partnership with IOGEAR, manufacturer of UpStream-branded pro-quality live streaming tools and Kaliber Gaming-branded eSports peripherals and accessories, including the game-changing KeyMander 2 console controller adapter. This announcement comes ahead of the squad’s season start today as part of THE TIPOFF Tournament when they take on Bucks Gaming at 3 pm.
Through this partnership, IOGEAR will provide the Kings Guard Gaming team with its latest high-performance Kaliber Gaming peripherals, including HVER Pro X optical-mechanical keyboard and upcoming SYMMETRE II mouse for maximum advantage during the 2021 season. Additionally, the company will supply the team with the latest live streaming tools from its UpStream line to help present pro-quality content and enhance connections online with their fanbase.
“IOGEAR’s innovative technology will further Kings Guard Gaming’s engagement efforts with the latest livestreaming and gaming technology to connect with our fans,” said Sacramento Kings President of Business Operations John Rinehart. “We look to continue to grow the success of last year’s partnership on and off the virtual court.”
“Much like IOGEAR, Kings Guard Gaming is quickly building a solid reputation in esports, and we look forward to being a part of the team’s 2021 season,” said IOGEAR marketing manager Mike Volpe. “Working with Kings Guard Gaming allows us to not only back a competitive team that has the tenacity needed to compete for the championship title this year, but also provides IOGEAR a platform to build brand awareness among a growing audience of gamers.”
To celebrate the second year of this partnership, Kings Guard Gaming and IOGEAR are offering fans the chance to enter the Ultimate Livestream Giveaway starting May 29 to coincide with the tip-off of regular season play. Five lucky winners will receive UpStream Live Streaming Tools including the UpStream™ Mobile Video Capture Adapter and UpStream Pro™ Dual Video Capture Adapter with UpStream Command Center. Contest rules will be shared with the sweepstakes launch and participants can enter until June 12.
This year’s team consists of veteran power forward/center Yusuf “Yusuf_Scarbz” Abdulla, veteran shooting guard/forward Waseem “Seem” Talbert, veteran guard/forward Rafel “Crush” Davis, veteran and recently acquired point guard Nidal “Mama Im Dat Man” Nasser, veteran forward/center Stanley “MaJes7ic” Lebron and rookie forward Kerry “KerryJr” Thompson. The team is led by Head Coach Del “DJ” Layton, who returns for his third season.
For more information or to keep up on the latest Kings Guard Gaming news, visit KingsGuard.gg or follow the team on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook – @KingsGuardGG.
To learn more about IOGEAR and Kaliber Gaming, visit www.iogear.com
Sensory powers new voice-enabled Farberware microwaves, the first of many home devices to feature a private, custom voice assistant
SANTA CLARA, Calif., May 6, 2021 –Sensory today announced that custom voice assistants that deliver total user privacy are officially here and are already revolutionizing how people interact with things they own.
Sensory’s technologies are helping custom voice assistants go mainstream, powering everyday appliances like the Farberware FM11VABK voice-controlled microwave oven. Immediately available in the US market, this new microwave oven utilizes Sensory’s TrulyHandsfree and TrulyNatural technologies to provide all the benefits of a custom voice assistant without the privacy compromises of cloud-based, general-purpose assistant platforms.
A recent survey by Voicebot.ai called out custom voice assistants as the biggest voice AI trend for 2021. Conceptually, custom voice assistants are voice assistants trained for specific domains, making them capable of outperforming general-purpose assistants like Google, Alexa, and Siri in quality of experience.
Amazon has already jumped on this trend with its announcement of custom voice assistants. Sensory has led the market in this same direction, but with a few substantial differences – Sensory does it 100% on device, keeping voice data completely private, with no data collection from the product and no recordings sent to the cloud. This means no added costs for cloud connections.
Due to the edge architecture of Sensory’s domain-specific assistant technology, customers can enjoy hassle-free setup – no Wi-Fi, no apps, no third-party hardware, and no cloud-connected assistant always listening in. Just plug the microwave into a power outlet and it is ready to understand numerous voice commands, such as, “Open door,” “cook popcorn,” “set timer to one minute 36 seconds,” “defrost,” “reheat for 2 minutes,” and many more commands. Ease of setup and use is just one of the many benefits of Sensory’s AI on the edge. Since Sensory’s speech recognition is all done on-device, concerns about audio recordings being sent and stored in the cloud are put to rest — privacy comes standard!
