Steve Jobs wasn’t just a man with great vision and instincts, he was a man that bet big on people, teams and concepts he believed in. Apple computers exist because Steve saw the potential in his friend Steve Wozniak’s hobbled together motherboard. The graphical user interface exists because Steve realized this academic notion that nobody knew what to do with was something that would make computers more personal, more accessible. He bet big on a couple of PhD’s and a fired Disney animator and shepherded Pixar for over a decade so it could eventually change entertainment and re-ignite the magic of storytelling.

At the Apple announcement the day before Steve Jobs passed away, we got another one of Steve Jobs’s visions of the future, a final legacy that will change everything, all over again. Like all his other visions, it was dismissed as obvious, incremental or no big deal. A year from now may prove otherwise.

From the beginning Steve Jobs has been dedicated to changing the way we interact with computers, making them more personal. Early Macs had text to speech functionality and primitive speech recognition. Both of these technologies have matured slowly over the last two decades. Neither in a groundbreaking moment. Part of the problem is that converting human speech into text is only a small part of the challenge.

Software and systems like Nuance, Vlingo, Google Voice Recognition and others have come a long way. But they still needed that magic touch to make them into practical alternatives. To do that you need three things: A powerful engine that can convert speech into text. Artificially intelligent software that can understand all the different ways you can phrase something and learn what you mean. And an over-arching idea on how it comes together and what it’s supposed to do for real people.

Watch the demonstration of the Siri voice assistant and you’ll see how Jobs and Apple saw beyond the present state of things and combined all three. Apple acquired the company and talent behind Siri because Steve Jobs recognized a team that got the way of the future. It wasn’t speech recognition. It was human understanding.

Siri is an AI system that learns things like an intelligent person. If you tell it “My mother’s name is Patricia”, it will remember that. When you tell it next time to “Send an email to my mom”, Siri knows that the “Patricia” in your contact book is who you meant when you say “mom”.

Speech recognition everywhere else is literal. It makes people bend to the way computers do things. You have to phrase things a certain way and be very specific. This has always been the antithesis of computing for Jobs. He believed that computing should conform to people.

Siri is built upon a lot of powerful technologies and concepts. Pundits who just saw it as another speech recognition platform totally missed the bigger picture. It’s a very big idea. If you ask it a question it doesn’t just do a Google search, it uses computational systems like WolframAlpha. Want to know the current distance to Mars for your kid’s homework? Siri will give you the actual answer and not just a search result that’s outdated and wrong.

A year from now voice interaction is going to be much more commonplace. It’ll go from just being text to speech and literal instructions, to a much more natural way to interact with our devices. Google’s impressive technology will continue to evolve. Apple’s Siri will get smarter. Other companies will continue to come up with brilliant contributions. iPhones, Androids and other devices will get better and better.

We’re about to see a paradigm shift in computing. All of the elements were there before. Natural language processing, speech recognition, AI. So was the GUI and mouse, the touchscreen, the MP3 player, the smartphone and the tablet. What they needed was someone to show us how to look at them and how to make them fit into everyday life so much so they become almost invisible.

Steve Jobs has always worked to put the hardware and the machine in the background. Siri is the next evolution of that goal. When you see the promotional video for the technology, it doesn’t feature people interacting with a piece of hardware, it’s merely a medium. It shows us people using technology in the most natural way possible, simply telling it what they need it to do. The last part of the video is the most touching. We see a young blind girl reading a Braille book and using her iPhone – a device she can’t even see – to send messages, interact and communicate with the rest of the world, the same as anyone else would. This is Steve Jobs legacy. This is how he changed the world, again.

Steve may passed away, but we’re only beginning to understand how big of a dent he kicked in the universe.

[More on Siri at Apple.com]

Simone Allyne is the Weird Things eBook reviewer focusing on readily available, affordable Science Fiction and Fantasy. If you have a book you’d like reviewed, please email WeirdThingsMail@Gmail 

“Falling in love is a lot like death.  It chooses you. It decides the moment and the chain of events that will preclude the precise intersection of life in which it occurs.”

Addison Moore crafts a tale of girly goodness in Ethereal.  If you enjoyed the Twilight series, the Vampire Diaries or just enjoy a good paranormal love story then you will most certainly like Ethereal.

Ethereal tells the story of young girl named Skyla who moves from sunny Los Angeles to foggy Paragon Island off the coast of Washington with her mother, sister and new step father and siblings.

