How Blind People Use The iPhone 4S

Tommy Edison, who has been blind since birth, demonstrates how people who are visually impaired use the iPhone 4S. He shows us how the Accessibility setting on the phone allows him to use the Twitter and You Tube applications.

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Siri Sings

Ever wondered what Siri would sound like if the voice assistant were a singer? The folks over at Apple parody site Scoopertino pieced together a clip of Siri performing Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven. But before you click that play button in the video above, know what you won't be hearing a pleasant robotic humming in your ears — Siri's more of a performance poet than an actual singer.

 

In a satirical post on its website, Scoopertino detailed Apple's (fake) plan to record all 12 million songs available on iTunes using Siri's voice. If the digital personal assistant ever becomes a veritable virtual pop star, we happen to know a fitting character design Apple could use — it's just not something you'd want to see before you go to sleep.

 

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Siri the serial killer 

 

Attack of the killer iPhones. CNN's Jeanne Moos reports on Siri the serial killer.

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Psycho Siri 

An abandoned iPhone turns out to be a killer of a deal.

 

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Your Next Phone Could Love You

OR,

SIRI TRIED TO KILL ME! 

 

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Petition To Correct Siri's Apparent Anti-Abortion Bias Collects Nearly 30,000 Signatures 

 

In the past 24 hours, more than 27,000 people have signed a petition asking Apple to stop iPhone voice assistant Siri from directing women to anti-abortion "crisis pregnancy centers" when they ask where to get an abortion.

The Raw Story reported on Tuesday that Siri does not turn up results for any abortion clinics in Washington, D.C. or New York City. Instead, the iPhone 4 assistant either suggests out-of-state crisis pregnancy centers, which have the stated purpose of convincing women not to get abortions, or says "I didn't find any abortion clinics."

The petition to Apple, organized by social activists Nita Chaudhary and Shaunna Thomas through MoveOn.org, states: "Apple: Stop promoting anti-choice extremists. If a user asks for family planning services, they should be directed to a group that offers full services, like Planned Parenthood--not to a hard-right clinic with an extremist agenda." It had collected 27,294 signatures by the time this story was written and will be sent to Apple CEO Tim Cook when it reaches 30,000.

"What's so surprising is that Apple would put a product on the marketplace that is so discriminatory and antiquated," Thomas said Thursday. "Apple needs to correct and update Siri's query data. Apple has this reputation of being innovative and progressive, and this oversight seems out of step with who we know them to be."

NARAL Pro-Choice America also sent a letter to Cook on Wednesday demanding that Siri recognize abortion clinics.
"Siri is a great tool that mixes humor and sarcasm in responding to questions--and it is another example of how your company is on the cutting edge of demonstrating how technology can transform the way we share and access information," wrote Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL. "Thus, it is disappointing to read that a tool like Siri is missing the mark when it comes to providing information about such personal health issues as abortion care and contraception.

Apple responded to the uproar by saying that the Siri glitch is unintentional and will be fixed.

"Our customers want to use Siri to find out all types of information, and while it can find a lot, it doesn't always find what you want," Natalie Kerris, a spokeswoman for Apple, told The New York Times on Wednesday. "These are not intentional omissions meant to offend anyone. It simply means that as we bring Siri from beta to a final product, we find places where we can do better, and we will in the coming weeks."

Chaudhary told HuffPost it doesn't matter to her why the problem is happening.

"The issue is that it is and it's actively hurting women who're seeking information on family planning services," she said. "This needs to get fixed--quickly."

ALSO SEE;

Apple Says Siri’s Abortion Answers Are a Glitch

http://todaysdailypoop.blogspot.com/2011/11/normal-0-microsoftinternetexplorer4_30.html

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iPhone Explodes: Brazil Incident Is Apple's Second In Less Than A Week

 

For the second time in less than a week, an Apple iPhone 4 has reportedly exploded, this time in Brazil, according to Mashable.

The phone, which was plugged in for an overnight charge, suddenly began sparking and emitting smoke while it was just inches from its owner's face.

The owner, Brazilian Ayla Paulo Mota told the Portuguese language blog TechTudo that he was not hurt during the incident, despite his close proximity to the phone.

