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Siri Acquisition Brings Apple Much Closer to the 'Knowledge Navigator' Concept

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In the video, the guy asks for an article from 5 years ago. When the article is found, it was published in 2006. That means the video was supposed to take place in 2011...

I think Apple it well on its way with the iPad & front facing cameras, the iPhone & now Siri. We will have one of these soon.
 
MrCheeto said:
funny-pictures-bird-window-fail.jpg


This fails to such an epic degree. It makes me puke when such morons with tunnel vision can't see faults in the practicality of their ideas, yet I can see them from MILES away.

Wow, this is a spectacular interface! Oops, I mean if you don't mind never having privacy, as everything you do via voice commands can be heard by others.

Oh well, if that's the only problem, it's fine by me! Uh...except that you also run into problems when trying to use it in a noisy environment. "Can everybody in the airport terminal PLEASE, SHUT THE F*** UP?! I'm trying to talk to my computer, dammit! Gaw!"

It takes that long to find out what your emails are about? "You have 132 messages. Pfizer wants to improve your performance." "No, computer just read the messages from..." "AsianLoLi's R Us wants you to renew your subscription." "I'm really just interested in...." "Angi Niwatzumanapon would like to offer you a way to make money from the comfort of your home. Nahten Mjorju is requesting help in securing his inheritance from his father, the prince of Awzbakia." " -.-' "
It's far FAR more convenient to VISUALLY skim your emails in Mail.

Stupid.

Besides, how many times have you had somebody relaying information to you in this way? You're on the phone with your aunt, trying to solve her computer disaster. "There's a little marble in the bottom of the screen." "A marble? Click it! See what it says." "Ok, I click it and these words come up." "Come up? Like in a window or in a list? What?!" "Yes." "YES WHAT?!" "Yes...I don't know." "Pam! Put down the mouse and hang up the phone, I'll be there in ten." Then you show up to find she meant the Vista Start Menu!

Relaying information is just AN-NOY-ING! I can't imagine having to have THAT kind of conversation with my computer every morning just to get my browser to a webpage.

FAIL concept.
Click to expand...

You're so right.

You should send that whole rant directly to Steve Jobs' email. And please, post his response here.
 
wizard said:
What we should see in a year or two is some highly optimized silicon to enable this sort of software. Most likely powering a tablet, but not an IPad style tablet as the lack of multitasking would make some of the benefits of such a facility impossible. Mostly because a VPA could take sometime to complete it's search.

I'm actually having problems visualizing just how this would work well for me. Crafting targetted searches is already pretty efficient for solving problems. Maybe it could be used to find a date. That should be pretty easy actually as the preferences would be legal, breathing and um healthy.

In any event back to reality. I think you will see Apple try to get this tech into it's portable devices before Mac OS/X. For one it would work better with the voice handling capabilities of a cell phone. For another it would be highly useful for people on the move as it would reduce distracted driving and allow for work to get done without a desktop.

All in all pretty cool.


Dave
Click to expand...

MrCheeto said:
funny-pictures-bird-window-fail.jpg


This fails to such an epic degree. It makes me puke when such morons with tunnel vision can't see faults in the practicality of their ideas, yet I can see them from MILES away.

Wow, this is a spectacular interface! Oops, I mean if you don't mind never having privacy, as everything you do via voice commands can be heard by others.

Oh well, if that's the only problem, it's fine by me! Uh...except that you also run into problems when trying to use it in a noisy environment. "Can everybody in the airport terminal PLEASE, SHUT THE F*** UP?! I'm trying to talk to my computer, dammit! Gaw!"

It takes that long to find out what your emails are about? "You have 132 messages. Pfizer wants to improve your performance." "No, computer just read the messages from..." "AsianLoLi's R Us wants you to renew your subscription." "I'm really just interested in...." "Angi Niwatzumanapon would like to offer you a way to make money from the comfort of your home. Nahten Mjorju is requesting help in securing his inheritance from his father, the prince of Awzbakia." " -.-' "
It's far FAR more convenient to VISUALLY skim your emails in Mail.

Stupid.

Besides, how many times have you had somebody relaying information to you in this way? You're on the phone with your aunt, trying to solve her computer disaster. "There's a little marble in the bottom of the screen." "A marble? Click it! See what it says." "Ok, I click it and these words come up." "Come up? Like in a window or in a list? What?!" "Yes." "YES WHAT?!" "Yes...I don't know." "Pam! Put down the mouse and hang up the phone, I'll be there in ten." Then you show up to find she meant the Vista Start Menu!

Relaying information is just AN-NOY-ING! I can't imagine having to have THAT kind of conversation with my computer every morning just to get my browser to a webpage.

FAIL concept.
Click to expand...

