Better Living Through Speech Recognition

A new feature on Android-based phones (as of version 4.1) is a "personal assistant" app called "Google Now" (see the video introduction of it.)  I've been using it, and I'll report the results as they come in.  But for now, what I want to report on is one aspect of it: a system to respond to simple spoken questions.  (Again, see video introduction in front of hysterical Google fans here.)

Of course, that's a lot like the famous Siri feature on iPhones, which was the big feature added for iPhone4.  (As opposed to iPhone5's big features, which was that it's slightly thinner and the maps don't work.)  So yes Apple fans, you did have this feature first.  But then, Apple is currently running a rather annoying commercial bragging about their panorama photo feature, which Android already had.

Of course, I've been testing the voice search ever since.  One disappointing aspect is that it can only respond in that friendly-yet-formal voice for a limited selection of data.  For instance, I verified that as in the video, it will tell you the height of the Space Needle, along with many other famous towers.  But when I asked, "What's the new name of the Sears Tower?" it just put that phrase into the normal Google search engine, and gave me a list of links related to what is apparently now called the Willis Tower.

Anyway, here are some other experiences:

Q: How old is Ichiro Suzuki?
A: Answered simply and correctly, "Ichiro Suzuki is 38 years old"

Q: How old is A-Rod?
A: I was worried when it transcribed it as, "How old is a rod?"  Yet it answered correctly again, "Alex Rodriguez is 37 years old."

Q: How did the Jays do today?
A: Got confused, spelled it out as, "How did J today," and gave me a list of web sites, strangely starting with John Elway's Wikipedia entry.  I rephrased it to, "Did the Blue Jays win today?" and this time it understood, responding, "No, the Blue Jays lost 3-0 to the Rays."

Q: Who won the Grand Prix today?
A: I was referring to the Singapore Grand Prix earlier in the day, and it gave me a write-up of the results.

Q: Who is Joe Walsh?
A: No speech, but it gave me a quick fact-sheet of his career.

Q: What is the Sub of the Day?
A: It just got confused, even when I specified the "Subway sub of the day."

Q: What did Mitt Romney say about airplanes?
A: I asked this after a bunch of confusing references to a Romney gaffe talking about air travel.  It did indeed give me a list of pages regaling the incident.

Q: Did Villa win today?
A: This was in reference to family soccer team Aston Villa.  Kept interpreting "Villa" as "Phil" or "Philo."  When I specified "Aston Villa," it gave me a table of recent Premier League results, which would have been nice, but I was enquiring about a League Cup game.

Q: Where is Dortmund?
A: Interpreted as either "Where is George mind?" or "Where is Georgia Mountains?"

Q: Did the Orioles win?
A: This was only minutes after the Orioles/Yankees playoff game had ended.  The question was transcribed as "Did the girl win?"  You can imagine the split-second of panic as I saw that this is what it had fed into the search engine.  Fortunately, only benign (but unhelpful) pages were returned.  Upon re-asking the question with superior enunciation, it interpreted it correctly.  However, the Google voice only responded by telling me that the Orioles and Yankees would be playing that night, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the game was over.

Q: Where's the nearest Salvation Army?
A: Successfully showed me three local properties.

Q: Where's the nearest cafe?
A: Gave me several valid answers, though it missed two of the closest ones.

Q: Show me pictures of Japanese Flying Squirrels
A: Just like the Pygmy Marmosets in the demo, I was successfully overloaded with cuteness.

Unseen At Any Speed

A weird thing happened on the highway today.  I had just pulled onto the highway, when I noticed there was a police car at the side of the road ahead.  Of course, it's good road manners to leave the lane by the shoulder if you see anyone parked there, for safety's sake (and it's now the law here in Ontario.)

The trouble was, as I had entered the highway, there was a truck beside me, so I couldn't move over.  Thus, I'd have to either pass the truck and pull in in front of it, or let it pass me, and pull in behind.  I was closer to the front of the truck, so I accelerated.

Only after committing to this action did it occur to me:  I've seen a police car ahead - obviously looking for speeders - and now I'm accelerating as I approach it.  Fortunately I made it past without the officer intervening. 

