The History of Siri ⓢ

by Christopher Paul on January 24, 2013

The Huffington Post has long article on the history of Siri, Apple’s voice controlled interface for iOS. One interesting bit of trivia is that Siri’s roots are with the government:

In 2003, the agency’s investment arm, DARPA, tapped the non-profit research institute SRI International to lead a five-year, 500-person effort to build a virtual assistant, one the government hoped might yield software to help military commanders with both information overload and office chores. Although it wasn’t the project’s mission, this helper, the Cognitive Assistant that Learns and Organizes, or CALO, would ultimately provide the inspiration and model for Siri.

The Defense Department’s financial backing, $150 million in all, united hundreds of top-tier artificial intelligence experts for an ambitious and uncertain endeavor that most corporate R&D labs could only dream of tackling: teaching computers to learn in the wild. The army of engineers at “nerd city” – one SRI researcher’s nickname for the lab – were tasked with creating a PC-based helper smart enough to learn by observing a user’s behavior, and all the people, projects and topics relevant to her work. The undertaking was “by any measure, the largest AI program in history,” says David Israel, one of the lead researchers on CALO.

Some other interesting information is that Siri was about to be a default feature on all of Verizon Wireless’ Droid phones until Apple bought it.

Overall, it’s fascinating story and the type of investigation journalism I enjoy reading.

via everyone on the internet

Actual Facebook Graph Searches ⓢ

by Christopher Paul on January 23, 2013

Facebook’s new search solution, Facebook Graph, is full of promise and, to me, down right scary. I’m certainly no luddite but the information Facebook has on us – and the ability to scour people’s profiles for it – could have some serious consequences. A Tumblr called Actual Facebook Graph Searches shows how fun but crazy this could be.

On the ironic side, we have Jews who like Bacon. On the scary side, we have Married People Who Like Prostitutes (with a side list of their spouses) and Current Employees Who Like Racism.

I see three options to avoid being embarrassed on Facebook:

  1. Frequently check your privacy settings and restrict it as much as possible.
  2. Don’t ‘Like’ anything on Facebook.
  3. Don’t use Facebook.

The last one is probably a bit extreme but it’s the ultimate solution. The rule of thumb is that don’t do or say anything on line that you wouldn’t want to talk your employer or loved ones about. It’s amazing how often that rule gets broken.

via Kottke

Monospaced Fonts For Writing

by Christopher Paul on January 23, 2013

For the past year or so, as I’ve refocused on writing, I’ve tried a dizzying array of apps and tools to help me. I think I’ve (mostly) settled down on the right apps to use. On the Mac, I use Byword to write and MarsEdit to post. On iOS, I use Poster almost exclusively. The exception is if I plan to write between Mac and iOS; if that’s the case, I’ll use Byword for it’s iCloud sync.

But so many people I follow on Twitter and other places on the internet use iA Writer. It’s a great tool for productive writing. There are no options which means people spend time writing. I love the way it looks and, while I love the way Byword and Poster look on their respective platforms, iA Writer is nicer to look at when all you want is to type your thoughts. The thing that iA Writer lacks is elegant beauty (simplicity is its beauty) and good keyboard shortcuts (soft on iOS, hard on the Mac) which is why I opted to use Byword/Poster. Still, every now and then, I find myself trying iA Writer to see if I will finally like it.

By chance, I recognized something more specific about iA Writer I liked that I never focused on before: its monospaced font. iA Writer uses Nitti (credit: David Sparks). I’m sure it’s one of the reasons that iA Writer attracts so many users.

Other writing tools use a short list of sans and sans-serif fonts to chose from. The defaults their developers picked are beautiful and I’ve sticked with them 90% of the time. But to get as close to iA Writer as I can without losing the posting features and keyboard shortcuts I love, I’ve switched to whatever monospaced font they offer. On Poster, it’s Inconsolata which, ironically, David Sparks praised the other day and I never took notice until now.

David lists some other good alternatives like Adobe’s Sans Source Code (I use its cousin, Sans Source Pro, as the font for this site). Between his post on Inconsolata, the other monospaced fonts, and my earlier realization that the monospaced font of iA Writer (along with background and cursor color) can help me with my own writing workflow, I’ve changed all my writing defaults to use whatever monotype available. If I can, I’ll try to keep the fonts consistent across apps but I don’t think that’s possible.

I’m sure there are hundreds if not thousands of monospaced fonts to choose from but I’m impressed with the choices I’ve made so far and can already see the net positive on my writing/editing. Lastly, as if today was Font Discussion Day, Marco Arment linked to – and talks about – the readability myth of serif fonts and, more interestingly, his thoughts on fonts on different screen resolutions/sizes and what users of Instapaper prefer.

Brave – A Blind Skateboarder ⓢ

by Christopher Paul on January 23, 2013

Here is a nice mid-week video to inspire you. Tommy Carroll was blinded by retina cancer since he was two years old. He’s been skateboarding since he was ten – and he’s good.

Two thoughts:

  1. People are amazing.
  2. Nothing I do can be as inspiring as this.

via Devour

Should Ives Be Apple CEO Instead of Cook? ⓢ

by Christopher Paul on January 23, 2013

No.

Not even close.

Not ever.

This Forbes article suggesting that Ives, Apple’s head designer, should take over as Apple’s CEO is ridiculous. I almost didn’t mention it because I loathe to give such drivel pageviews. But… it’s out there and The Loop covered it.

The idea that Jobs and Ives are closer to Apple’s guiding principals than Cook could be true. But it was Jobs’ vision that really propelled Apple. It just happened to have great design, engineers, developers, and supply chain managers. That’s not to say that Cook or Ives can’t (or don’t) have great vision. But there’s no reason to scuttle a solid ship with only the slightest hint of rough seas.

Jobs’ role of CEO, in my opinion, was to provide direction on where to steer the ship. He didn’t helm the tiller, he didn’t tack the sails. He did, however, shout out his orders to those who could do those tasks the best. There is no reason to think Cook can’t do the same.

Perhaps Cook, Ives, and the rest of Apple’s senior management have to come together to find a point to sail towards. They’ve been working very well for years so there is no doubt they can’t create the next “magical” thing. And I’m confident they’ll find that point and get their safely with a boat load (sorry to keep using the sailing puns) of money along the way.

via The Loop

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