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After nearly a year in development and $24 million in venture capital, Siri is finally ready to bring its personal assistant to the iPhone. Siri brings a conversational interface to the iPhone which allows you to ask it to perform tasks for you such as find a French restaurant nearby and book a table, look up movie listings, order a taxi, or look up the phone number and address of a local business.  The app is now live in the App Store (iTunes link; for now it is recommended only for iPhone 3Gs models because it requires more processing power, but a version tuned for older iPhones will be come out by the end of the quarter)

You simply speak into the phone with a request like, “Find something to do in San Francisco this weekend.”  It turns your speech to text and pushes your request out to an appropriate service on the Web such as Eventful or Citysearch, in this case.  It not only attempts to bring you back the appropriate information based on context, time of day, and your location, but with your permission can go ahead and make reservations or buy tickets as well.  (Read our extensive first-look coverage from last year or watch this sneak-peak video)

Siri combines an impressive array of technologies and brings them together on the iPhone.  These include natural language processing and semantic analysis.  The underlying technology was developed at SRI with $200 million worth of Darpa grants. Siri was spun off to commercialize it and bring it to consumers.  It’s last funding round was led by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing (a fact never disclosed before), who also is an investor in Facebook.

In a way, Siri is the “mother of all mashups.”  The iPhone app is a conversational interface with Siri’s servers on the Web, which tie into  nearly 30 different APIs at launch, with more on the way.  These include OpenTable, TaxiMagic, MovieTikets.com, Rotten Tomatoes, WeatherBug, Yahoo Local, Yahoo Boss, StubHub, Bing, Eventful Freebase, Citysearch, AllMenus.com, Gayot, and Wolfram Alpha.

The app is free, and Siri gets affiliate fees every time you buy something like a concert ticket or make a restaurant reservation through the app.  In addition to helping you do things, it also can be used to set reminders. Simply tell it to remind you by email to make a phone call on Thursday morning, and it can figure it out.  The app licenses its speech-to-text engine from Nuance, another SRI spin-off. Android and Blackberry versions are also in the works.

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Mumbai. Rajesh Khanna aka Kaka has finally broken his silence and has confirmed what was being widely speculated and rumored around in the Indian blogosphere – James Cameron’s latest blockbuster Avatar being a copy of Kaka’s 1983 Bollywood masterpiece Avtaar. In an exclusive interview to Faking News, the romantic superstar of the 70’s has accused James Cameron of lifting certain scenes from his movie without giving due credits.

“After reading about it on various blogs, I decided to watch James Cameron’s movie, and I was shocked to find it a scene by scene copy of my movie. They just moved an A from the right side of the T to the left side in the movie title.” said a visibly upset Kaka, adding, “I almost wanted to cry, but I didn’t, because you know, Pushpa, I hate tears re.”

Kaka has some hard evidence to prove his point; he has pictures that show exactly how Avatar (2009) is inspired by Avtaar (1983). Kaka was kind enough to hand over these images to Faking News reporter Pushpa, and is contemplating filing a court case against James Cameron.

We leave our readers with these pictures so that they can decide for themselves:

"They copied the POSTER!"

"They even copied my paralyzed hand "

"Shabana’s faraway look, copied again"

"Do you need more proof?"

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The recently unveiled iPad was hyped as the device that will revolutionize the gadget industry—but is it worth all the fuss? Check out NPR’s quick (under five minute) podcast where host Liane Hansen talks to Laura Sydell about where Apple might have gone wrong with the iPad (besides the name).

(Via NPR)

Love podcasts? So do we.

Google Does Barcodes (Again)

Google hasn't given up on barcode scanning just yet. Although a failed Print Ad program featuring barcodes for newspapers was shut down at the beginning of the year, that hasn't stopped the company from giving barcodes another go. This time, the venue isn't the old-fashioned newspaper, but local businesses. Through Google's Favorite Places program, over 100,000 of the United State's most popular local businesses will receive stickers sporting Google's logo, a scannable barcode and a message reading, "We're a favorite place on Google." Business owners can post these decals to their store windows to show off their respectability and popularity - and you can bet many will.

Customers scanning the barcode will be taken to that store's "place page" which reveals various details about the business, including hours of operation, reviews, photos, directions, phone numbers, brands carried, menus (if a restaurant) and even mobile coupons, if available. In addition, users can "star" (rate) the establishment and submit their own review, turning Google Local Businesses into a Yelp-like user-generated review service.

While this initiative has a better chance for success in introducing barcode-scanning to the United States market than the Print Ad program did, there's still going to be some confusion on the part of consumers as to how to get started. Google notes in its Favorite Places FAQ that many modern smartphones including the iPhone, Blackberry, Droid and other Android devices offer barcode scanning applications, but no links or suggestions are provided. This leaves consumers with the problem of having to figure it out on their own. In addition, feature phone owners whose more basic devices include cameras may also wonder if there is software for their phones, too. In some cases there is, but the less tech-savvy mainstream user base has no way of discovering that without taking the time to do some research on the topic.

Perhaps Google should have introduced a cross-platform barcode-scanning application of its own? If it had, it could have definitely helped push the technology adoption forward. It's almost surprising that it hasn't yet done so, especially considering that its latest search rival, Microsoft, has. With Microsoft Tag, for example, you can create your own barcode-like "Tag images," as well as download mobile, Tag-reading software.

Good collection of apps that I would want..

Google's pre-Christmas rush

By Timon Singh | 12/07/09 - 14:45

 

Google has a busy week....

It looks like it's set to be a busy few weeks for Google, as the internet giant is expected to release its 'extensions gallery' for general users of their Chrome browser ahead of Christmas.

In Chrome's first official release, the potential extensions, available to download, are said to include SEO extensions to help in internet marketing, Shareaholic, a social media extension, Gmail Compose, which lets you quickly compose an email through your gmail account, and Quicksearch, which speeds up searches through Google.

The extensions will also give you complete control of your Google Task List and the ability to synchronize it with your Gmail Task List. Another extension will also allow Chrome users to open a tab and view websites that only work in Internet Explorer. This will enable users to view IE sites without leaving Chrome.

Busy week

As well as releasing Chrome's extensions, Google is hosting an event in California talking about the evolution of the search product over the years. It will boast presentations by Google VP of Search Products and User Experience, Marissa Mayer, and Google VP of Engineering, Vic Gundotra.

Many in the industry are expected something major to be unveiled at the conference, but whatever it may be is being kept under wraps. Could it be something to rival Bing's Maps beta product?

Later in the week, it is possible that the Mac beta for Chrome will also get released. The beta version has long been said to be complete, with designers ironing out small bugs and completing previously left-out features.

No word on the Linux build, but it is possible that could go beta this week as well.

Other projects

On top of all of that, Google have also announced they are to launch a property dimension to its UK mapping system. The new service will allow both estate agents and private sellers to put their property as an overlay on Google Maps.

Expected to launch early next year in the UK, the service has already proved popular in Australia. That site allows estate agents to list properties for free, with pictures taken from its Street View service and listing details on a map.

Clearly, Google doesn't understand the idea of winding things down before Christmas...

Cool.. Google's pushing it real hard..