Apple Siri. The Butlers are coming

Siri

Web2.0 democritised e-publishing and data creation in a friendly way for the masses and low and behold there are 182 million websites available on the net in 2011. Some of these websites have the lions share of the content (Facebook, Flickr, Google, Amazon etc) but collectively it's a grand publish of human thoughts, artefacts, wishes and desires.  What a wonder!

Creating content is one thing but leveraging insights across the content is more difficult. In truth there is still too much information for humans to effectively use and we find ourselves to be a gear in the machine rather than the driver - connecting systems together, cutting, pasting and rekeying.

I want to ask simple questions of my computers and have powerful background processing bring me the answer. Questions like "Which famous guitarists endorse products but don't use them in their live shows?" A query like this would require text analysis of the question to understand the meaning, scouring the net for famous guitarists,  checking which brands they claim to use in endorsements, checking their live 'kit' on websites, picture recognition of what guitars they are using, comparison of statements versus reality and then provide a weighted response based on the volume of data processed. Not easy and lots of key tapping.

Voice Control on the Bat Computer

It won't always be this way.

Batmans computer has been serving him for years (in the fictional world of DC Comics) controlled by his voice helping him fight crime. He simply asks the computer a question while he is driving or smashing heads of supervillans together and his Batcomputer gets back to him with the summary. Questions like  "Cross reference the known toxins that the Joker uses with chemical factories in the vicinity of Posion Ivy's locations over the past three months" are answered with ease. If a clarification is needed then it asks Batman. All achieved using natural language as the interface.

Digital buddies, assistants and advisors are here already for consumers albeit in the form mostly of recommendations engines and advertising systems. Last.fm helps reduce the millions of bands down to something I might like based on my previous listening while Amazon  advises me of books and products I might enjoy based on my previous activity.

These systems help us save time and slash the options and possibilities down to something we can handle. The volume of data falls below our eye and we can concentrate on the richer questions and answers.

For me the biggest aspect of the new iPhone 4S release was Siri - the virtual assistant. I think that as innocuous as it might appear on the surface (fixing calendars, looking up the weather, setting reminders) it is one of the first believable assistants that interact with consumers in a rich way.

Over time this service will grow to understand your accent, tone of voice and mood. It might voluntarily ask you what's wrong or question your commands if it thinks you are acting irrationally. It will potentially develop it's own personality and it will be answering more and more complex queries. Multiple Siris may even communicate and negotiate with one another to save their 'owners' from corresponding back and forth needlessly. Young children that can't type and older people may begin interacting with computers in richer ways. Siri may begin to find it's way into robots and other household devices outside of mobiles.

It's exciting and this is only the beginning. Others have tried to provide this kind of service but none have had the design and user base that Apple have in order to make it 'stick'.

I'll be watching this one carefully.

Rebuilding Iberian Motorways with Slime Mould

Wet machines and Soft Computers planning road routes organically. 

Place your 'problem' in bag and shake to get the answer!

Although done on a simple flat map/surface there is no reason why this couldn't be a 3d model with variable temperatures/variables throughout. The modelling of landscapes can be more accurate organically in order to find target map paths that are efficient from a biologic standpoint.

These types of navigational problems* were among some of the first tackled by 'hard' machines (computers like you are reading this with) when they were first developed and it's nice to see the initially parallel development of bio computing.

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* Travelling Salesman problem : What is the shortest route visiting each city exactly once and then returns to the starting city? See more classic computing problems here 

Wearable and Always On Computing

I'll be surprised if 2011 doesn't see something further happen around the wearable computing space.  We need to stop tinkering with metal boxes and facilitate direct interaction with the world a bit more.

There are two social dynamics to this kind of interfacing:

1. Broadcast the display externally on walls, tables, car bonnets or bodies (not private) OR
2. Broadcast internally on glasses or hidden earpieces (i.e. privately).

I think both approaches are more favourable to the current head down into a mobile neck stretch. Mobiles are private devices and Tablets/iPads a bit less so but they are both metal objects you have to put in front of your face and carry around.  The world is only there in periphery when using devices like these. 

Directly communicating with others and including the web as a 'third voice' is still not an elegant flow when taken out of presentation theatres and onto buses and high streets.

Pervasive and wearable computing will see an always-on environment for audio and video. The machines will listen to you 24/7 and parse what you say. The video components will continually record and pattern match the objects around you. Forget Amazon recommends when the data you can input is your whole day! We don't need to key the data about us like monkeys with typewriters. Spines everywhere will rejoice as we lift our heads to look back at the world once more.

