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Google Assistant and Google Home: Amazon Echo, But From Google (arstechnica.com)
At its developer conference I/O, Google on Wednesday unveiled Google Home, a small round gadget with microphones and speakers that listens and responds to your questions and commands. As you may have guessed, Google Home will compete with Amazon Echo. The company also announced Assistant. Ars Technica reports: Google's conversational assistant is in the same vein as Cortana and Siri, Google Assistant. Google Assistant will be on phones and wearables too, and Google says that it will be better at picking out the context of what you're doing than any of the competitors. As an example, when standing near Cloud Gate, better known as The Bean, in Chicago, you can ask Google Assistant "Who designed this?" Based on your location alone, Assistant will understand that you're probably referring to the large shiny sculpture in front of you, and answer "Anish Kapoor."The Google Home will be available for purchase later this year. CNET has more details.
haha :)
Be or ben't
And now It's canceled.
The thought of Google being so aware of the moment-to-moment context of my life that it can make accurate inferences about what I mean by "this" or "that" makes me want to buy a gun and go live in the woods until I die of something preventable.
Pizza the Hutt: Well, if it isn't Lone Star. And his sidekick, Puke.
Barf: That's Barf.
Pizza the Hutt: Barf... Puke... *Whatever!*
So your complaint is Siri doesn't understand that you want to use military time?
Just for kicks, I pulled out my iPhone and said "Siri, set an alarm for noon" - hey, presto, I have an alarm set for noon. Then I asked Siri to set an alarm for 1:20pm, and that worked too.
When I tried "set an alarm for sixteen-thirty", it initially didn't work... but that is because my phone isn't on 24-hour time. When I enabled that (Settings -> Date & Time -> 24-Hour Time), that same directive worked perfectly.
#DeleteChrome
That's the problem with most AI assistants right now, though. It's too easy to get kicked out of the system. Google is even worse than Siri - anytime it's not sure what your voice command is, it sends you to a chrome window with the term you spoke as the google query. Which is fine occasionally, but most of the time is wrong (because spoken syntax really isn't what google is keyed for), and - most frustratingly - there's no interaction and no way back without starting an entirely new query. And that's an issue if you're trying to get information while, say, you're driving.
Which brings up another point...if google knows where I'm going because I 'm using maps and turn by turn directions, why does "where is the nearest *insert shop*" return what appears to be a random set of locations, rather than one that is closest to the route I'm travelling? If I'm on a trip, I'm probably *not* interested in the fact that the nearest gas station is 10 miles behind me unless the next one on my route is waaaaay out there.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
No. I am not stupid. My phone is set to military time, and always has been from the day I bought it.
Proverbs 21:19
Thank you. I think that is an excellent point. Sometimes, even if you DO want the feature; even if the feature works fine; you decide it's not something you really want. That does happen with technology. An example, for me, would be Facetime. When we first got iPhones, my daughter and I used to Facetime frequently, but it didn't take long before we decided there wasn't much point in it, and now we just talk on the phone the traditional way, except for those few occasions when we want to show each other something.
Proverbs 21:19