How?  It could be that I just wasn't going that fast to begin with, or that the police are more concerned with crazy-fast dangerous drivers than someone edging over the unofficial speed limit.  But I suspect that it's because my older, unassuming car doesn't attract attention.  As I tweeted a few weeks ago, I passed a Lamborghini on that same stretch of road; I assume that only happened because that driver knows his car is asking for a ticket and was driving accordingly.  For just a moment, I bet he was jealous of my automotive freedom.  A few more years and my car will be old enough to attract attention to itself, and the effect will be lost, but for now, I'm going to try to enjoy the automotive anonymity.

It's A Sin

I'm not a big animal rights guy.  I'm not a vegetarian; I've never been in any animal-related organisation.  But as a compassionate person who cares about animals, I figure I'm the sort of person that animal rights groups like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals would be most likely to win over.  And yet, I find myself laughing at PETA's antics right along with everyone else out there.
Their latest target is Pokemon, complaining that the game okays exploitation of animals. 

PETA seems to have a weird stream-of-consciousness way of picking targets.  This isn't even the most delayed reaction protest they've had.  In 2009, they asked the Pet Shop Boys to change their name to the Rescue Shelter Boys, a mere twenty-four years after they made it big.

Of course, I find myself wondering just how seriously PETA takes themselves.  To look at it another way, I described myself as laughing at PETA, but maybe they want us to laugh with them.  As I've mentioned, I've enjoyed reading examples of people taking Onion stories too seriously.  Could it be that I'm going find myself on some web site ridiculing people who don't get the joke behind PETA?

I don't think so.  My impression is that they are trying for publicity:  That is, they don't really think Pokemon or the Pet Shop Boys are the biggest threats to animals today, they're just easy ways to get into the headlines.  Who knows, maybe they are issuing these press releases tongue in cheek.  Trouble is, it's hard to make people laugh when you're also making serious accusations against much of society.  They've won over a lot of actors over the years; perhaps they should concentrate on recruiting some writers.

Speed Reading

photo by Jose A. Herran used by creative commons licence

At right is a picture from the Nürburgring north course.  It's an old race track in Germany that's often considered to be the world's most difficult.  You can also see that for some reason, it has become traditional for people to leave graffiti on the road surface.  Mostly it's just people leaving "___ was here" type messages - in some cases remembering people killed on the track. Some people use the track writing to brag about their favourite car brands (there's a large VW logo in one part of the track.)

from Gran Turismo 4, by chuckoutrearseats

Because of the Nürburgring's legendary reputation, it's made its appearance in racing video games.  And gaming technology being what it is nowadays, the virtual versions include all the authentic graffiti.

So I had an idea as I was driving my virtual car over this simulated track (or more likely, ricocheting off a virtual guardrail.)  One reason the track is difficult to drive is that it's so long that you can never remember what is coming up in the road ahead.  Thus, it would be very beneficial if there was useful information painted on the track.  So I'm appealing to anyone travelling to Germany: please spray paint some instructions on the Nürburgring.  Nothing complicated, just "Brake!" in front of some of the blind curves.  Gamers the world over will thank you.

You Don't Want To Get Involved In High-Tech Gang Wars

Today I saw this on a local building:

In most places, the File Transfer Protocol is a forgotten part of Internet history, but here in Kitchener-Waterloo it's vital enough to be the stuff of graffiti.  What's next, HTML tagging?  Ha! I'm hilarious (among people with very specific background knowledge.)

If You Can Find A Better Ad, Film It

If I ever find myself CEO of a company, I'm going to try to remember the following: don't appear in my company's TV commercials.  There must be something that urges them to be their own pitchmen.  It could be to save money, or it could be a by-product of the big ego a person needs to get that far in the corporate world.  But I suspect that the blame can all be laid at the feet of Lee Iacocca and Dave Thomas.

They were the only execs who made good TV ads.  But after them, everyone with a corner-office thinks they can do it.  But Iacocca was a gifted speaker; he made it look easy because he was so good at it.  Thomas, on the other hand, had a kind of anti-charisma.  You felt comfortable with him because he didn't come across as polished and artificial.

Unfortunately, for every one of these guys, there are five of the Alarm Force guy.  So remember execs, stay in the boardroom, and get your products pitched by attractive families with dumb husbands.

Logonym

Definition: A word whose structure symbolises its own meaning:

Examples:

• "committee" has unnecessary letters everywhere tacked on wherever they'll go
• "awkward" has that weird-looking "wkw" in the middle
• "bookkeeper" - all the letters are organised into groups
• "embarrassed" has extra letters sticking out