52 Tiger

CNET gets it wrong about Siri

by Dave Caolo on May 15, 2012 in Articles with No comments

CNET has erroneously suggested that Apple “rigged Siri to name iPhone best phone” in response to last week’s non-story in which Siri accurately reported data it received from Wolfram Alpha:

“As of yesterday, the voice assistant is firmly back in Apple’s camp. When asked the same question, Siri now responds: ‘The one you’re holding,’ or ‘You’re kidding, right?’”

“Yesterday” being May 14, 2012. Wrong, CNET. You are wrong. Here’s a post from the Mac Observer Forums in which a user describes Siri providing a humors answer to a now infamous question:

“Depending on how I asked ‘What is the best smartphone?’- I got either ‘You’re kidding, right?’ or ‘You’re holding it.’”

That post is date stamped October 17, 2011. Here’s another one, posted to YouTube on November, 2011, just one month after the iPhone 4S’s release. Perhaps CNET defines “yesterday” as “seven months ago.”

Meanwhile, Nokia spokesperson Tracy Postill told the Sydney Morning Herald:

“Apple position Siri as the intelligent system that’s there to help, but clearly if they don’t like the answer, they override the software.”

Right, Tracy. It would be a brillant move for Apple to censor Wolfram Alpha data to meet its own marketing goals.

Postill’s quote illustrates another error. Both CNET and Nokia are seemingly unaware of where Siri’s answers come from. In short, Siri pulls from several sources, including Apple’s servers, Wolfram Alpha and Yelp. When it responded to The Next Web’s query with “Nokia’s Lumia 900,” it returned results from Wolfram Alpha. The “joke” answers (and yes, they are jokes) like “The one your holding,” come from Apple’s servers. Here’s a video of Siri providing humorous answers to 96 questions (recorded in 2011). Finally, if you ask Siri for the best Italian restaurant in town, its answer will come from Yelp.

Apple has given Siri a sense of humor because it humanizes the service and helps users feel like less of a tool while conversing with an inanimate object. It was a very clever move. Apple did not, in any way, “rig” Siri to name iPhone the best phone. If CNET or Nokia believe that Apple is afraid of losing iPhone sales to loose-lipped Siri, I have a bridge in New York that’s for sale.

Disable that Twitter digest email

by Dave Caolo on May 15, 2012 in Links with No comments

Twitter has launched a new feature that I think is pretty annoying. Once a week, it delivers a digest of tweets you might find interesting to your inbox. I don’t want it, but it’s enabled by default. Here’s how to turn it off.

Log into your Twitter account
Click Settings
Click Notifications
De-select “A weekly digest of Stories & Tweets from my network”

No more digest emails.

First!

by Dave Caolo on May 15, 2012 in Articles with No comments

The race to be the first to post a story online ¹ frequently causes problems. For example, this morning I saw a headline on Boy Genius Report (BGR), “New Jersey bans texting while walking“:

“Fort Lee, New Jersey passed a new law earlier this year that fines walkers $85 who do not stop prior to texting. ‘It’s a big distraction,’ Fort Lee Police Chief Thomas Ripoli said. ‘Pedestrians aren’t watching where they are going and they are not aware.’”

BGR linked Huffington Post as the source, so I clicked the link for more of the story. HuffPo’s headline reads, “Texting While Walking Ban: Fort Lee Imposes $85 Fines On Dangerous Texters [CORRECTION].” As soon as I see “correction,” I think, “Uh-oh.” The HuffPo story begins with a link to a story at MSNBC, entitled, “New Jersey town’s police chief: No, we didn’t ban texting while walking.” Oops.

I can forgive HuffPo for this gaffe, as it appears to have been the starting point. Its writers simply got it wrong. But BGR parroted the story without hesitation (as did many others). Plus, as of this writing, BGR hasn’t updated its headline or story.

This happens all the time. Yesterday there was a story going around that Best Buy had just put Apple Macintosh computers on sale. Before we posted it at TUAW, I called Best Buy and was told that the sale has been going on for “over a month.” So yes, the Macs are on sale but no, the price drop isn’t new.

I realize that every tech blogger can’t independently confirm every single story. Still, it took less than five minutes for me to call Best Buy. I’d rather be right than first any day.

