Siri – a week later and my next killer Siri app idea

It’s now been nearly a week since my wife got her iPhone 4S.  I’m surprised that the way she uses her phone has changed slightly.  All because of Siri.

I’ve caught her talking to that Siri person, even late at night.  And I know she’s been talking to Siri in the car.  Why is she talking so much with this person?

It just so happens that it’s much faster to say “Remind me to call the dentist at 9 tomorrow” than to pull up the Reminders, click the +, give it a title, select a time, etc. 

It’s just so much faster to say “What’s the weather tomorrow?” than to find a weather app, click on it, etc.

It’s just so much faster to say “Play Fix You” than to click the Music icon, scroll up and type out “Fix You” using the keyboard.

But I now wish that Siri could connect and be used by apps.  

On the theme of “Personal Assistant”, my killer idea for today is to integrate Siri with shopping list intelligence.  Imagine how useful Siri could be if you could dictate your shopping list throughout the week.  If you run out of something during the week, just tell Siri “Remind me to buy toothpaste”.   Or if you’re looking up a recipe to cook up, just dictate what you need to get like “Add onions, garlic and tomatos to my shopping list”.  Then when you get to the shops, it can remind you to buy those items.   That would be absolutely brilliant.

Or all TomTom or other GPS app interaction should be by voice like “Drive me home” or “I wanna go home”, or if you’re on a long roadtrip with the kids, “Navigate to the nearest McDonald’s” or “We need to get a toilet quick!”

 

Thoughts on Siri and Artificial Intelligence

When I was at Uni, I did some work that covered a bit of Artificial Intelligence.  Now AI is a huge field, but my project was on a basic speech recognition engine.  There are many areas being researched in AI, but one large problem is “learning”.   If we could train an AI system by feeding it more input, and if it can continually get better at categorising/recognising/classifying the input, then it would appear to be get more “intelligent”.

One problem is getting enough input.  For my speech recognition project at Uni, I had access to a CD with a handful of sound samples – of different people saying the same set of words.  The idea is, the more it heard different people saying, eg. the number “One”, then it should get eventually be able to recognise anyone saying “One”.   It would have been wonderful to record everyone in my unit, or even everyone doing Engineering as input to my project – but the logistics were too hard.

The problem of getting a large bank of input is not just for my speech recognition project – it’s for any AI learning system.

And that’s one thing that I’m so excited about for Siri – the new Personal Assistant Application on the iPhone 4S.

Imagine this – you gather over 300 researchers from 25 of the top research institutions in the world to work on an Artificial Intelligence project to build an AI assistant.   Then you put the findings and results of their work into a common handheld device, combine it with a voice recognition system, and unleash it to millions of people around the world who might be using it regularly, if not just to play with for novelty’s sake.

That is one MASSIVE bank of input data from an Artificial Intelligence point of view.

Just imagine the amount of new input data that is being received and processed.  On one hand, I wonder if Apple are collecting and storing the phrases people are saying into Siri and the privacy concerns around this.  But on the other hand, if Apple are using this data for Siri to continually improve its responses and intelligence, then you’d hope that it will get better at producing more useful results as time moves on.

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The other thing I’m excited about (wow, readers must think I’m a real Apple fanboy), is that, yes, even though speech/voice recognition is not new by any means, Siri’s conversational interface is in line with the touch UI of the Apple iPad/iPhone – in that user’s shouldn’t need to THINK about HOW to interact with the technology, it should just work naturally.

All those patents about how the iPhone touch interface bounces at the end of scrolling, and how it slows down – those are concepts to make the screen appear and act like a physical object with momentum and inertia – it makes it seem more “real”.   And so with Siri – I know it’s not perfect, but the user doesn’t have to remember some strange sequence of words or to re-work sentences into specific structures, or speak slowly one syllable or word at a time to make it understand you.   You should be able to talk to it like any other person, and it should just understand.   I like where Apple is heading with this – where technology really is there to “assist” humans when required, and us “humans” don’t need to try to translate our intentions into the computer’s view of the world.

Perth Beach Wedding – Renae & Ywain

A few weeks ago, the gloomy weather in Perth decided to stay away, and the beautiful Spring sunshine arrived for Renae and Ywain’s wedding.   The weather was perfect – one of those days when you think to yourself “This is why I live in Perth!”   Renae & Ywain – thank you for letting me be part of your wedding day and capturing your love for each other!

The shoot started at the boy’s house.   It was also the day of the West Coast Eagles’ final in Melbourne, and this kept the boys entertained for a while!

We scooted quickly over to the Ocean Beach Hotel in Cottesloe where the girls were getting ready.  It was definitely beach weather with lots of people chilling at the OBH.  I just loved the amount of natural light streaming in through the windows that day.

Renae and Ywain had organised a 1958 Cadillac Fleetwood Limousine from JC Classic Automobiles.  According to the driver, John, it turns out that he bought and carefully and personally restored this American car as a labour of love!

After the wedding, the bridal party had a couple of hours to chill out and wander around the Surf Club and beach for photos.  Yes, we did get all the shoes off, but luckily no-one got too wet

There was an amazing sunset that day, so we just HAD to get back out on the beach one more time before the reception at the Surf Club.  I can’t believe how fortunate we were with the sky that evening.

The reception was held on the balcony of the City of Perth Surf Life Saving Club overlooking the beach where the celebrations continued!

ANCA WA Choral Festival Concert Photos

ANCA is the Australian National Choral Association – an organisation which aims to encourage and promote choral music and choirs in Australia.   The WA chapter has just been reformed and they had Choral Festival Day to mark this occasion.

No, this was not a “concert” – it was a festival where for a few hours, everyone first did a warm-up, then different choirs sang for each other and it all finished with a big “sing” – where everyone learnt a song together.

It was a fantastic session – the age range of participants ranged from Primary School to people in their 70′s-80′s!  So many choirs and people were interested attending that there weren’t enough seats in the venue!

I was there to take some snaps to document the day.  The hardest part was choosing the right time to click the shutter button as many of the items were quiet – so I had to time my shots with louder parts of songs, or right at the end just before or with the applause.  Maybe I need to investigate a mirror less camera body one day or some noise dampening for the Nikon D700

Here are some shots from the day!

PCCC Fundraising Concert Photos

A few months ago, I was asked to take some photos for a church fundraising concert.  It was great to see such a huge audience turnout for the concert, which unfortunately pushed me right to the backs and sides only.  However, there were many different acts so I was able to move around between items and get different angles.

The best part of the event was the last item where various ensembles all combined together!  It was wonderful to see the adult choir, childrens choir and orchestra all together.  Was it professional musical standard?  Of course not, these were all amateurs doing something for a good cause.  But what struck me was the gusto – the passion that they all had – well done to all!

Here are a few of my favourite shots from the day!