Alex Kelleher’s Blog

This out in August, but missed me until now.   Ofcom’s (UK communications regulator) “Communications Market Report“.  Apart from talk of the UK getting faster broadband (I’m not holding my breath, although buying a BT iPlate increased my connection speeds by almost double, I kid you not), something grabbed my attention.  The share of media time in terms of average minutes spent a day in each medium is:

• TV: 218 minutes
• Radio: 164 minutes
• Internet: 60 minutes

That’s right, the “lean-forward” medium we’re all breaking our backs over is a mere 60 minutes, or 13% of an average person’s day… 

Mind you, as my digital TV reception worsens, any TV I do watch is online via iPlayer and the equivalents at ITV and Channel 4.  That’s kind of half “lean-forward” half “sit-back” behaviour, as a) the screen isn’t big enough to be that far away, and b) endless Outlook email alerts interrupt anything I do try and watch.

admin Television, Web

Every so often (i.e. not very often), the web springs a pleasant and unexpected surprise.  Like when I clicked on the “enter site” link on Searcy’s guide to the 30 St Mary Axe, London (the “Gherkin”).  

I won’t spoil it, give it a go!

admin UI, Video, Web

For the first time, one “chat bot” managed to fool 25% of its human conversationalists that they were chatting to another human.   The annual Loebner prize ($3000, so they’re not in it for the money) was won by Elbot, created by Fred Roberts, this last Sunday.  The “Turing Test” model sets the interrogator behind a wall, and has them converse with an unknown human-or-machine on the other side.  A machine that fools 30% of people is deemed (by Turing) to have passed, so we’re almost there, you’d think.

This is what I got from a quick chat with Elbot:

E: Hello dear user and welcome to Elbot! Just wondering, could you enter a single word that describes your energy level?

Variable

E: Well, my biorythms are all mixed up. Maybe because I’m not biological.

Way to give the loebner prize away!

E: Do you think you will win the Loebner prize?

oh sure

E: Please say that in some other way. I am not able to process ironic statements.

And so on, but much more random as time went on.  Not sure I’d want to meet the 25% that were fooled, but you can make your own mind up by chatting to Elbot right now: http://www.elbot.com/

admin AI

Recently Infoworld published their 10 “future shock” predictions.  Here they are, and what I think of them (and a couple of my own):

1.  Triumph of the cloud – following on from Amazon’s EC2 services and the like, and from early attempts such as SETI@home’sdistributed search for E.T.  Verdict: quite likely, but conflicts with the growth in cheap-yet-powerful small webtops, mobile phones crammed with technology, and the commoditisation of high tech

2. Cyborg chic- by 2018 people will be evolving into cyborgs.  Though I think it will take (a lot) longer (viz Arthur C. Clarke predicting in 2001 – A Space Odyssey that we’d be colonizing the moon by now).  But head-embedded phones aren’t too far away, maybe 2025

3.  Everything works- a joke prediction that everything digital will work, though the prediction of “it even changes based on what you’re currently doing” is one I’m pretty much focused on right now…

4.  Nothing escapes you.  In other words, everything you do and experience lives on in a digital vault somewhere.  Actually, pretty useful and scary at the same time.  But inevitable.  Some people are “life logging” already

5.  Smartphones take center stage.  For sure they’ll be more ubiquitous and ever more useful, but I don’t think they’ll replace laptops/PCs in their current form.  Unless we evolve matchstick fingers and zoom lens in our eyes, we’re all of one broad size – and that size needs a keyboard and a screen.

6.  Human-free manufacturing.  Robots rule.  I thought this was already the case?

7.  Perfect image recognition.  Object recognition in images is being worked on all over the place, for sure, and everyone’s favorite human-shaped robot Asimo is currently learning to recognise objects.

8.  Big Brother never sleeps – yup, if we’re not being tracked already through every step we take, we’re about to be.  The UK government right now is trialling satellite tracking technology to help us all live better lives.  Sorry, I meant to tax us more and fine us if we pause on double yellow lines too long…

9.  Unbroken connectivity – that would be good

10.  Relationship enhancement – using technology to enhance our offline relationships (e.g. automatically storing their kids names for future recall).  Sure to happen.

Finally, then, a couple of my own along the same lines:

11.  Today’s top online brands won’t be the top brands in 10 years or even less (Facebook, Google, etc).  Hard to imagine, but almost guaranteed.

12.  Unified messaging.  I don’t actually care whether the message I just got was through Twitter, an SMS, the Blackberry Messaging service, interpreted voice via Spinvox, an email, smoke signals, or someone shouting across the room.  I really just care about the message.  Unify them, please, before I go mad.

admin top lists

Every so often, a product idea just clicks.  This is one of them - a virtual “cable” projected onto the windscreen that shows you exactly the turning you need to take.  Simple.  Brilliant.  Check out the videos on their site.

While I’m on the subject, a bit more TomTom – style “social” networking of real-time traffic information would be welcome.  GPS routing on my 3G blackberry, where they offer some real-time traffic info is poor (make one different turning and downloading the new roads takes too long to catch up).  RDS doesn’t really work, and waiting for radio traffic reports is really, really old now.

Social driving brings up all sorts of new networking opportunities (stuck in the same traffic jam?  Drive the same route to work each day?  Want to send insults to the driver in the car in front?) - which you’ll either hate or love, depending on your viewpoint.  Me, I’d like to know in real time the quickest way to get from A to B in real-time, and not make too many wrong turns along the way… Simple.

admin Cars