tweet of the day
The app store has a “date night” category and one featured app is called “just the tip” and I was very confused.
— Tim Maly (@doingitwrong) January 27, 2012
oops
Siri on the iPhone 4?
Today, we have a very interesting bit of news, tipped to us by a source close to Apple. According to them, Apple is testing Siri on devices other than the iPhone 4S. The device specifically mentioned to us was the iPhone 4, but we can most likely assume that other devices are being tested as well. This means that we will potentially see a software update that allows Siri to run on older devices. Currently, it only runs on the iPhone 4S, but Apple has given employees access to a special software version that incorporates Siri’s features on to older devices. Hackers and developers are currently working for a port, but if Apple releases this in a software update any time soon, they may not need to.
Grain of salt, and all that.
RETROFY YOUR HI-FI SYSTEM
Just let that neologism roll around your brain like you’re trying to extract all the nuance from a swig of Manischevitz. Then check out the exciting “features.”
more on the possible iOS 5 Assistant
I posted a week or so ago about Assistant, a potential voice controlled personal management system available with the next version of the iPhone software. Joel was skeptical, Michael was amused. Here is what Norman Winarsky, the co-founder of Siri, which the software would be based on, thinks about the possibilities:
Let me first say I have no knowledge of what Apple plans to do with the Siri purchase. I read the rumors just like everyone else and it appears that Apple is getting ready to reveal what it has done with Siri over the past year and a half (we were actually expecting it at WWDC). Make no mistake: Apple’s ‘mainstreaming’ Artificial Intelligence in the form of a Virtual Personal Assistant is a groundbreaking event. I’d go so far as to say it is a World-Changing event. Right now a few people dabble in partial AI enabled apps like Google Voice Actions, Vlingo or Nuance Go. Siri was many iterations ahead of these technologies, or at least it was two years ago. This is REAL AI with REAL market use. If the rumors are true, Apple will enable millions upon millions of people to interact with machines with natural language. The PAL will get things done and this is only the tip of the iceberg. We’re talking another technology revolution. A new computing paradigm shift.
I guess we’ll see tomorrow.
In a perverse way, his work for the government only encouraged his criminal behavior and pushed his wayward ambitions into the stratosphere
Only 25 years old, with little more than a high school education, Albert had created the perfect bubble, a hermetically sealed moral universe in which he made the rules and controlled all the variables — and the only code that mattered was the loyalty of his inner circle. He even had an insurance policy, one designed to keep him a step ahead of the federal agents charged with tracking cybercrime: For the past four years, Albert had been working as an informant for the Secret Service, helping federal agents to identify and bust other rogue hackers. His double life as a snitch gave him an inside look at how the feds try to safeguard the nation’s computer data — and reinforced his own sense of superiority. “Psychologically,” his sister later told a judge, “it was feeding an obsession that in the end would become my brother’s downfall.”
I felt like the outcome of the story was less interesting than the details, but if you’re fascinated by psychology, and crime, and the internet it’s still worth a read.
iOS 5 Assistant
An overview of potential features in Assistant, a voice controlled personal management system available in the next version of the iPhone software:
The system will actually speak back and forth with the user to gain the most information in order to provide the best results. The user essentially can hold a conversation with their iPhone like it is another human being. For example, if a user is making a meeting with me, they will say “setup meeting with Mark” and the first “bubble” of the conversation thread will say that. After that, the system will speak back: “which e-mail address should Mark be notified at, work or personal?” This question will both be spoken out loud by the iPhone Assistant and shown as a new “bubble” in the conversation thread. The user will then respond with the email address they want to notify me at, and the appointment will be made.
The speculation is this feature will only work with the new iPhones, and not the iPhone 4 or 3GS, because of processor and RAM requirements.
Unlike Philip K. Dick’s novel “The Minority Report” or the film inspired by the novel, the program relies on algorithms, and not mutants to predict the likelihood of something happening
The police department in Santa Cruz has employed predictive algorithms to reduce burglaries and car break-ins.
The heart of the program is the belief that criminals often commit a second or third crime in the same location and the same time as a first successful crime. For example, if a burglar is successful breaking into a home at 2 p.m. in a certain neighborhood because no one is home, the criminal will use that experience to do it again to another house in the same neighborhood around the same time.
In the case of Santa Cruz, on California’s central coast and home to a University of California campus, that would be about four days later.
