Siri, a new personal assistant app for the iPhone. Looks pretty impressive.
What makes Siri unique is that it understands natural language, accomplishes tasks and adapts to user’s individual preferences over time. Siri leverages many services and technologies to accomplish the task requested.
Here’s a detailed review of Siri by Louis Gray and Robert Scoble recently did an building43 interview with Siri CEO Dag Kittlaus.
Parry Gripp made a song about the iPad that reminds us that the concept of nachos is awesome and incredible.
The 9th annual Strong Beer Month take place throughout the month of February at 21st Amendment and Magnolia Pub and Brewery in San Francisco.
February 1st, marks the start of the 8th Annual Strong Beer Month. The brewers of the 21st Amendment and Magnolia Pub and Brewery once again bring you an astounding range of memorable brews to lift the winter doldrums. Visit both breweries, try all twelve beers and keep the special commemorative glass. Commemorative t-shirts are also available. The festivities begin February 1st, but check back often as special kegs and casks of vintage and barrel-aged beers will appear throughout the month and runs the entire month. These special beers and glasses will be available from February 1st until they run out.
Time travel is always fun, and Google Earth now makes it easy to do. The newest version includes a button that allows users to to view historical imagery to see how a place has changed through the decades.
I tried it out with San Francisco, where Google Earth offers views of the city dating back to 1946. Sometimes the changes are subtle, but at other times they are very stark.
The image at top, for example, shows SOMA and the original Bay Bridge approach on Fifth Street. Notice all the ships tied up at San Francisco’s then-active wharves.
Here’s the site of the former Seals Stadium, at 16th Street and Bryant, as it looked in 1946, before the elevated 101 freeway went in, and before it became today’s Potrero Safeway:
Here’s the Panhandle, with extensive redevelopment happening in Laurel Heights and the neighborhood just east of the University of San Francisco campus:
And here’s the former Southern Pacific rail yards, now home to AT&T Park and the emerging UCSF biomedical campus:
Have fun procrastinating.
A budding rockstar for the bricolage generation, 21-year old electronic musician Pogo (aka Nick Bertke) creates original musical compositions using small sounds taken from famous films. His most recent track, the his elaborately layered “Skynet Symphony“, was composed entirely with sounds from director James Cameron’s “Terminator 2: Judgement Day”.
His most notable track, Alice, a composition of sounds from the Disney film ‘Alice In Wonderland’, was received with much success gaining 4 million views on YouTube as of December 2010. Pogo has since produced tracks using films like ‘Up’, ‘Mary Poppins’, ‘Harry Potter’, ‘The Sword In The Stone’, ‘Hook’, and ‘Terminator 2: Judgement Day’.
Pogo also creates all the videos for his songs, wonderfully mesmerizing staccato tone poems that not only evoke the spirit of the movies from which they were made, but often illuminate some new aspect about them.
Like many collage artists before him, such as Plunderphonics creator John Oswald, Pogo was drawn to the form by an innate desire to hear specific sounds repeatedly, and in a different fashion.
“For as long as I can remember, I have always detected small sounds in musical arrangements that appeal to me. I find myself with a natural desire to hear those sounds over and over. During my teenage years, it seemed logical for me to record these sounds and sequence them to form new pieces of music. …The essence of my work is to capture the elements of a scene or film that captivate me, and use them to make music that I can love.” [Interview on Youth Drip]
Given his chosen idiom, Pogo is understandably dedicated to changing the way we view copyright infringement in today’s remix culture.
“The purpose of copyright today is very questionable if I do say so myself. It may have originally been conceived to serve the creative mind in its expressive endeavours, but nowadays its used by business trolls as a mousetrap for profiting from equations and technicalities. It’s inevitable that if something is beautiful and inspiring to people, it will be used and promoted by thousands if not more. The human spirit is relentless. I don’t think Disney can copyright Alice’s voice any more than the inventor of the violin could have copyrighted its sound. The very idea is ridiculous.” [Interview with Melanie McBride]
To hear more of Pogo’s work, visit his website or YouTube channel.
See Previously: Alice, An Electronic Remix of Alice In Wonderland
BarBot 2010, the 3rd annual Cocktail Robot Festival, takes place February 17-18 at DNA Lounge in San Francisco. Advance tickets are now on sale.
In a world where robots and humans struggle together in the fight against boredom… Only one event ends up with the robots dancing ‘The Human’ while the meat puppets (you) end up singing the praises of RoboBartenders.
Come hang out with some alternative life-forms at BarBot 2010: the third annual festival of Cocktail Robotics!
BarBot is a celebration of cocktail culture and man-machine interface. Get a drink from an actual robot. Chat up a snarky electronic bartender. Listen to some graceful tunes being played by robotic music makers. And after downing your last martini, you can finally admit that it’s the geeks who shall inherit the earth.
