Apple’s Siri Still Hates the British. And Southerners

Siri comes with support for five languages: three dialects of English (U.S., United Kingdom, and Australia), French and German.

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/12/20/apples-siri-still-hates-british-and-southerners/

A growing number of accented Americans have taken to Apple’s forums to voice their complaints in the only language Apple tech support understands: the written one.

Siri: Why Apple will build, buy, or partner on a search engine: Siri is emerging as Apple’s game-changer that could put serious pressure on Google. But, first Apple needs to figure out web search integration.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/siri-why-apple-will-build-buy-or-partner-on-a-search-engine/64382

The revolutionary piece of Siri is what it does in Internet search. It’s early and Siri is still imperfect, but there are moments when Siri drastically streamlines the search process and gives us a peek at the future.

Below, Stewart Alsop, veteran venture capitalist, ex-tech journalist, and Apple watcher, says that Apple is developing a smart search architecture and is embedding its newly acquired Siri technology into all its devices and content. He also predicts that the iPad will soon become as large as a television!

Wolfram Alpha search engine now tracks flight paths, trajectory information. he search engine, which recently began incorporating data from the FAA can now, with a five-minute delay from real-time data, use a flight’s speed, heading and altitude to offer a projection of a plane’s position. A search for ‘flights overhead’ via the Wolfram Alpha web site or app will use your location to pinpoint flights that should be visible to you.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/19/wolfram-alpha-search-engine-now-tracks-flight-paths-trajectory/

Here’s a demo using Siri enabled iPhone

Siri’s Sister Company Launches a Discovery Engine — Trapit, a startup that personalizes content with the same artificial intelligence technology that powers Apple’s Siri, is launching its public beta.

Trapit was unveiled in June as a system for personalizing content based on keywords, URLs and reading habits. The company describes itself as a “Pandora for content.” By using its A.I. technology, Trapit can identify related content based on contextual data from more than 50,000 sources.

Andrew Ng, who teaches this great course, talks about unsupervised feature learning and deep learning. I’d love to ask him if this is the kind of research and science that made iPhone 5’s “Siri” possible.