Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Mobile & Intelligent (Siri @ iPhone 4s by SRI)

The best new feature on iPhone 4s, "intelligent agent" Siri ("virtual personal assistant") is developed by SRI and funded by DARPA ("Siri-ously DARPA" @ Fast Company)...



Apple purchased SRI spin-off company that made Siri App,
and then improved and included in iOS 5.

Here comes Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Mobile Devices on every new iPhone :)

Born out of SRI International’s CALO (Cognitive Assistant that Learns and Organizes) project, the largest artificial intelligence effort in U.S. history, Siri utilizes advanced technologies to enable an intelligent, context-aware, question-and-answer interaction with humans, in the service of task delegation and completion.

SRI was founded as Stanford Research Institute in 1946...

SRI + DARPA also invented Internet (first called ARPANET) in 1969...

HTML5 Canvas Drawing Lines

The future of GUI is HTML5. Just ask Microsoft.
And this includes graphics, too.

I have observed a strange issue that lines show 2-pixel wide,
even when "stroke" width is selected to be 1 pixel.
As usual, there is a rational and useful explanation and solution...

This good (free online) book has answers to right questions...

Canvas - Dive Into HTML5 by Mark Pilgrim (@ Google)

for (var x = 0.5; x < 500; x += 10) {
  context.moveTo(x, 0);
  context.lineTo(x, 375);
}
Q: Why did you start x and y at 0.5? Why not 0?

A: Imagine each pixel as a large square. The whole-number coordinates (0, 1, 2…) are the edges of the squares. If you draw a one-unit-wide line between whole-number coordinates, it will overlap opposite sides of the pixel square, and the resulting line will be drawn two pixels wide. To draw a line that is only one pixel wide, you need to shift the coordinates by 0.5 perpendicular to the line's direction.

For example, if you try to draw a line from (1, 0) to (1, 3), the browser will draw a line covering 0.5 screen pixels on either side of x=1. The screen can’t display half a pixel, so it expands the line to cover a total of two pixels:

A line from (1,0) to (1,3) is drawn 2 pixels wide

But, if you try to draw a line from (1.5, 0) to (1.5, 3), the browser will draw a line covering 0.5 screen pixels on either side of x=1.5, which results in a true 1-pixel-wide line:

A line from (1.5,0) to (1.5,3) is draw 1 pixel wide

Steve Jobs turtlenecks

The real reason Steve Jobs wore turtlenecks | Technically Incorrect - CNET News

Jobs took a trip to Japan in the 1980s and was rather moved to see everyone at Sony wearing a uniform
...
Jobs discovered that the Sony garb was designed by the fine Japanese fashion icon Issey Miyake. So he asked Miyake to create, dare one even imagine it, an Apple vest for all of Cupertino to wear.
...
Apple employees expressed aggressively negative reservations about such a 1984-ish suggestion
...
The Apple CEO and Miyake, though, stayed in touch. Jobs' enthusiasm for a personal uniform remained undimmed, so he asked Miyake to make him some of his classic black turtlenecks. He received "hundreds of them."
...
Jobs understood that the more he was seen in public, the more he felt he ought to project a consistent brand image for his own personal identity.