The algorithm knows this because Mohler has fed eight years of data on crimes in Santa Cruz into the algorithm.
Now you know, and I guess, so do the criminals.
tweet of the day, II
A beautiful Hillman Curtis video for a product that doesn’t seem to exist
This is both an ad for Nokia’s Voice Visualizer, which doesn’t seem to exist, and another example of Hillman Curtis’s beautiful video work.
Telex — ‘A radical new approach to thwarting Internet censorship would essentially turn the whole web into a proxy server’
Telex is a proof of concept that would harness multiple servers outside restrictive countries that would make it harder, or impossible, for governments to block access to specific websites.
“This has the potential to shift the arms race regarding censorship to be in favor of free and open communication,” said J. Alex Halderman, assistant professor of computer science and engineering at U-M and one of Telex’s developers.
“The Internet has the ability to catalyze change by empowering people through information and communication services. Repressive governments have responded by aggressively filtering it. If we can find ways to keep those channels open, we can give more people the ability to take part in free speech and access to information.”
A review of iA Writer. My new favorite text editor.
OS X Lion
Jason made the post I was going to make about the new Mac operating system, so I’ll link to his.
quote out of context
The upshot is that talking is poised to become a major way we produce written words, and the shift will produce weird new forms of composition and thinking.
(via @tcarmody)
Evernote Peek, an iPad Smart Cover app
This is kind of a cute idea. Evernote has created an app that interacts with the cover of the iPad. When you fold it back, it asks a question based on the notes you’ve taken. When you fold it back further, it provides the answer. Kind of electronic flashcards I guess.
(via @khoi)
Engadget previews iOS 5
If you are interested in a thorough overview of the iPhone/iPad/iPod software that was announced yesterday.
(via daring fireball)
‘It’s the heaviness of the Mac that allows iOS to remain light’
John Gruber on the Windows 8 demonstration that was made earlier today:
The new Windows 8 touch-based UI, revealed earlier today at the D9 Conference, looks good. It’s clearly drawn from the same inspiration as Windows Phone 7, and shows some seriously innovative UI thinking. The idea of tiles rather than icons is rich, and strikes me as even better-suited to bigger screens than phones. The snapping concept is an interesting way to make use of a bigger screen to show two apps at once. Displaying side-by-side content isn’t possible on iOS, and no one’s yet solved that problem in the post-windows (note lowercase “w”) UI landscape.
But.
I can’t stop playing with it
Otomata lets you set a few variables, press play, and listen to the beautiful (sometimes) sounds that come out. It’s minimalist composition for the musically challenged.
If you make a composition you like, you can save it as a link. Here are a few I made that I like.
Also, I found a way to record them through the system audio on my Mac.
(via kottke)
Does it exist?
I want a piece of software that cross-references what I am typing with things I have written. I’m thinking specifically of notes I took while watching the documentary footage. A visual map of similar thoughts or phrases, key words, patterns or relationships. A way to see the connections between seemingly unrelated moments of footage.
all aboard
Martha Stewart released an app for dyeing Easter Eggs, tweeted about it, and some people didn’t piss themselves with gratitude.
Middle Men
The movie is decent, but the story behind the movie is even better.
quote out of context
Microsoft soon regretted the terms of the deal; PowerPoint workers became known for a troublesome independence of spirit (and for rewarding themselves, now and then, with beautifully staged parties—caviar, string quartets, Renaissance-period fancy dress).
Let’s Enhance
Thanks @sampotts via @hodgman.
fyi
Pixelmator is hosting the Daring Fireball RSS feed this week, and is offering a transitional price of $29 for its image editing software. If you are looking for a Photoshop alternative, you could do worse.
Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps
Some thoughts on the technical implications of Apple and Murdoch’s The Daily:
What makes me sweat — I can’t think about it too much, because I’ve already spent the last couple years trying not to think about it too much — is what the whole thing looks like under-the-hood. How do you specify the different content and interactions and layouts? You can’t just take snapshots from InDesign and push them out: you need something almost like a Hypercard stack (Hyperpad?) that says what should happen when you tap here and rotate and swipe and so on. They had to create an entire platform for this.
And that’s no small achievement. I’ve spent years thinking about it, dreaming about it, fantasizing about it — which is probably only enough to have a small notion of the difficulties involved and no real concept of what it really takes to create a platform and production system like this.
I would not at all be surprised if a product appears out of this, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it makes a ton of money.