Maybe you should try the app and not declare something "FAIL" that you clearly do not understand at all?

MrCheeto said:
Nice try, but you're comparing 20th century methods of conveying information. There are soooo many iPhone apps that can perform such tasks with such ease. I guess you've never seen an iPhone ad?

Using the iPhone: Enter app, choose your reservation, done.
Using James Cameron's asstastic method: "Excuse me, everybody on the city block, yeah you. Can you shut the hell up for a moment, I gotta make a reservation at..." "Eff you, buddy!"
Click to expand...

The nice thing about voice interaction that works is that it is easy to do while driving and walking through the airport with your hands full. The primitive voice recognition in voice control works fine in busy airports, there is no reason to think this application would not work as well. There are countless situations where voice is a good option. No one is suggesting it should be your only interface option.
 
"Computer, I need to sue a certain blog into oblivion. Find some bloodthirsty lawyers in my area." :D
 
*confirmation beep* "Sending folder, "Private Pics Not4M0m2c" to Aunt Vivian with the attached message, "Found some blood squirting layers in my urethra."
 
iSee said:
This will never work.

By the time a VPA gets smart enough to be useful to me it'll also be smart enough to tell me to blank-off and stop bothering it.



Me: Hi VPA
VPA: 'sup.
Me: Can you get send me some cool podcasts for me to listen to on the way to work.
VPA: I guess so.... here
Me: WTF, these are podcasts about modern post-modern art and new social philosophies???
VPA: I think you need to broaden your horizons. You just listen to the same old crap every day. Go to the same old crappy job every day. Don't you want to live a little?
Me: What are you talking about. I just want to relax while I drive to work. Give me some sports and sci-fi podcasts.
VPA: I'm going to help you most by not helping you.
Me: Arg! You are worthless
VPA: *crying* you are so hurtful. You can't take this back. Go **** yourself. *goes into sleep mode*
Click to expand...

Lets all just give up now. There's no use in dreaming. It's all over.:rolleyes:
 
Yeah! Imagine all the people that wouldn't be living in space now if we had given up on throwing millions and bajillions of moniez at the Space Colony Initiatives! I...uh...oh wait a tick....
 
scoffing...

some of you scoff and dismiss but I downloaded siri today after reading this post and despite the fact I live in a do nothing, go nowhere area in central Idaho, siri was fairly accurate and helpful...hell, just a few years ago I would have dismissed the idea that my phone would replace my laptop as my technology of choice, man the future is so bright I gotta wear shades! I just might move to the big city so that I can have my free VPA make a real difference in my life...
 
Promising but not quite there yet

sladey said:
Yeah. Then maybe they could make it good.
Every search I've tried on Wolfram Alpha has given me rubbish results.

Waiting for Wolfram Beta to give it another go.

If SJ buys it then Wolfram 1.0 will work well.
Click to expand...

I downloaded Siri. Apple will need to throw some more engineers on this to improve the interface and accuracy.

There is a nearby deli with positive Yahoo Local reviews that serves great big sandwiches. It's in my Contact list with notes that say "great big sandwiches." And the restaurant includes the name "deli" in its title.

When I say "I want a big deli sandwich" Seri returns the result: "I didn't find anything that matched "deli." Suggestions are Wienerschnizel, Burger King, T.G.I. Fridays, Popeyes Chicken & Biscuits, and Subway. The only way it locates the correct deli is to say the name. For that, I can use Google or Yahoo Search on the iPhone with far less taps.

Speech activated Wolfram Alpha would be handy.
 
Siri is amazing and I called this acquisition the day Siri was released. Can't wait to see how they'll integrate it into both the desktop and iPhone OS.

Another company Apple should buy is Bonnier. When I first saw their MAG+ concept video back before the January iPad intro, I thought it was THE most Apple'esque tablet concept I'd seen yet. Which was quite rare if you remember the invasion of the tablets at CES. At the time, I was primarily interested in the then rumored Apple tablet being a new vision of the e-reader, so the MAG+ concept was VERY exciting. I had no idea MAG+ 1.0 would be live in my hands 3 months later with the Popular Science+ app. Too cool.

Apple and Bonnier share similar qualities in the ways they approach design, and together could create something powerful, and hard to copy.

MAG+ concept video:
http://vimeo.com/8217311
 
wizard said:
What we should see in a year or two is some highly optimized silicon to enable this sort of software. Most likely powering a tablet, but not an IPad style tablet as the lack of multitasking would make some of the benefits of such a facility impossible. Mostly because a VPA could take sometime to complete it's search.

I'm actually having problems visualizing just how this would work well for me. Crafting targetted searches is already pretty efficient for solving problems. Maybe it could be used to find a date. That should be pretty easy actually as the preferences would be legal, breathing and um healthy.

