The Future Is Here Today...Robots, Genetics, AI, Longevity, Singularity

Siri: a Free Personal Assistant in Your iPhone (video)

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by Aaron Saenz on February 7th, 2010
Siri iphone App

Give Siri a command and it will hunt down information on Yelp, MovieTickets.com, Google Maps, etc to get you what you want. Amazing.

You’re about to get your very own genie in a bottle. Simply talk into your iPhone and tell Siri what you want. Tickets for a show, reservations at a restaurant, a taxi to pick you up – the newest App can arrange to get you what you need. Best of all, Siri learns (with your permission) what you want, and gets better at understanding your commands. Just like a human assistant. Originally developed as part of DARPA’s CALO project, Siri represent more than five years of steady research and refinement. The App is sophisticated enough to filter through a sentence and identify the relevant key words and know which of its dozens of partnered APIs to engage. Want to find some live music in your area? Siri calls up LiveKick and understands to use GPS to determine what “in your area” means. It can handle most any command for six broad categories of interest: restaurants, movies, events, taxis, local information, and weather. In those fields, Siri can figure out what you want and how to get it for you. Best of all, the App is free. Look below for the cool demo video and a great interview of Siri founders by the Scobleizer himself.

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Check Your Date Before You Mate – iPhone Has an App for That

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by Aaron Saenz on January 13th, 2010
date check from intelius

Ignore the catch line. Intelius has far bigger goals than just a dating App.

Maybe you’ve dated someone you shouldn’t have. Sometimes that means getting bored or a little inconvenienced. For a friend of mine that meant being lied to by a con-artist for months in his elaborate ruse to get money. It’s a tough world out there so information snooping website Intelius is offering Date Check, a new sort of free App for your iPhone, Android, or (soon) BlackBerry. Using just an email address or phone number, Date Check lets you search for someone’s criminal record, investigate their living situation, scan through their social networking, and browse other public information. It’s the online equivalent of a full body frisk. Maybe not the most romantic thing to do to someone you’re hoping to have a nice meal with, but it could be helpful to people hoping to avoid being conned. Check out the video from Intelius after the break.

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Broadcast Streaming Video – iPhone Finally Has an App for That

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by Aaron Saenz on December 21st, 2009
Ustream Live Broadcaster is the first such app approved for sale at the App store.

Ustream Live Broadcaster is available for free at the App store.

Technology is turning us all into miniature media moguls. For those that want to share moments of their lives as they happen, recording video and uploading it later is simply too slow of a process. They need streaming video and they need it know. Luckily iPhone can finally help them out. While Ustream has had a broadcast streaming video application for Nokia and Android phones for months, the iPhone version just came out earlier in December. With Ustream Live Broadcaster, users can upload and record live video to the web, alert their social networks (via Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube), and archive their work for later. Best yet, Ustream offers the application for free.

There are other live video phone applications. Qik is available on many phone platforms, and can be used on the iPhone, but only if you hack it. Knocking Live Video will share streaming video, but only between one mobile and another. Ustream is the first one to many broadcasting iPhone App approved by Apple, which means it’s the first that is likely to dominate the market. That market is set to increase in the years to come. Already we’ve seen how life recording and other extreme sharing concepts are gaining ground, it’s probably only a matter of time before broadcasting events is as popular as texting about them on Facebook and Twitter. I wonder how the next generation’s concepts about privacy will change with this new technology. A new sense of what is private is bound to shape everything from job hunting to airport screening. It’s going to get harder to tell governments, and employers, they can’t hunt for information when we’re all sharing it freely online.

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Dragon Dictation, Voice Recognition Comes to the iPhone for Free (Video)

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by Aaron Saenz on December 14th, 2009

Can’t afford a stenographer? Well now iPhone has an App for that. Nuance, the creators of the successful Dragon Naturally Speaking dictation software have expanded into mobile service. Dragon Dictation is now available for free on the App store and it brings all of the high quality speech recognition you’d expect from Nuance and puts it in the palm of your hand. Dictations up to 30 minutes can be converted to writing and then emailed, texted, or copied to the clipboard for later use. Check out the demo video from Nuance after the break.

Dragon Dictation lets you record up to 30 minutes of text, edit it, then send it via SMS, email, or your iPhone's clipboard.

Dragon Dictation lets you record speech, edit , and send via SMS, email, or clipboard.

