Siri and autistic kids

There was a great op-ed in the NYT yesterday. It's by Judith Newman and it's about how much Siri has helped her autistic son. Seriously, Siri is this kid's best friend and Newman writes about their relationship (the kid and Siri) in a touching and very funny way. You must read "To Siri with Love". Ah haz spoken.

I don't want to excerpt sections that reveal the child's interaction with Siri. If you want to check that out, you'll have to click on the link above to read Newman's words. But here's a bit from another part of the op-ed:

But the companionability of Siri is not limited to those who have trouble communicating. We’ve all found ourselves like the writer Emily Listfield, having little conversations with her/him at one time or another. “I was in the middle of a breakup, and I was feeling a little sorry for myself,” Ms. Listfield said. “It was midnight and I was noodling around on my iPhone, and I asked Siri, ‘Should I call Richard?’ Like this app is a Magic 8 Ball. Guess what: not a Magic 8 Ball. The next thing I hear is, ‘Calling Richard!’ and dialing.” Ms. Listfield has forgiven Siri, and has recently considered changing her into a male voice. “But I’m worried he won’t answer when I ask a question,” she said. “He’ll just pretend he doesn’t hear.”

See? Newman is a smart, funny writer. G'wan, go read it!

Sometimes Siri gets drunk

Siri, Apple's virtual assistant, is usually reliable. But every now and then, it seems like she's dead drunk.

First, understand that Siri and dictation both use the same engine. If Siri understands your words, so does Mac's dictation function. I often speak to my iPad in the evening. I'll dictate an idea for a post, or a note for a novel. It's quite helpful.

The way dictation and Siri work is that when you speak you speak to your iPad (or computer), it records what you say and sends the recording to Apple, whose servers decipher its meaning and return text to you. As I say, it's usually quite good.

But when the circuits are busy -- like on a Friday night or, really, anytime after school lets out -- Siri screws up. Last night I tried to input a title for a post. I dictated "These people are onto something" and Siri returned "Are Pontoosuc". See what I mean? Drunk. I think it's wild how wrong it gets it. I mean, are pontoosuc? Well, I guess it got the "onto" part right.

Anyway, if this ever happens to you, just wait a moment and try again. If it still doesn't work, wait ten minutes. That should take care of it.

Siri in camouflage?

Found this at TUAW (a Mac site) today.

Also to be found within the exhaustive look at Siri's backstory is the tale of how the concepts behind [the] software got their start as a project of the US Department of Defense. Only instead of finding nearby restaurants and setting alarms, the goal of creating a military-grade virtual assistant was to aid top brass in day-to-day base operations and other important tasks. We can't help but shudder at the idea of it interpreting a general's request to "order some flowers for mom" as "deploy all our nuclear bombs."

If you've interacted with Siri, you know how frightening that prospect is. The software is easily confused. Siri on the battlefied? Horrors.

So how's that iPad workin' out for ya, Keith?

I'm so glad someone asked. This iPad is great!

My main reason for getting an iPad was to have Siri and dictation available on a mobile device. My iPod Touch is too old; it lacks these features. My fondest wish for the device was that it would give me a way to record ideas without using my computer.

It met my expectations, and more. Now I can pause a football game, reach for the iPad and talk an idea into it. Does dictation make mistakes? Yes, but not often if I speak clearly. And this is the interesting thing: when it gets a word wrong, if I put my finger on the word to highlight it, it suggests the correct word. This is true although the correct word may be lightyears away from the original word it produced.

I think what happens in these cases is that dictation thinks "it's this word or this one" and puts one of them out there. If I click on it, it suggests the other word it was pondering, and this is almost always the correct word. And I suspect that all the while, it's learning about my voice and improving itself. Very cool. So I got what I wanted, in terms of dictation. I've been writing entire blog posts with dictation. I'm typing this one but I dictated "Goodness gracious" below. Works great!

As for Siri, if I have a pressing need to know the population of Pakistan during a game (and I do, sometimes), I ask Siri and boom, there's the answer. Plus, as I've noted here before, Siri is great with sports. I say, "show me the NFL schedule for Sunday" and there it is. I ask "what NFL teams are playing tonight" and Siri shows me the Steelers game, with the start time. I love Siri.

And I love my iPad. Everyone needs one of these, especially writers.

Funny post about Apple's Siri

You've all heard about Siri by now, I assume. In case you haven't, it's the digital assistant included with the iPhone 4S. It seems almost magical. Just ask it a question and it comes up with a likely answer.

And you can have fun with it. Check out this article at The Blaze. If nothing else, scroll down and read the screens where a text question was posed to Siri, and look at Siri's answers.

I gotta have this. I gotta!