“We’re at a turning point with voice UI technology. People love the convenience of mainstream voice assistants, but privacy, accuracy, complicated setup, and connectivity issues continue to be a growing concern among users. These concerns have intensified the need for custom private voice assistants,” said Todd Mozer, CEO at Sensory. “Sensory’s customer base used to be driven by companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Samsung that licensed Sensory technology to improve their general assistant offerings. Today we’re seeing a major shift, with most of our customers being brands that want to own and manage their own private custom voice assistant platforms.”
The Farberware microwave is an example of what can be done at the edge. The large-vocabulary recognizer with a custom statistical language model and NLU can support complex actions like, “Cook four baked potatoes.” Because the Sensory NLU engine looks for “intents” within a limited domain, the chance of being misunderstood is substantially less than any off-the-shelf assistants. Sensory’s product testing division, Vocalize.ai evaluated the device for speech recognition accuracy and task completion rate, and when benchmarked against the Amazon Basics Microwave with Alexa, the Farberware microwave accurately recognized and executed 68% more spoken commands than Alexa. The complete evaluation report is available from Sensory.
“Smart appliance adoption is growing among US broadband households. Thirteen percent of US broadband households now own a smart appliance and smart microwaves are a leading category. Voice control is a highly-valued feature for smart appliance owners, with more than one-fifth of those who own or intend to purchase various smart appliances rating voice control as one of the most appealing features of the appliance,” said Patrice Samuels, senior analyst, Parks Associates.
This news expands on Sensory’s recent announcement of its VoiceHub platform, a free-to-use set of web tools that give brands the power to quickly create custom wake words and powerful, private voice assistants supporting many languages in just a few minutes.
About Sensory
Sensory Inc. creates a safer and superior UX through vision and voice technologies. Sensory technologies are widely deployed in consumer electronics applications including mobile phones, automotive, wearables, toys, IoT, and various home electronics. Sensory’s product line includes TrulyHandsfree voice control, TrulySecure biometric authentication, and TrulyNatural large vocabulary natural language embedded speech recognition. Sensory’s technologies have shipped in several billions of units from leading brands all over the world.
Attendees of CCO Showdown Sailfish Edition will have a chance to learn about the latest Clarion Marine audio products, grab swag, and win gear
Miramar, Flori., May 4, 2021 – JL Audio announces that its Clarion Marine brand has officially become the Exclusive Audio Sponsor of CCO Showdown Sailfish Edition. Put together by the creative minds at Center Consoles Only (CCO), CCO Showdown events are the only fishing tournaments solely dedicated to the use of center console boats.
“Beyond the extremely appealing social media content they create, CCO is revolutionizing the marine media landscape. No other media group delivers the same kind of modern approach, unique perspective and influential voice to boating-focused content than they do,” said Bryatt Fischer, Marketing Director, JL Audio. “We are thrilled to support CCO Showdown and look forward to seeing CCO expand these events in the future.”
As part of this sponsorship, Clarion Marine will work with CCO to create high-quality content and generate exposure among those fishing in the tournament and those following it on social media. Additionally, Clarion Marine will have personnel on the ground at the event to answer any questions about Clarion Marine products, hand out swag and host product giveaways.
“JL Audio has been a great partner of ours and we are excited to expand the relationship to include Clarion Marine in our CCO Showdown,” Alan Blanco, CEO at Center Consoles Only. “We personally chose the Clarion Marine brand for our boat’s audio option and couldn’t speak more highly of the product quality and overall value. The products are a perfect fit for Center Console enthusiasts and we look forward to working more closely with this brand as we grow our CCO Showdown tournament events.”
The CCO Sailfish Showdown Fishing Tournament will be hosted in Coconut Grove at Monty’s Raw Bar at Bayshore Landing in Miami. Event runs from May 6-8, 2021. Participants must have center console boats to participate and fish the tournament.
About Clarion Marine: With a history spanning eight decades, Clarion has long been recognized as a trendsetter in the audio space – pioneering in the marine audio category starting in 1995. From that point forward, Clarion Marine has built a reputation for providing marine-grade products that provide an uncompromising blend of performance, value and durability. Today, Clarion Marine products come standard or as optional equipment from several top boat manufacturers and can be purchased at leading audio resellers and retailers globally. For more information, visit clarionmarine.com or follow the company on Facebook or Instagram.
About JL Audio: Guided by a philosophy that great audio has real value, JL Audio develops innovative products that improve the audio experience on the go, in the home and in the studio. Committed to unique engineering and quality manufacturing, JL Audio operates three U.S. engineering facilities, and builds many of its home, car and marine loudspeaker products at the company’s Miramar, Florida, USA factory, with components sourced from the company’s global supply network. For more information, visit jlaudio.com or follow the company on Facebook or Twitter.