Dragon Dictation has most of the features you’d want in a speech to text App. It allows you to edit converted text easily. It let’s you cut and paste text into other Apps. It can’t directly interact with other applications, but that’s Apple’s fault (damn the ‘no Apps running in the background’ restriction). DD is also fairly quick. Wifi connections allow for text conversions to happen in a second or less. 3G connections bring that time up to around three seconds or so (depending on connection). As speech recognition technology improves further it’s going to become even more universal. The new 3GS iPhone has voice command capabilities and Nuance provides the voice command routines for the Samsung Rogue (see the second video below). We’re likely to see the smart phones of the future run on a combination of touch, talk, and physical movement.

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Universal Translators Are All Around Us (Video)

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by Aaron Saenz on November 23rd, 2009
Will the iPhone be the Universal Translator of the future?

Will the iPhone be the Universal Translator of the future?

When watching Star Trek, I was always amazed that the aliens all spoke English. Writers explained this happy coincidence by the presence of a universal translator (UT), a portable device which could take any language and translate it into any other language as needed. Our nonfictional modern world has more than 20,000 different languages (if you include dialects) in its history. With the rise of globalization we desperately need an universal translator to help us speak to one another. Luckily, there are several different companies that are taking the first steps to creating an UT. Sahkr and Jibbigo have developed iPhone Apps which transform the smart phone into a handheld speech to speech translator. Check out some of their demo videos after the break.

Computer aided speech to speech translation isn’t easy. You need speech recognition, language analysis, machine translation, language generation, and speech synthesis. We’ve had limited handheld translators for some time. Devices like Voxtec’s Phraselator allow you to select a range of sentences and have them translated into many different languages. We’ve also had more complex non-portable systems (like IBM’s MASTOR) which can do nearly full translation. But the products created by Sahkr and Jibbigo represent a new paradigm in speech to speech: commonly used hardware devices adapted solely through software. By integrating into an existing hardware platform, these next generation programs are taking us one step closer to having a universal translator that anyone can carry in their hands.

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Wolfram Alpha, iPhone has an App for That

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by Aaron Saenz on November 12th, 2009
Immense technical knowledge and computational power? iPhone has an App for that.

Immense technical knowledge and computational power? iPhone has an App for that.

You know, if computers ever take over the world, it’s not going to be through a super smart spaceship like HAL, or a global network like SkyNet, or even Asimov-defying robots. No, it will be the iPhone. Those little handheld gadgets, not even the most popular smart phones, by the way, have so many insane applications that they’re getting dangerous. They can control your bank account, fly military drones, and now they even have access to the data and calculation power of Wolfram Alpha. Built off of their API, the Wolfram Alpha iPhone App lets you find visual answers to computational and statistical questions. What’s the rainfall in India like? How do I mix cyanide in water to get a 3 molar solution? Now you, or your Apple overlord, can find these answers on the go.

Wolfram Alpha, though trailing in popularity since its debut this summer has continued to impress us with the range of its technical knowledge. Sure, for the casual user, finding the population of North Dakota is as easy in Wikipedia, Google, or Yahoo as it is in Wolfram Alpha. But what about the hyper tangent of three times pi? Or the rate at which GDP has changed in Belgium over the past 23 years? As an open resource, the internet is evolving. Yes, we’ll always be able to get celebrity gossip, but as WA and other technically impressive sites evolve, so too will the level of available expertise. If we choose to use it.

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iPhone Lets You Reserve, Find, and Open a Car

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by Aaron Saenz on October 5th, 2009
Need a ride? iPhone has an App for that.

Need a ride? iPhone has an App for that.

Like peanut butter and chocolate, Batman and Robin, or babies and puppies, some things are just more powerful when combined. So it is with the iPhone and Zipcar. For those of you who don’t live in a major US metropolitan area, Zipcar is a car sharing company that allows users to locate, drive, and return a car without a traditional rental facility. iPhones, of course, are all powerful hand held devices that can do practically anything if you write a software application for them. Now, those Zipcar members that have an iPhone can use it to make a reservation, find their car, honk its horn, and even open its doors. It’s a cool upgrade for an already cool system. Check out USA Today’s video with Luke Schneider, CTO of Zipcar, after the break.

