Siri Thinks New York City Is In Texas

Apple has been getting a lot of bad press recently in regard to its Internet-based software (see disastrous Maps app). Well, Siri has a huge glitch of its own which is not even something due to IOS 6.

This has been a problem w/Siri since last spring where if you ask for the weather in New York City, it will usually give you the weather for New York, TX.  How Siri could confuse these is a bit bizarre given that the other New York is hardly even a town; it's more of a crossroads about 80 miles southeast of Dallas.

Siri is supposed to be able to learn from its mistakes but not in this egregious case of error. There have even been a number of threads on the Apple website discussing this with people talking about going to the Genius bar.  But still there is no solution yet.  It seems like this is something that might be a priority given the thousands of iPhones in NYC. But months later, it remains unfixed. I love Apple products but Apple software? That's a whole other story....

So Call Me Maybe.....On Your Glove Phone

This picture is not a joke or something from The Onion or the latest Carly Rae Jepsen spoof video.  This is Hi-Fun, a real and crazy little gadget that takes Bluetooth to the next level.

This set of warm winter gloves comes with a built in microphone and speaker so that you can literally put it up to you ear and mouth and hold a conversation.  It's made to connect with the iPhone too, making it a cool new accesory for those iPhone 5 adapters. Granted, people may think you look a little silly and your hand may cramp up a bit for those long conversations with your spouse. But in the winter, something like this might actually come in handy....especially in New York! Made and marketed mainly in Europe so far, the cost is 50 Euros...or about $64.

Could Your Cat Be An Amazing Photographer Too?

The Tribeca Film Festival wrapped last week and one of the more talked about shorts was CATCAM.  It's about a German engineer named Juergen Perhold living in the South who has a very adventurous cat named Mr. Lee who would disappear for days at a time.  Curious what his cat was up to, Juergen engineered a little "catcam" that hung around Mr. Lee's neck that recorded 500 photos at different intervals of his cat's many adventures, like finding a snake or crawling through a drain.  

You can view Mr. Lee's photos (like the extremely artful shot above of a garage) on Juergen's website. And if you have a cat who wanders, you can buy a catcam of your own for just $53 dollars! Now you can see how your cat lives when you're not around.  It could seem like spying but, if your cat has as great an eye as Mr. Lee, who knows...your kitty's photos could be worth millions in the art world.

Could 48 Frames Per Second Ruin The Magic Of Movies?

There is a bit of a technical tempest brewing this week after Peter Jackson screened footage from his upcoming THE HOBBIT.  Utlitizing a new digital technology that shoots 48fps (as opposed to the 80 year old 24fps standard for films), Jackson hopes to revolutionize cinema with this new look.  However, the screening of 10 minutes of scenes from his highly anticipated pre-quel to LORD OF THE RINGS got a decidedly negative reaction at Cinema Con this week.

As reported on the HuffPost and geek blogs everywhere, many people though the footage looked so hyper-real that it lost the magic that the standard movie image has.  There were unflattering comparisons to the film looking like "a bad soap opera" and the sets looking like....sets.  This sounds a bit like the concern 10 years ago when HD was first introduced and everyone thought actors on screen would look too real, and thus ordinary.  But as HD rolled out, that concern appeared to be overstated. However, given the strong reaction to Jackson's screening, it might be longer and rougher road for the conversion to this 48fps format.

Latest In Hi-Tech Toys Comes To Times Square

I was in midtown yesterday and stopped by the new pop-up WIRED store on Broadway and 42nd which features tons of hi-tech toys for holiday shoppers, including everything from 3D flatscreen TVs to touchscreen watches.  One of the most buzzed about items was the Lytro light field camera.  It is a curiously-shaped rectangular box that takes whopping 45MB pictures which capture so much information that you can change the point of focus after you've taken the picture.  You can check out one of these nifty cameras from the "ambassadors" in the store (a.k.a. cute actors with jobs for the holidays) and you take some pictures with it.  It won't be on the market til 2012 but you can pre-order them already, starting at $400.  This little cameras could be the wave of the future, especially when their expected video version comes out soon.

Other unusual products on display and for sale are the Maker-Bot 3D printer, which creates tiny objet'd'art in plastic (like a 3-inch Teddy bear or an octopus).  I would have liked to seen the printer in action but it only had the finished products.  Price tag...a cool $1300.  Another pricey item which was not on display due to theft concerns was a bit retro-tech.  A gold-plated Atari gaming system going for $6650.  That would look amazing in front of your huge flatscreen TV...talk about some entertainment bling!  The WIRED pop-up store will be open everyday from 12-7pm until Christmas Eve.

&$@!*? That Siri Says...And Sings Too

In the last week, people have been having fun with Siri, Apple's new built-in digital personal assistant that comes with the new iPhone.  Though you can make appointments, phone calls and search the internet for all sorts of information, people of course like to ask Siri personal questions.  To some of these there is a built in response while to others, Siri seems to go a little blank.  There is now a Tumblr devoted to the "Shit Siri Says" where you can read what people have said (PEOPLE: "I Love You" SIRI: "All You Need Is Love. And Your iPhone"! ) and add your own too.

But asking Siri what she looks like is not enough for us humans either. We also have to sing it to her.  A talented young musician named Jonathan Mann has created a little duet with Siri.  How cute.  And very funny too....

Clean Your Facebook

There are many of you out there who, like myself, are not happy with the new look of Facebook. Too many useless quizzes like "what chakra are you" and "what's your superpower", too many notifications from applications you never use, too many things cluttering up your homepage. Well, now there is a way to clean-up Facebook's act on your own. Simply written and in plain English, it's the SKILLFOO page which can make your online life a little more manageable. I spent about 15 minutes going through the suggested "tips" and already my homepage is cleaner and my notifications more useful. So stop joining lame groups that want to go back to the original design. The new Facebook is here to stay...and it's yours to control.