Apple vs. Google

The growing war between Apple and Google continues as Apple acquired a mobile search app company called Siri. This is a large step into the searching field. But it's not in the same sense as a Google-style search engine, where a massive amount of data is crawled to reveal a result. Siri acts more in a way that fits into Apple's paradigm of user interactivity. The user is expected to ask Siri to accomplish some sort of task (e.g. get dinner reservations) and Siri will operate through some other website's API to return an actual dinner reservation for the user.

This appears to be Apple's effort to counter Google's search monopoly in a way that fits into Apple's iPhone and iPad product lines. By providing a system where a user does not have to navigate to Google, click on a website, hopefully navigate that site in a mobile setting, and get the desired result, Apple is essentially bypassing what Google can offer in that area.

I see this as a good move for the end consumer. In concept (as, of course, application is a different beast) Siri sounds like it would be quite useful for a variety of mobile phone users. For Apple, this is a fantastic tactic. They are entering the search arena, and are finally going into battle against Google. The outcome will be interesting to watch.

Roger Ebert speaks with his own voice again

The movie reviewer Roger Ebert no longer has a voice box or lower jaw. He has had several surgeries to deal with cancer and he can no longer speak. But recently, a company based out of the UK created a way for him to speak in his own voice again. Using recordings of his voice from DVD extras, they were able to patch together a library of his own voice.

This is a really interesting concept. The technology itself is pretty cool, and it's great that he has this ability back in the best way possible with technology, but I think the really interesting concept is how they acquired the voice samples. This is a man who spent his adult life in the public light, and his job was to talk about movies. So it was a relatively trivial task to assemble the audio pieces. But what if someone in the same condition didn't have this ability to look back on a catalogue? I feel like we're fast approaching a time period where a massive DVD library wouldn't be necessary. We are constantly on phones or other audio input devices. How much of that goes through servers where it could be kept and stored (whether by consent or not)? This gets into really interesting privacy issues and how much of our future interactions are recorded. I, for one, really do not want anything I say or do to be recorded without my knowledge and explicit consent. And I hope that at least in the US we avoid heading down that path.

GALLAG and Chesepeake Bay

Watching the news this morning, I saw an interview with Philippe Cousteau discussing the UVA Bay Game. This is a multi-disciplinary GALLAG project aimed at promoting sustainability of the Chesepeake Bay Watershed. According to that site, they developed it in 6 months, and are unveiling the game in a public demonstration April 8.

From the site's description:

The UVA Bay Game is a large-scale agent-based simulation of the Chesapeake Bay watershed that allows players to take the roles of stakeholders, such as farmers, local policy-makers, watermen, and developers, make decisions about their livelihoods and professional expertise, and see the impacts of these decisions on the watershed and on each other over a twenty-year period. The Game is an educational tool for raising awareness about watershed stewardship; a tool for exploring and testing policy choices; and a tool for basic resarch in complex systems modeling.

This is a fantastic example of how GALLAG can be employed for greater good not only of people but the environment around them.