Editors at The Huffington Post U.K. translated Mota's comments into English:

"At dawn, I woke up seconds before witnessing the burning of my iPhone when I saw a lot of sparks and black smoke out of the cell. My room was full with an unbearable smell of smoke! At that moment, I turned off the power switch in the room to remove the phone from the outlet."

Last week, a similar incident occurred aboard a regional Australian airliner shortly before landing in Sydney. Officials from the airline company Regional Express described the incident as a "mobile phone self combustion" in which an iPhone began to glow red and emit a "significant amount of dense smoke."

Mashable also writes that in 2009 a French teenager claimed to have been hit in the eye with a glass splinter from an exploding iPhone. CBS News reported on the incident in a video which can be seen below.

Responding to the Australian incident, Apple spokeswoman Natalie Harrison told the the Associated Press that her company was looking forward to "working with the officials investigating this incident."

Apple has yet to issue a response to the latest incident.

WATCH:

 

ALSO SEE

Apple iPhone spontaneously combusts aboard flight in Australia

http://todaysdailypoop.blogspot.com/2011/11/normal-0-microsoftinternetexplorer4_787.html

 

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Updated: Siri goes down for iPhone 4S owners across the country

 

Siri, Apple’s new voice assistant feature for the iPhone 4S, is apparently suffering from an outage, which has rendered it useless for many iPhone owners. The outage began at around 1 PM CST today.

Siri isn’t just a simple piece of voice control software. To function properly, Siri must communicate with one of Apple’s servers for additional information. For example, when you ask Siri what the weather is like in Nashville, Tenn., it plays an elaborate game of telephone with a main database that has the information, and then updates you with the answer.

This is precisely the reason jailbreaking the iPhone 4 and the iPad to run Siri is so difficult.

We’re contacting Apple for additional information and will update you with what we find out.

Update: We called Apple’s customer service number to find out more information. Despite toggling off the Wi-Fi and restarting the phone as they suggested, I was unable to get Siri to connect (not that I’m surprised). The Apple Care supervisor I spoke with said it’s entirely possible that it’s a network outage.

Update 4:40pm CST: Siri is still offline, according to our tests, and numerous other users are also reporting outages. So far, Apple has not issued an official statement, and it has not responded to our requests for comment.

Update 6:04pm CST: Siri functionality has been restored for some iPhone 4S users — including myself. At this point we still don’t know what was causing the outage, or how widespread it was, and Apple still hasn’t responded to our requests for comment.

Siri did respond, however. I asked her, “Siri, where you been all day?” Her response? A number of day spas and hair salons.

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Scottish Accents Foil iPhone 4S’ 

 Siri

 

We’ve all heard about the cool and fun things that the iPhone 4S’ virtual personal assistant Siri can do.

Just like a live assistant, Siri can schedule appointments, point out potential scheduling conflicts, look up nearby restaurants, and even joke around with you. The system that combines artificial intelligence and voice-recognition can even speak and understand different languages.

And just like us humans, Siri can be befuddled by “strong” accents. The Times of London ran a story Wednesday (note, paywall) reporting that many people in Scotland are having a hard time getting Siri to understand their commands and comments.

The Times reports that when asked if it can fetch one of its owners a “fish supper,” Siri answered: “I don’t know what you mean, ‘can I pick up your professional drum people.’”

Other comments, such as “Cheers” said in a Scottish accent, was interpreted to mean “chairs.”

The Times quotes the Scottish novelist James Robertson accusing Apple of “linguistic imperialism.”

“If the phone doesn’t recognize a simple word like ‘cheers’ it won’t recognize much,” Robertson complained. “People are obliged to moderate their voices to make themselves understood by machines. It has the effect of modulating everyone’s voice toward the most powerful, dominant people in the world.”

Apple says that Siri is designed to work in all of the the United Kingdom, the United States, and Australia.

The Times, however, scoured the streets of Edinburgh and Glasgow and reported that many people said that they had had a hard time getting Siri to understand them.

But perhaps the Scots should give Siri a little time.

It could be that she just needs some more time to become familiar with their accents over time — just like a human. 

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iPhone 4s Siri

My new favorite Tumblr: S**t That Siri Says: http://bit.ly/pVPXxO

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