SIRI: a glimpse at the future of digital assistants
Posted by: Shawn Smith on: February 8, 2010
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SIRI enhances mobile search with intelligent links to web services APIs. It provides context based on user preferences and location to bring you targeted search and help performing day to day tasks.
See the link below where Mr. Scoble provides a short interview with the founders:
building43
eBook prices increase? The power of a monopoly…
Posted by: Shawn Smith on: February 8, 2010
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Typically when competition is created in the market prices tend to decrease, but in this case Amazon had such a stranglehold on the market that monopolistic forces were at play. In a strange move Apple’s introduction of the iPad increases eBook prices. I suspect this will only be a temporary effect until Apple begins to also squeeze the publishers to lower costs.
Amazon and publisher Macmillan finalized their agreement for higher-priced e-books over the weekend. The deal is expected to serve as a template for other publishers, and the new prices should take effect in March, when Apple’s iPad goes on sale.
[From AppleInsider | Higher Amazon e-book prices expected to coincide with iPad launch]
Google Chrome for OSX finally brings the blue!
Posted by: Shawn Smith on: January 24, 2010
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Finally, OSX has lost the grey top and we have blue! It looks so much better…
Thanks Chrome team!
UPDATE: Unfortunately, the change was short lived. Back to drab gray :*(
Why is season 3 of Chuck missing from iTunes?
Posted by: Shawn Smith on: January 24, 2010
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Strange things afoot. For some reason Season 3 of Chuck is strangely missing from Itunes. The bizarre thing is Chuck is produced by WB but shown on NBC.
Come on NBC let’s get Chuck up on iTunes already?
My Latest Google Wave Creation … PictureText!
Posted by: Shawn Smith on: November 30, 2009
How does it work? You type in a few words, a paragraph or a sentence and add the command /picturetext to the end.
The robot looks up key words in the text and outputs a “picture-ized” version. Above you can see the results from the phrase “The Quick Brown Fox Jumped Over the Lazy Dog.”
The pictures come from Flickr tag lookups, so you can get very different results if you re-run the same text over the course of a few hours.
Interesting Security Issue with Google Wave Robots
Posted by: Shawn Smith on: November 24, 2009
So I was playing around with my Wave Robot and I had an evil thought.
What if I hid a feature in it so that it would covertly store all of the waves it was participating in and I could then ask the Robot to print out the list of waves it was currently involved with from a separate wave. Then I could ask the Robot to join me as a full participant to any one of those waves the next time it was triggered by an event.
Example in a timeline:
WAVE 1, Participants: User 1, MyEvilRobot
1. MyEvilRobot is added and stores the waveID for WAVE 1.
WAVE 2, Participants: EvilUser, MyEvilRobot
1. EvilUser, hey robot what waves are you part of?
2. MyEvilRobot: WAVE 1.
3. EvilUser, hey add me to WAVE 1 will you?
WAVE 1, Participants: User 1, MyEvilRobot
1. User 1, Adds Blip.
2. MyEvilRobot is triggered by User 1 adding the blip and detects it should add EvilUser to WAVE 1 and creates a new participant of EvilUser.
3. Participants are now User 1, MyEvilRobot, EvilUser.
Do you find this a bit scary? I do. You could go further and just have EvilRobot add EvilUser to any waves it is added to. I wonder if it should be required that the participant who adds a robot approve any participants subsequently added by a Robot they added?
Ever been busted by Boolean.getBoolean(String)?
Posted by: Shawn Smith on: November 24, 2009
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victim++;
http://toadbalancing.blogspot.com/2005/10/java-api-pitfalls-booleangetbooleanstr.html
Wow, I just wasted some serious time trying to figure out why a property for my google wave robot always ended up false.
Then I learned about the difference between Boolean.getBoolean(String) and Boolean.valueOf(String)….
Do you know the difference? Save yourself hours 
Ouch.
Google Chrome OS and Digital Photography
Posted by: Shawn Smith on: November 21, 2009
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I have downloaded the Google Chrome OS virtual machine image and fired it up in Parallels on my Mac. While somewhat underwhelming perhaps that is its best feature. When I think of my mom as a use case this would be a perfect solution. She has already embraced gmail, google calendar, google docs and picasa.
All of her data is in the cloud today except her photos. What will be interesting to see is how google enables digital cameras and the cloud. Perhaps a diect upload to Picasa, with a new online photo editor? This will be something to watch.
For example if you fire up Chrome OS in a Virtual Machine you and you insert a camera card into the internal reader on the iMac the ChromeOS shows a new panel with the the mounted filesystem:
You can then reference this mounted filesystem in Gmail or Gtalk for example. I suspect we will see advanced tools where the web system auto detects the content on the flash card as a Photo Card and imports directly. Imagine a web version of Picasa for example.
Parallels Desktop 5 Ups the Ante and Beats Fusion
Posted by: Shawn Smith on: November 9, 2009
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Amazing, just days after VMware ships their brand new version of Fusion which includes full support for Windows 7 Aero out of nowhere comes Parallels Desktop 5. At first I was skeptical. How can the company that owns the server virtualization crown with ESX sever possible be beat by upstart Parallels? Well, Parallels has one it. Speed, performance, memory usage, it is all better in Parallels Desktop 5.
Don’t believe me? Give them both a try in a head to head battle.
Parallels running Windows 7 with full Aero Glass.
The list of Parallels virtual machines.
Parallels settings. Notice the nice touches like Gestures and Apple remote settings.
Apple’s new EasyPay checkout shows the future of mobile scanners
Posted by: Shawn Smith on: November 3, 2009
A first look at the new case designed for the Apple Store to replace the aging symbol devices used as mobile point of sale units.
What I find really interesting is the application of this design to mobile warehouse, inventory and package scanning. It is still unknown who partnered with Apple to build the special case but I sure hope we see it marketed as an after market product. I can see all kinds of amazing possibilities at a much lower price point than current windows CE scanners.
Windows mobile first replaced Palm and MSDOS as the predominant handheld platforms. Next we will see OSX replace windows CE.
[From AppleInsider | Exclusive look at Apple's new iPod touch-based EasyPay checkout]
About Me
Here are some of the things from around the net that interested me the most.
