Daily Bits

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Will Ferrell and Wired Tie Up

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The Apple iPad is one of the most sought after gadgets today – and no wonder. While it is small enough to be portable, it delivers only the most excellent graphics. That is why countless content providers have jumped into the fray, developing content for specifically for the iPad.

Wired.com is one such provider, but it seems that it has been having difficulty attracting enough subscribers for its iPad application. One factor is that a lot of the content offered in the paid version is also available in the web site for free.

Now, the provider is scrambling to get paid subscribers. As part of its efforts, Wired.com has created exclusive videos that can only be viewed via the iPad application. More so, it has employed the help of comedian Will Ferrell. While not everyone thinks Will Ferrell is funny (for the record, I think he is hilarious), this collaboration should serve to make the Wired iPad app more marketable.

Here’s a sampling of what is on offer.

Wired – Will Ferrell Short from Nick Bilton on Vimeo.

This is only the beginning for Wired.com’s expansion, though. In the near future, various content will be available for other gadgets such as the iPhone, tablet computers, Android phones, and the like. More so, by fall of this year, Wired.com is also planning on including social networking and sharing features.

Wired.com does provide interesting content, and the move to join forces with Will Ferrell just might be a good thing for them. Will this entice you to pay $5 for the app, though?

Adios, Google Wave! Is Buzz Next?

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All things come to an end, even the good ones; or maybe, most especially the good ones. For the longest time now, Google seems to have had a golden touch. It has reached such great heights, but even such a big entity makes wrong judgment calls every now and then. With Google Wave, it seems like one of those things.

Yesterday, an announcement on The Official Google Blog finally put an end to speculation about Google Wave. Launched around a year ago in June 2009, Google Wave generated tons of interest and excitement – not so different with many other Google products. The interest did not prove to be enough, though, and even the most hardcore fan has to say goodbye.

Here’s a snippet of the announcement:

But despite these wins, and numerous loyal fans, Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked. We don’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects. The central parts of the code, as well as the protocols that have driven many of Wave’s innovations, like drag-and-drop and character-by-character live typing, are already available as open source, so customers and partners can continue the innovation we began. In addition, we will work on tools so that users can easily “liberate” their content from Wave.

There’s good news at least – fans will have till the end of the year to use the site. Users will also have the tools to extract all the content they’ve put in there.

Now I am wondering…will Google Buzz suffer the same fate?

3 Android Games You Need to Have

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While we’re on the topic of Android phones, why don’t we take a look at some of the apps that are getting lots of people addicted as I write? While it’s true that iPhone apps are very addictive and that their graphics can be quite impressive, there are Android games out there that can keep you glued to your phone as well. Here are three of those games.

Bonsai Blast
There are many reasons this game is the first on the list. One, it’s free. Two, it’s completely addictive. It is just like Zuma in terms of graphics and gameplay. You’ll see marbles of different colors and blow them up by matching the patterns. Simple but you can spend hours playing the game.

Speed Forge 3D
This one costs $4.99, but people who’ve played it say it’s worth the small price you have to pay. It’s a racing game that is set in the future, in the Red Planet. The bored citizens have turned to racing for entertainment. Some users have likened the game to Wipeout. There are 6 tracks, 3 different vehicles, and weapons as well. The graphics are in full 3D.

Zenonia
Korean company Gamevil is the one behind this acclaimed mobile RPG. According to critics, the game’s richness of detail is nothing short of amazing. Wikipedia describes the game: Zenonia’s protagonist is Regret, a young man whose origins are initially unknown. His primary mission in the game is to find the reason for the death of his adoptive father at the hands of a demon and subsequently a more powerful evil that is at work.

If you haven’t gotten these games yet, what’s stopping you?

iPhone Bows to Android Phones

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It seems that predictions by some experts in the past are coming to life. According to statistics released by Nielsen, smartphones using the Android OS are being used by more people than iPhones. They released the following graphs, which were published by The New York Times yesterday.

As you can see, for quarter two of this year, the number Android OS users has surpassed the number of iPhone users. Indeed, the numbers have been steadily going up since quarter four of 2009, but it was only in the second quarter of this year that the tide truly turned. More from the report:

By the end of 2011, there could be more smartphones in the United States than the less advanced feature phones, according to a report released Monday by the Nielsen Company, a market trends monitor.

The report also notes that the Google Android platform continues to show rapid growth and over the past six months has edged past the Apple iPhone platform with new subscribers.

As the report said, though, in spite of these numbers, it seems that the iPhone is still more sought after than any other kind of mobile phone in the market. The brand and the hype look to be stronger assets than any other set of features out there. Indeed, other stats point to more people switching to the iPhone in the future. However, the fact that this handset is tied to a single carrier just might contribute to declining sales.

Do you think this is the beginning of the end for the iPhone? Are Android phones really better?

The CIA and Google Team Up to Predict the Future

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Remember the movie Minority Report? Yeah, that was a pretty cool movie, but we all know that it’s “just” science fiction. There is no way that it can happen in real life, right?

Think again. It seems that the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States and Google are planning on creating something that will make the possibility of predicting events as reality. There’s this company called Recorded Future, and this is what they do (from their web site):

1. Scour the Web
We continually scan thousands of news publications, blogs, niche sources, trade publications, government web sites, financial databases and more.

2. Extract, rank, and organize
We extract information from text including entities, events, and the time that these events occur. We also measure momentum for each item in our index, as well as sentiment.

3. Make it accessible and useful
You can explore the past, present and predicted future of almost anything. Powerful visualization tools allow you to quickly see temporal patterns, or link networks of related information.

In short, the company monitors the information that can be found online – as much of it as they possibly can – using what they call a temporal analytics engine.

How is this different from what Google and other search engines do now? The key is in the linking of information. What the temporal analytics engine does is to find patterns and relationships amongst documents, web sites, files, etc. Related names, entities, and events will be connected via the engine, and people can analyze the data and connections to somehow piece that past together or even predict the future.

Naturally, the project – and the entities involved – has drawn various reactions. There are those that are quite excited about the possibilities, and there are those who are afraid of the potential dangers this kind of technology brings.

Personally, I think that the dangers are definitely there, but that we really can’t stop the CIA from engaging in this kind of activity.  We do need control and transparency, and we can only hope that it will be so. You?

Go Fast and Accurate with Dragon NaturallySpeaking

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Speech-recognition programs used to be a thing for the future, but I guess we’re in yesterday’s future now. There have been programs promising to deliver in this regard, but the latest from Nuance seems to hold a lot of promise.

Nuance Communications recently launched an updated version of their speech-recognition program with bold promises:

  • 15 percent improvement in accuracy
  • 3 times faster than typing
  • Faster execution of voice commands.

Reading those promises, one can’t help but be excited – if you are into using speech-recognition software. However, not everyone is that impressed with the announcements. David Pogue from the New York Times unenthusiastically says:

This upgrade follows the same philosophy as the last few annual updates. It’s full of nips and tucks, all welcome, all well-executed, though none killer — and the annual improvement in dictation accuracy.

Nuance says the new version is 15 percent more accurate. Which is fine, if barely noticeable (how much better is a 15 percent gain when you’re already getting 99.6 percent accuracy?). More interesting is how it got there.

He does have a point about the gain in accuracy, doesn’t he?

In any case, you can check out a demo video below.

You can purchase the new program – it has several versions – from Nuance’s web site. The cheapest comes in at $99.99 (Home).