These robots don’t clean carpets. Waht they will do is much, much better. They make you a drink! let your roommate do the vacuuming. These bots have got better programming on their mind.
Featuring an a cast of internet luminaries, Olga Nunes and Elaine Doyle have created “We Love xkcd”, a real life version of “I Love xkcd”, which itself was an animated version of the comic xkcd Loves the Discovery Channel.
FEATURING THE AWESOMENESS OF: Neil Gaiman, Wil Wheaton, Cory Doctorow, Lawrence Lessig, Bruce Schneier, Jason Kottke, Google Zurich, Hank Green, MC Frontalot, Patrick & Teresa Nielsen Hayden, Mr. Toast, Miss Cellania, Team Genius, Phil Plait, Allan Amato, Maddy Gaiman, Charissa Gilreath, Belinda Casas, Chuck Martinez, Jeremy James, Joanna Gaunder, Lee Israel & Octavio Coleman Esq. of The Jejune Institute.
via Boing Boing
In 2007 we reported that Abe Vigoda is still alive and we now have evidence that Abe Vigoda continues to be alive, as seen here in this Betty White Snickers Super Bowl ad.
Justin Van Genderen has created a wonderful series of minimalist Star Wars Galaxy Posters.
via Drawn!
“Parisian Love” the Google ad that aired during Super Bowl XLIV, part of their series of “Search Stories”. According to Eric Schmidt, it wasn’t originally intended to be an ad.
The Letterman-Oprah-Leno Super Bowl ad. Bill Carter of the New York Times gives a behind-the-scenes look at how it all came together.
via Andy Ihnatko
Greg Benson, Jonathan Coulton, Paul & Storm and Kim Evey have made a Super Bowl Song for people who watch the game just for the commercials.
Greg has also posted a behind the scenes video.
The Mighty Decider, an iPhone app for The Mighty Boosh that Doc Pop has been working on at Tribal Games, is now available.
NASA and GM Create Cutting Edge Robotic Technology
NASA and General Motors are working together to accelerate development of the next generation of robots and related technologies for use in the automotive and aerospace industries.
Engineers and scientists from NASA and GM worked together through a Space Act Agreement at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston to build a new humanoid robot capable of working side by side with people. Using leading edge control, sensor and vision technologies, future robots could assist astronauts during hazardous space missions and help GM build safer cars and plants.
photo by Tod Seelie
Writing for Juxtapoz magazine, San Francisco artist and performer Spy Emerson recounts her experiences creating and voyaging on the junk art rafts of “Swimming Cities of the Switchback Sea” and “Swimming Cities of Serenissima“.
Both daunting projects were based on Swoon’s giant multimedia floating sculptures, beautiful rafts built from trash. As a group, we made these great, impossible situations happen. For Serenissima, we built junk boats in Slovenia and floated them all the way to [the Biennale in] Venice, Italy — and right into the Arsenal, with the band playing a haunting soundtrack, reverberating off the brick walls. We shook the art elite.
photo by Tod Seelie
Working with the Anonymous Gallery at NYC’s Collective Hardware, Spy also produced a retrospective of these ephemeral vessels, and the crew of over 30 artists and dreamers who labored to bring them into existence: the “Pankabestia” of the Swimming Cities.
“Pankabestia”- what the Italian villagers called us when we floated into town on our junk rafts. It translates to “punk beasts”, and by all accounts we were – magical, grubby, unruly creatures carrying out an enchanted mythical scene, looking like bits of broken dreams, drifting.
photo by Tod Seelie
Her story is a vivid travelogue of a journey through liminal space, arduous, emotional and transcendent.
photo by Tod Seelie
See Previously:
- Update on the Swimming Cities of Serenissima
- Speakeasy, A Fundraiser For The Swimming Cities of Serenissima
photo via Weather Sealed
Weather Sealed takes a two part look at the steepest streets in San Francisco:
- More Steeps Of San Francisco
Ask a San Franciscan about the City’s steepest streets, and four out of five times, he’ll say something like “Great for scaring the bejeezus out of tourists!”
photo by Josh Ellingson
Jimmy’s Old Car Picnic has been a tradition in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park since 1988. In addition to being San Francisco’s biggest and best annual vintage car gathering, the event also raises thousands of dollars annually for children with developmental disabilities. This year, the San Francisco Parks & Rec department has denied their permit, thus putting the future of the Picnic in jeopardy. There is an online petition to help keep this unique event going and a City Hall meeting planned on Feb. 18th to discuss the situation. You can find out more at the Jimmy’s Old Car Picnic blog.
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