The demos from MIT Wearable Computing Team in 2009 still look fantastic and the prototype only cost around $300 back then.



The TED talk - Pattie Maes' lab at MIT, spearheaded by Pranav Mistry



The interface ideas

The evolution of Steve Manns private eye glass display

Human Body as interface for X-Box - full body motion and voice recognition

Great new human body interface illustration via Microsoft at their recent keynote....

Photosynth and how the 'collective image memory' is harversted

We're building a collective digital memory with all those:

• votes and ratings
• comments and blogs
• tags and bookmarks

We can put this data on google maps, and provide strong links between place and time as well as invent applications that use this data to create new environments. We don't even need to use the common map metaphor to see our data with IBM's wonderful tool 'Many Eyes' which allows us to analyse data in interactive graphs and visualistions. Data can be processed by simple XML allowing for automated feeds of information and graphic representation such as the example below:




And then there is some next level image-onomy or whatever new paradigm term we need to invent that Photosynth ushers in. A technology acquired by Microsoft and originally developed by Blaise Aguera y Arcas.

It allows a feed of photos to build up a map of the earth and places not just using flyover images by aeroplanes or satellite data but by using our own photographs and even illustrations. Photosynth uses public images and it doesn't matter whether these photos are taken by a £10 disposable camera or a posh SLR - it can stitch them together and produce a never ending tapestry that allows you to move around geographic areas and locations with ease.

With Photosynth you can:

• Walk or fly through a scene to see photos from any angle.
• Seamlessly zoom in or out of a photo whether it's megapixels or gigapixels in size.
• See where pictures were taken in relation to one another.
• Find similar photos to the one you're currently viewing.
• Send a collection - or a particular view of one - to a friend.

Zooming in might have you moving through 10 photos using your own as a starting point. Your landscape shot of the fair ex-mining town of Cowdenbeath on your digital camera might be part of a family of 1000 photos of Cowdenbeath. Using this pool of images like stones in the middle of a pond you can step and zoom in deeper and deeper to find the Forth Road Bridge in detail when it was just a red spec on your own photo.

Photosynth takes data from everyone - from the collective memory of what the world looks like. A model emerges of the entire earth as our own photos get tagged with other peoples metadata and the mesh of linking becomes tighter and stronger. The network effect continually enriches the space and easily provides cross user and cross model experiences and information.

This is the real semantic web or 'Web3.0' along with the Social Graph developing through the use of people networks. These inferences are taking a life of their own and one can only wonder at what Web5.0 might be.

There's a great demo hosted by TED where Blaise runs through the application with jaw dropping effect.

Photosynth modestly state "Our software takes a large collection of photos of a place or an object, analyzes them for similarities, and displays them in a reconstructed three-dimensional space."

This experience is on the web to try right now but be warned Mac fans - this web experience is PC only for now.

Don't Click It

http://www.dontclick.it/



This is a great little project that allows you to navigate and do your web business without ever having to click on bit of the virtual screen. Although a little migraine inducing as the screens change constantly it is actually quite simple to use.

Contextual actions for such an interface (normally provided by right mouse click) will have to be programmed in from the beginning as part of the UI. A pretty big plus is the removal of tendon damage from all the inane clicking we do.

Another aspect of this type of interface is that with a simple projector and a flat surface (i.e. a desk) you could even use your finger OR a stick to move around the virtual space and options.

I dig (single g) it.

Speaking Freely

"You are currently studying user generated content and I'm not obsessed with the fact about trying to become the next ___."

spoken through SpinVox

What was actually said:

"We are currently studying User Generated Content and we're not obsessed with trying to become the next Facebook"

Speaking Freely

"The majority of computing is working collectively towards murtuality."

spoken through SpinVox

What was actually said

"The majority of computing is working collectively towards Virtual Reality"

Speaking Freely

Speak your blog through SpinVox now.

I'm reading this first blog over the spin Vox Service. This service knocks me out and I christen this blog off the coff(?) IT stuff.

@We set ourselves free and avoid the Darwinian ending of big thumbs.

spoken through SpinVox

What was actually said
"Speak your blog through SpinVox now. I'm reading this first blog over the SpinVox service. This service knocks me out and I christen this blog Off The Cuff IT Stuff". We set ourselves free and avoid the Darwinian ending of big thumbs"