Car sharing is an eco-friendly, traffic cutting, and democratic approach to transportation, and Zipcar is the US leader in the field. For around $7 per hour, you can pick up a car in your neighborhood knowing that all your gas, parking, and insurance will be paid for. The inclusion of an iPhone App is taking this great idea and propelling it into the 21st century. You now have a mobile connection to a semi-public resource. Smart phones are becoming a type of ’single key access’ to all your living necessities. Instead of a ring of keys, a wallet of credit cards, or a host of user IDs and passwords, you may one day only need to carry around your phone. It’s just another way in which smart phones, and the iPhone in particular, are demonstrating their power as digital tool kits for the 21st century.
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Scanning Barcodes and Counting Calories – iPhone Has an App

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by Aaron Saenz on September 30th, 2009
Need to count calories? DailyBurn and iPhone have an App for that.

Need to count calories? DailyBurn and iPhone have an App for that.

Your iPhone can play so many roles in your life: tour guide, military commander, camerman, restaurant reviewer, bank teller, DJ, and now… nutritionist. The newly renamed DailyBurn (formerly Gyminee) has developed a calorie counting iPhone App, called FoodScanner, that lets you scan barcodes on packaged food products to keep track of your daily intake. With over 200,000 registered items in their database, DailyBurn’s App also lets you view nutritional labels post-scan. While the retail price is $3, you can purchase the App now for just $1. Check out the demonstration video after the break.

DailyBurn’s App is just the latest example of how the physical world and the digital information world are merging. Just by pointing the iPhone camera at a scannable object, users can connect themselves to a large database that is directly relevant to their needs. In the case of health and nutrition, this database is DailyBurn’s extensive online community. We’ve seen other such connections like the Layars augmented reality functions on other smart phones. In the future every item in the real world will be enhanced by an extraordinary depth of data we will be able to connect to quickly and easily.
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Commanding Military Drones – Now iPhone Has an App for That

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by Aaron Saenz on August 18th, 2009

If you’ve got drones in different area codes, iPhone has an app for that. MIT’s Human and Automation Lab (HAL) has been able to control an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) using everyone’s favorite smart phone. By utilizing the iPhone’s touch screen, tilting sensors, and high speed data transfer HAL is able to manually fly the drone or guide it to follow a prescribed path. In turn, the drone sends back video and snap shots as requested. MIT’s success shows how the controls for UAVs can get smaller, simpler, and easier to use. Watch the three demonstration videos after the break.

Could the iPhone replace the bulky controls of the Raven Drone?

Could the iPhone replace the bulky controls of the Raven Drone?

UAVs and other military drones are an important part of the modernization of the US Army. The Raven drone is a light-weight surveillance platform that can be launched by hand. Unfortunately, it’s operating controls are a heavy briefcase like enclosure that has to be lugged around. That sort of discontinuity irks HAL team leader Prof. Missy Cummings. Cummings was once a F/A-18 Hornet fighter pilot for the Navy and saw the UAVs as a great way to prove that drone control could be light-weight, simple, and elegant. Her students were the ones that pointed out they could use iPhones. (They would all have to receive iPhones as part of their research, of course).

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Need to Make a Deposit? iPhone has an App for That

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by Aaron Saenz on August 12th, 2009

We’re rapidly approaching a time when every conceivable human action will have an associated iPhone application. While still in the early stage of exploring the App-space, I’m impressed by the amount of financial transactions that can be accomplished from your cell phone. USAA, a smaller bank and insurance company that is a pioneer in mobile account access, has just upgraded its iPhone App to include deposits by check. Just start the App, take some pictures of the check, and you’ve got money in the bank. It takes less than 2 minutes! Check out the promotional video after the break .

USAA bank allows iPhone users to send in checks via photo.

USAA bank allows iPhone users to send in checks via photo.

While I haven’t used the USAA iPhone App, I do have some experience with their previous generation of online deposits. My old roommate used to borrow my scanner all the time to send checks to USAA. The scanning software (akin to a Java applet) was hard to use at first, but became much easier with practice. USAA has had that technology in place for 3 years. A fact I often consider while trudging uphill both ways in the snow to my local bank’s ATM.

USAA isn’t even in the top 20 of US financial institutions, but with only one branch in the country (San Antonio) it has to focus on banking anytime, anywhere. A good philosophy when a large part of your customer base is overseas military personnel. About one million of USAA’s 7.2 million clients access their accounts via their phone by text or online access. They require you to pass a credit check, and have some form of insurance with the company. About 60% of their total clientele qualify. While less than 3% of the million mobile users may own an iPhone, USAA is confident that just having the option will draw customers and raise brand awareness.

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