Or, more often, regurgitate a story. ↩

On connection and mindfulness

by Dave Caolo on May 14, 2012 in Links with No comments

Cody Dehaan has written a nice response to episode 29 of 52 Pickup, in which I explored social media’s role in contemporary friendships. Cody wonders if we sacrifice mindfulness in exchange for ubiquitous connectivity:

“Our society encourages and enables us to always be focused on something other than what is in front of us. It manifests in all sorts of ways: we are constantly focused on the next big band and what movies are coming out soon. Despite many of us having more than enough material goods, we are always enticed to spend just a little more than we have to acquire goods that are just a bit better and will purportedly (but in actuality will not) make us happier. We drive our cars while we listen to the latest music and get advertised at while we text and eat breakfast on our way to work. And then, when we come home to our families, or spend time with our friends, we check our emails and communicate with everyone else instead of enjoying who we are with.”

Two years ago, I was in a grocery store checkout line with my then five-year-old. As I unloaded the cart, he said, “Look at the snowman.”

“What snowman?”

“The snowman,” he said.

“There’s no snowman, William. It’s summertime.”

“There’s a snowman.”

I followed his finger. It was pointing to a balloon in the floral section, about 30 yards from the checkout counter. A balloon shaped like a snowman. That was the day I started to wonder about what else I was missing ¹. It was also the day I promised myself to spend less time staring at my phone and more time observing and enjoying the world around me.

Dehaan is right. We’re constantly told, “Look here.” It’s very difficult to resist.

And, not coincidentally, a few weeks before I visited the Zen Center for the first time. ↩

Drafts 1.1.1 ads Byword support, new theme

by Dave Caolo on May 14, 2012 in Links, Software with No comments

Agile Tortoise has released Drafts 1.1.1. This update lets you send a note to Byword and features a new theme, Ultralight (above). It’s a nice update to a useful app.

The Anger Room

by Dave Caolo on May 14, 2012 in Links with No comments

Time:

“Located in a Dallas strip mall, the Anger Room is just as you’d hope it would be: filled with old furniture and electronics collected from junkyards and public donations, arranged to look like an office, bedroom or kitchen. But everything here is expendable: go ahead, grab a chair and chuck it across the room. Throw a plant at the computer screen. Stomp on the telephone. Grab a baseball bat and show that glass lamp who’s boss.”

I suspect I’d feel self-conscious for the first few minutes. Then it’d be game on.

Made me think of this.

Magazines are having the best week ever

by Dave Caolo on May 14, 2012 in Articles with No comments

To everyone who’s waiting to sign the magazine industry’s digital death certificate: not so fast. This week, an issue of Time magazine featured an image of a 26-year-old mother breast-feeding her almost 4-year-old son and the question, “Are you mom enough?” Meanwhile, Newsweek published a portrait of President Obama on its cover, complete with rainbow halo and the caption, “The First Gay President.” As NPR points out, both magazines have generated a huge amount of discussion, likely amongst people who haven’t bought a magazine in a while.

Poynter calls the Newsweek cover “a flag in the ground for print journalism.”

“[Today], an article in a newsweekly has as much chance of becoming the focus of cultural conversation as a photo of a falling bear or a review of an Olive Garden in a North Dakota newspaper, but an arresting cover is an assertion that while print magazines’ power may have receded, they’re far from toothless.”

Print publishers have long known that provocative images on their covers get people talking. I suspect that an all-digital publication — The Daily, for example — would generate less buzz with a controversial cover image.

Facebook’s new App Center

by Dave Caolo on May 14, 2012 in Links with No comments

Some nice thoughts on Facebook’s new App Center from TechHive.

Siri loves Nokia OMG

by Dave Caolo on May 11, 2012 in Articles with No comments

Here’s a stupid non-story that I’m glad to point out as the garbage that it is.

The Next Web (TNW) is all excited because Apple’s Siri “will recommend you to buy Nokia’s Lumia 900.” Except that’s not true.

TNW asked Siri, the voice-controled, virtual assistant that ships with the iPhone 4S, “What is the best smartphone ever?” Siri then queried Wolfram Alpha as it often does and returned the results: Nokia’s Lumia 900. TNW then concludes:

“When you break out your iPhone 4S and ask Siri what the ‘best smartphone ever’ is, your humble virtual assistant will recommend you to buy Nokia’s Lumia 900.”

Wait, that’s not the question Siri was asked. TNW said, “What is the best smartphone ever?” not “Which smartphone should I buy?” So I did. Here was the result:

That’s different.

If you think TNW is being slippery, look at this headline from Business Insider on the same story: “Apple Says The Nokia Lumia Is The Best Smartphone In The World.”

Nope. That is 100% false.

Finally, let’s take a closer look at the Wolfram Alpha results. TNW didn’t include everything in its screenshot, but I did: