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21 Nov 2011

Siri, Please Teach Google Voice to Listen
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Sometimes using one’s smartphone is like playing a game of, well, “telephone.” Half the time no one can hear you and when they can, the message gets lost in translation – even when it’s not actually being translated. I’m convinced that mine is actually a “smart-ass phone” given how it willfully drops calls, truncates texts and creates general mayhem in my personal and professional lives. “Can you hear me?” becomes “Gland doo deer meat?” I sound like a Martian ordering venison.*

Perhaps I shouldn’t complain. The fact that one can speak into a rectangular hunk of plastic that beams one’s voice to the heavens and back to whomever you’re calling is pretty damn marvelous. Except when it’s not. And what truly doesn’t work is the voicemail transcription on freebie messaging service Google Voice. Again, I shouldn’t complain – the Mountain View search giant takes my voice messages and spits out text to my phone so I can take action without taking the call. For free.

The problem is that their translation mechanism works more like a game of MadLibs with an emphasis on the “mad” part, as in “mad as a hatter” or as Google Voice interprets it, “Man has gone splatter.” This man has nearly gone splatter off a few rooftops after simply hearing my own name gargled by the Google bots. As one might imagine, “Daedalus” is a voice-recognition time bomb.

On a recent occasion, Google Voice assumed my name was “metal brush.” I don’t even mind “Metal Brush,” which sounds like an ’80s hair band gone literal. What I mind is getting gibberish texted to me instead of my messages. So, I’ve turned off the automatic dispatch and instead check my voicemail like someone from the last millennium. Fortunately, iPhones let you scrub through your messages without having to listen to every second. This is godsend since, no matter, how much my outgoing message emphasizes “leave a brief message,” I get a soliloquy. It’s like having Hamlet call with a question and no intermission in sight.

Google’s been trying really hard to work out their voice recognition for some time. I remember when they were still operating Google 411, which purported to be a telephone directory when in fact it was a huge voice data acquisition tool. Since it knew where you were calling from, it could assess and catalog the nuances of your regional accent. And it was probably recording us so that somewhere there’s a record of me stammering my request for an Indian take-out number in my twee-transcontinental accent (this was before there was an app for that – the curry, not the accent).

Meanwhile, Siri, Apple’s answer to the question, “Can voice recognition just work, for crissakes?” was recently born into a few million iPhone 4Ses. Sadly, this came on the eve of the passing of Steve Jobs (whose name is probably the English translation of whatever language “Siri” is).

Consequently, she lost a little of her limelight, though she’s been more than compensated with fawning reviews and loving fan tributes. As can be expected, some wags have made videos of themselves tricking Siri into saying naughty notions chiefly by hacking their own IDs so the phone thinks their names are four-letter words, making it unclear who the joke is really on. I have yet to upgrade so I’m unsure as to how Siri will destroy the pronunciation of my name or transcribe mine or others’ words. I do hope, however, the next time Hamlet calls she’ll cut him off with a brisk, “That’s the question, isn’t?” and hang up. *Some of these examples have been made family-friendly.
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1 Oct 2011

How to Use the Cloud as a Writer
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“Skywriting by Word of Mouth” was a posthumously published book of prose penned by John Lennon that I was gifted a quarter-century ago. It was writing born of an anarchic love of language that sufficed as depth when I was 14 and sometimes still haunts me. Well, at least its title haunts me.

When general awareness of so-called “cloud” computing burst into media consciousness in recent years, I couldn’t help but think of Lennon’s book title and it’s reference to skywriting. Though the term is usually reserved for daredevils with an airplane, it’s become my personal metaphor for writing directly into the “cloud.” Whether that was with Google Docs, or ever increasingly, Evernote, the idea of putting words into some ephemeral-sounding digital mist appeals to me.

Moreover, I can access it anywhere and on any device. Now, moments otherwise lost waiting for the train or between bouts with baristas for refills could be productive. I could “skywrite” my columns, my blogs, bits of books, scenes in screenplays when I would otherwise be twiddling my thumbs, or more likely, using my thumbs to scroll through the Facebook or in engaging some other digital distraction.

Now, my thumbs are producers, world class hacks, hunting and pecking these very words you’re reading. What’s interesting to me is that writing to the cloud makes the creative act both incidental and opportunistic — with the right device in hand (an iPhone in this case), writing is like spackle filling the fissures in one’s schedule. Many a colleague might bristle that I’ve not ennobled the act of writing with it’s own appointment in my Google Calendar. Mind you, I do occasionally make a date with the muse but as a man with a toddler and a full-time career writing hokum on the clock, I have to let any “extracurricular” writing spring like weeds from the cracks in the concrete.

Writing into the cloud allows me to do this into a single document, always waiting for me in the sky when inspiration strikes. Of course, the “cloud” is just a server farm in an air-conditioned warehouse but by the same token, one’s muse is more neurochemistry than a visitation from the divine but we can romance it all the same.

Of course, I haven’t yet bothered to extend the cloud metaphor to its logical conclusions, namely the various forms of digital precipitation that might occur if Google flipped the wrong switch. Would words rain from the heavens? Not likely, but the waterworks would be real for me and thousands of other bawling scribes who entrusted their work to a couple of Stanford dropouts in Mountain View.

This is where a healthy denial mechanism is useful. Having lost an opus or two to various snafus (I once watched the lone copy of a terrible play I’d written wash out to sea), one might think I’d reconsider my precious “skywriting” notion and commit everything to good old pen and ink. Try emailing a page from a notebook sometime. I try to keep about a hundred miles between me an my editors for safety’s sake, so emailing is the only option for deadline writers like myself. And if by some miracle particle physics I was able to email my handwritten scrawl it would be unintelligible anyway. My carefully-keyed missives are borderline as is, so I don’t want to push it. For now, I’ll keep putting my words in the sky and hope they don’t get lost amongst the Lucy’s and the diamonds.
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10 Jul 2011

Phone Drones: Virtual Agents Answer Customer Service Call of Duty
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That a large portion of one’s customer service call are outsourced to India or other exotic locales is old news. We’ve all been patched through to a phone bank half a planet away to speak with someone trained to suppress their native accent and make references to your local weather and high school sports rivalries. Some fast food chains even outsource your drive-up burger order to countries like India where eating cow is verboten to a substantial portion of population. Lately, tax breaks and a surfeit of college-educated English speakers have attracted blue chip companies like IBM, Shell and Hershey to the Philippines, creating a customer service economy that, due to the 9-hour time difference from its American customers, operates predominately at night. Companies like MyCyberTwin, however, are anticipating yet another shift in customer service outsourcing – one that won’t require a legion of nighthawks in Manila, nor pretending to be American – just human. Thanks to advances in artificial intelligence, avatars (or, “virtual agents,” to use industry parlance) can answer complex questions and use rational and logical thinking. Think “Spock in a Box.” “By combining sophisticated ‘brain’ technology with state-of-the-art animation, MyCyberTwin brings a distinct and advanced virtual specialty to businesses,” explains CEO Liesl Capper. The secret sauce behind “brain technology” is the virtual agents’ ability to learn as they go, “allowing them to consistently get smarter and function at a higher level as time moves on,” Capper adds. NASA has recently implemented the technology suggesting a real-life HAL might not be far behind. Chat bots have existed in various forms since the mid-60s. MIT’s Joseph Weizenbaum is credited with creating one of the first, ELIZA, a program that used a primitive form of natural language processing to simulate a real conversation with its interlocutor via text-based exchanges. Thousands of so-called “chatterbots” have spawned since with customer service implementations facilitating millions of monthly “conversations” (San Francisco-based VirtuOz claims12 million such interactions a month for clients in the Fortune 1000). But can a virtual agent pass the Turing Test? Developed in 1950 by researcher Alan Turing, the test was originally devised to answer the question “Can machines think?” and uses natural language conversation with a human as its principle gauge. Though the test has been criticized by such heavy weights as philosopher John Searle for conflating rhetorical manipulation for cognition, the test remains something of a gold standard if only for proving the fallibility of an artificial intelligence’s human interlocutor. The goal of companies like MyCyberTwin isn’t to fool people into thinking their product is human but rather improve the customer experience but interfacing with them in a manner they’re most accustomed – like humans. As online insurer Esurance proclaims in its current ad campaign “People when you want them, Technology when you don’t.” Ultimately, however, most consumers would prefer not to have to communicate with customer service at all, whether that be in Manila or on with HAL on some customer service odyssey. The virtual agent will surely learn this long before the companies who employ -- but then again, they can't hear you scream in virtual space.
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21 May 2011

Venture Capital: Start Me Up
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Money makes the world go around—really, really fast—which is why one's head tends to spin with each new billion-dollar valuation and smug twenty-something on a magazine cover. This isn't anything new; it's even something of a Bay Area tradition. Or at least that's the impression one might get watching Something Ventured, Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine's documentary exploring the history of venture capital and the men who first saw dollar signs in Silicon Valley. "We start at the back, and if the numbers are big, we look at the front to see what kind of business it is," laughs the dapper Tom Perkins, early in the film. Perkins is the gimlet-eyed partner of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, who successfully funded companies like Google, Amazon and Genentech. The film, which screened earlier this month at the San Francisco International Film Festival, serves to remind that not only did these swaggering money men make possible companies like Apple, Atari, Cisco and Intel, but they're responsible for recasting the American dream with a geek sensibility. At the Founder Conference in Mountain View last week, the geeks were in full force, attending panels and seminars with titles like "Can You Really Raise Angel Money with One Email in 2011?" (I wasn't able to get the answer.) Presented by Foundrs.com—that's not a typo, but rather a spelling both predicated on the availability of domain names and a hip, post-dot-com disregard for vowels (think "Flickr")—the conference was crammed. According to its romance copy, organizers promised a "simple alternative to incorporating for Web 2.0 startups," which came in the form of meet-ups and some order of "virtual company product." Whichever way companies surely sprang from the event, it was evident that cash was flowing. The numbers, it's worth noting, were not in the obscene, let's-buy-a-foosball-table amounts of last decade, but rather sober seedlings of cash that almost seemed quaint. I overheard a sharp-dressed man talking loudly on a mobile phone, insisting to his interlocutor that he "can get you $50,000 in seed money right now, if that's all you want. People love the concept—you're a candlemaker in Marin!" Sure, candlemaking might not be Facebook material, but here was a guy in a suit obviously excited about the notion. This is what the Bay Area does best—it takes little ideas, infuses them with passion, smarts and drive, and turns them into big ideas. Even my toddler son seemed to get the bug. He filched a penny from my coat pocket and promptly threw it in the fountain—a small investment that turned an otherwise banal water feature into a wishing well.
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15 Apr 2011

QR is PR: How QR Codes are changing the media landscape
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They look like the bastard offspring of a crossword puzzle and a crop circle. QR codes, also known as "quick response" or "quick read" codes, are often seen lingering on the corner of magazine ads, clothing tags or band fliers as a bridge for our digital and terrestrial worlds through the aid of one's smartphone. Though nearly 20 years old, the technology, which was originally devised to track auto-parts for Japanese auto manufacturers, has only recently penetrated American consciousness since being appropriated as an advertising gimmick. However, it seems the codes will eventually transcend marketing as artists and others embrace the technology—in fact, the Bohemian itself themed its recent Best Of issue around QR codes that linked to editorial videos. The process is simple: download any of a dozen free QR code reader apps to your camera-equipped smartphone, and tap into a world of info that would otherwise be inscrutable. QR codes take the "Easter egg" concept of sequestering content in obscure places within a game environment or DVD and apply it to reality. Google has been issuing such codes with its "Google Places" initiative as a means of muscling into Yelp territory. Stroll by hip ROE Nightclub in San Francisco and stuck to the corner of a window is a QR code that, when read, links to a half-off lunch coupon to present to your server. Conference badges now boast QR codes for the facile swapping of contact information. Indie-music service CD Baby's Kevin Breuner recently posted a blog and video about using QR codes to promote one's band. The little iconic square is becoming ubiquitous. "Pick up any magazine, go walk around the city, go up to a hotel—it's all over the place, and, in general, in Asia and Europe, it's much more accepted. We are very far behind with the QR code here in the U.S.," observes Peter Philip Wingsoe, CEO of Entertainment Fusion Group, which has produced QR marketing campaigns for Guess and Neuro Beverages, among others. Though his company has used QR codes for five years, he's only seen an up-tick in requests for QR-related campaigns this year. Wingsoe suggests the relatively slow acceptance of QR codes in America is because the software to read them is not preloaded on our smartphones, as it is in Asia and Europe. "We're seeing a huge pick up, and I think that in the near future we're going to see a lot more, and you can start doing more with the QR codes," says Wingsoe. "We're actually making the codes look like logos." Of course, it's only a matter of time before logos themselves become encoded with secret information—as if they aren't already.
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13 Jan 2011

iPad App Takes Comic's Content Over Medium
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Sad Comics droll addition to iTunes' burgeoning (comic) book store

Somehow, someone in every generation claims to have had the inaugural issue of – insert comic book title here – stowed in the attic, garage or under the bed only to discover that their mothers had disposed of it with the one-eyed teddy bear and one’s cummerbund from prom. If this well-worn tale is true, millions of dollars of collectible comic books are now moldering in landfills across America. When your progressive mother claims to have “recycled” your pristine first edition of Action Comics No. 1, remind her that having $317,000 pulped into toilet paper is little consolation. How the ephemera of children’s entertainment transforms into high-end obsessions for collectors requires more analysis than this space allows, though we might surmise names like Freud and Peter Pan and would come up as frequently as Frank Miller and Stan Lee (also, notice how it’s always the mother who dumps the comics in these tales of multi-panel of woe). Entrepreneur Alex Komarov has a product that will prevent comics from ever being dumped again – keep the content, ditch the medium. Komarov’s latest foray into the iPad app market (coming on the heels of his popular “Accordéon” app, which replicates the squeezebox in nothing less than HD) is an elegant addition to the growing library of graphic novels now available on the tablet device. Komarov’s, however, is a standalone application entitled Sad Comics, a clever anthology written and illustrated by Roman Muradov that invites readers into a “world of delight and dismay” and features the ruminations of a dying fish (and its notion of seducing Hitler’s bride Eva Braun) and a bear negotiating an existential entreaty with his terminal brain cancer. That both Komarov and Muradov hail from Moscow might account for the distinctly Dostoevsky-ian sensibility of the material rather than the muscle-bound, Spandex-clad tortured redeemers one often finds in comic books. This is content for its own sake. Whereas a traditional comic book is collectible as an artifact, Komarov’s product is only collectible in a sense – you can purchase all 5 issues on iTunes for $3.99 (the first issue is available for $0.99). There is no inherent value, however, to the digital one and zeroes that ultimately comprise the experience. In fact, since digital media is infinitely replicable, it’s tantamount to ubiquitous, which, in terms of market scarcity equals worthless. Sad Comics, however, is worth far more the aggregate pixels that form its tastefully murky palette – like the best graphic novels, Sad Comics is diverting, contemplative, beautifully rendered hybrid of art and literature. Its method of delivery, however, raises intriguing questions about how we not only consume media but how and why we value it, and by extension, art. Hang an iPad frozen on Sad Comics on your wall and you’ve saved on a frame by wasting an iPad. However, a lithograph of the tumorous bruin signed by Muradov might fetch you some rubles on eBay. Will this valuation model ever change? Komarov, one can safely assume, doesn’t care – for him it’s about the content, not the debate. The eponymously-named Alex Komarov, Inc., is a “mobile interaction design and strategy” company, which generally creates solutions for clients in the digital mobile space. Publishing Sad Comics and other material under the Pretentious Press banner is a relatively recent development for the technology firm, which quickly realized comic books represented an entirely different kind of challenge. “I think the biggest challenge is the content,” said Komarov. “No matter how good your eye is, at the end of the day what matters is ‘Are the comics interesting enough and do people want to read them?’” The technological aspect of the project rolled straight out of Komarov’s wheelhouse. “The iPad does not present too much of a challenge because the format of the screen is perfect. You can read it on the screen as if you’re holding the real comic book,” said Komarov. “This is exactly what we’re trying achieve – the feeling of the real comic book, to basically transfer the magic of the comic books that you have on your shelf to the iPad.” Sad Comics will soon release a “premium app” that will feature high-resolution artwork and “extras” reminiscent of DVDs, including “making-of” material like early sketches, additional illustrated short stores and “secret bonus content.” Which, sounds kind of collectible, but only kind of – so far.
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21 Nov 2011

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13 Jan 2011

Sad Comics droll addition to iTunes' burgeoning (comic) book store

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