I’ve written here in the past on both the impact of cognitive computing, and how you can integrate IBM Watson services into your mobile apps to add cognitive language processing capabilities and more. I’m happy to share that IBM has just recently released a new beta SDK that makes integrating more Watson services into your iOS applications easier than ever.
If you aren’t familiar with cognitive computing, or the transformative impact that it is already having on entire industries, then I strongly suggest checking out this video and related article on IBM DeveloperWorks.
IBM Watson services, which are based on machine learning algorithms, give you the ability to handle unstructured data, like text analysis or translation, speech processing, and more. This makes consumption, mining, or responding to unstructured data or “dark data” faster, more efficient, and more powerful than ever.
The new Watson iOS SDK provides developers with an API to simplify integration of the Watson Developer Cloud services into their mobile apps, including the Dialog, Language Translation, Natural Language Classifier, Personality Insights, Speech To Text, Text to Speech, Alchemy Language, or Alchemy Vision services – all of which are available today, and can now be integrated with just a few lines of code.
The Watson iOS SDK makes integration with Watson services significantly *really* easy. For example, if you want to take advantage of the Language Translation service, you first have to setup a service instance. Once the translation service is setup, then you’ll be able to leverage translation capabilities within your mobile app:
[js]//instantiate the LanguageTranslation service
let service = LanguageTranslation(username: "yourname", password: "yourpass")
//invoke translation methods
service.translate(["Hello","Welcome"],source:"en",target:"es",callback:{(text:[String], error) in
//do something with the translated text strings
})[/js]
I’ve actually put a sample application together that demonstrates the language translation service integration, which you can access at github.com/triceam/Watson-iOS-SDK-Demo.
Be sure to check out the sample’s readme for additional detail and setup instructions. As with all of the Watson services, You must have a service instance properly configured, with authentication credentials in order to be able to consume it within your app.
The new Watson iOS SDK is written in Swift, is open source, and the team encourages you to provide feedback, submit issues, or make contributions. You can learn more about the Watson iOS SDK, get the source code, and access the open source project here.