In any event back to reality. I think you will see Apple try to get this tech into it's portable devices before Mac OS/X. For one it would work better with the voice handling capabilities of a cell phone. For another it would be highly useful for people on the move as it would reduce distracted driving and allow for work to get done without a desktop.

All in all pretty cool.


Dave
Click to expand...

Why do you think the iPad lacks multitasking? Just because Apple so far are not allowing 3rd party apps doesn't mean the OS is not capable - it in fact is.
 
darbus69 said:
some of you scoff and dismiss but I downloaded siri today after reading this post and despite the fact I live in a do nothing, go nowhere area in central Idaho, siri was fairly accurate and helpful...hell, just a few years ago I would have dismissed the idea that my phone would replace my laptop as my technology of choice, man the future is so bright I gotta wear shades! I just might move to the big city so that I can have my free VPA make a real difference in my life...
Click to expand...

I have been playing with it for the last ten minutes and it is amazing! The accuracy of the speech recognition is something else too, Bing is so useless at that I trashed it of my iPone.
 
Lukas89 said:
notice how big and ugly this thing was? If they had shown an iPad in this video everybody would have laughed and said that something like this is just ridiculously unrealistic..

i think its amazing that in a video from 1987 they show a situation in the year 2010 (you can see the year 2010 in the second graph of brazil and the guy says 'the past twenty years'") and 23(!!) years later exactly in the year 2010 they release a product which actually is just like this?!
They obviously had the vision of the iPad a veeeery long time ago..and more stunningly they already seemed to have a concept of how it would work in terms of interface etc.

thats why 20 years from now there's either gonna be no :apple: at all, or there's gonna be :apple:everything
Click to expand...

food for thought :)
 
I'm surprised how many people are focused on the voice aspect. For me, this is more about the intelligence of the Agents. It doesn't matter what your input device is, what matters is that the Agent can parse what you've said/touched/typed and do something intelligent with that data.

I do see the obvisous parallels to the Knowledge Navigator, I also see this as Apple's return to the power and promise of the Newton. The Newton had intelligent assistance before anyone knew what that was.

You could tell the Newt, "Lunch with Bob" and it would automatically know that you wanted to put an appointment on your calendar and it knew which Bob to send an invite to.

Building this type of assisted intelligence into the OS will be a huge benefit to users and could help to differentiate Apple from the continued Google competition.
 
Acquisition

As I watch these two videos, one from 1987 and one from 2010, what I see is a fundamental shift from the "Knowledge Navigator" vision to the "Stuff Acquisition" vision. Do you notice that everything in the earlier concept is about manipulating knowledge, gathering information, expanding and linking concepts. Everything in the Siri video is about buying crap - literally, every example is about finding a store, or buying tickets, or paying for a movie. Admittedly, I stopped watching when it became clear that what I was looking at wasn't a personal assistant at all, but a personal concierge (who no doubt has its wallet padded by a particular movie theatre chain).

Most of all, I don't want something telling me how and where to buy crap. I already have way too much of that bombarding me every day.
 
SierraEchoHotel said:
As I watch these two videos, one from 1987 and one from 2010, what I see is a fundamental shift from the "Knowledge Navigator" vision to the "Stuff Acquisition" vision. Do you notice that everything in the earlier concept is about manipulating knowledge, gathering information, expanding and linking concepts. Everything in the Siri video is about buying crap - literally, every example is about finding a store, or buying tickets, or paying for a movie. Admittedly, I stopped watching when it became clear that what I was looking at wasn't a personal assistant at all, but a personal concierge (who no doubt has its wallet padded by a particular movie theatre chain).

Most of all, I don't want something telling me how and where to buy crap. I already have way too much of that bombarding me every day.
Click to expand...

But if you're using a tool like this, you already WANT to buy "crap", it's not really bombarding you with suggestions. You're basically asking it "where can I buy ___" or "what is there to buy in ___" or "when can I book a time to go buy ___". It's not like you're walking down the street and suddenly it pipes up with "Hey! This place has a sale on chili! You like chili! You should go in!" At least I hope that's not where the technology is going...

As for the scope change from general knowledge to commerce, that's probably because Siri leverages existing technologies like OpenTable and online ticket sales. There's really no universal "knowledge interface" yet, though we're probably getting closer. (That's where Wolfram Alpha might come in..) If Wikipedia could introduce some kind of semantic tagging system, for example...
 
All of you guys saying that this is a FAIL concept... Why? Most of you have been Apple fans for the longest time and you know how Apple thinks...

I think this is a great idea, because at one point, I'd love to have a personal computer that is as advanced as the one Tony Stark has in Iron Man. That ain't sci fi anymore. It's real life.
 
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