Once on Paragon Island Skyla discovers that she is special in many ways and that she is not alone, especially on the island.   There she meets two handsome cousins, who both vie for her attention while trying to keep her safe from some of heavens darker elements.

I really enjoyed reading Ethereal.  It was a different take on the angel genre, that also had a strong, non whiney female lead that wasn’t content with just sitting around and waiting for whatever fate has in store for her.

Plus lets be honest what girl doesn’t like to read a good love story?  We can all relate to that feeling of being swept up in the good looks and charming personality of a new boy.

And then you throw in the supernatural/ sci-fi element and that love story becomes an intriguing tale of mystery and suspense.  Follow Skyla on her journey to discover who or what she is and what that will mean for her future and the future of her relationships.

If you are looking for a good romance with strong sci-fi elements then you should definitely pick up Ethereal.  You will not be disappointed!

[Amazon]

Surgery robot Da Vinci shows off exactly how precise it is by peeling a grape. Like a show off.

[Da Vinci Surgery]

A good friend of mine, frustrated by the current, sixth, season of the rebooted Doctor Who summed up relatively positive fan reaction to the current series thusly: “nobody wants to say anything bad about it because they are afraid it will be taken away from them.”

So it is with full knowledge that I love the Doctor and hope his TARDIS adventures continue on ad infinitum that I make the following statement. The recently completed sixth season of the rebooted series is easily the worst since the 2005 relaunch. A moribund plot, confusing big bads, stalled motivations and one particularly overused side character served to ruin an initially compelling Doctor-Companion tandem and left a humming mythology in neutral.

Full breakdown, including spoilers (sweetie), AFTER THE JUMP. (more…)

Brasil! Home of Carnival! Steak houses where they never stop bringing you meat! Sports fans! Random schools of piranhas that swarm beaches with no warning!

Three out of four ain’t bad.

In a scene right out of a horror-movie, complete with scantily clad bathing beauties screaming bloody murder, a swarm of flesh-eating pirahna’s munched on 100 frolicking beachgoers in Brazil this week. The bathers were subsequently treated at a hospital for bites on their heels and toes.

According to River Monsters host Jeremy Wade the attack was most likely caused by swimmers disturbing the resting period of the fish. That would mean the wounds were defensive and not predatory.

What a relief.

[Animal Planet]

Get door to door from London to Sydney in under three hours, one hour 45 minutes of flight time to be exact, and you get to call yourself an astronaut when you land.

That is the dream of Michiel Mol. The 42-year-old Dutchman who co-owns the Force India F1 team has announced that he hopes to send commercial travelers into sub-orbital space via rockets to drastically cut down travel time between destinations.

“It’s the first time a spaceship will be capable of doing four flights a day and of doing 5,000 flights with one engine,” he said.

Passengers, who will be entitled to call themselves astronauts if they reach an altitude of 100 kilometres, will be required to pass physical tests which he says are no more stringent than would be expected of an air steward. The first generation spaceship will travel at 2,200mph, but the second generation will need to reach a velocity of 13,750mph to achieve the desired orbit.

The breakthrough is expected to bring unexpected new relevance to the lyrics of Elton John’s “Rocket Man”.

[Perth Now]

Inspired by the Ansari X Prize for private space travel, NASA decided to put $1.35 million on the table to push forward the progress of election aviation. Their challenge? Fly 200 miles at a speed of at least 100 mph with four passengers using only slightly less than a gallon of gas per passenger.

It was a task that even optimistic researchers initially thought was science fiction. Until two teams beat those benchmarks this weekend.

Team Pipistrel-USA.com took home the big money with their Taurus G4 aircraft which used less than a half gallon of gas per passenger. Team E-Genius also completed the trial and was awarded $12,000.

Check out this awesome Flickr set from the event and hear all about the specs of the winner in the video below.

[Cosmic Log]

Sightings are up. The legends are building. In the foothills of Siberia, the time has finally come for scientists from around the globe to unite in a common cause.

Finding the Yeti.

Researchers from Russia, the U.S., Canada, Sweden, Estonia, Mongolia and China will arrive later this week at a conference designed to find evidence of the beast.

Alleged sightings of Yetis in Kemerovo and the neighboring Altai region, about 1,988 miles (3,200 kilometers) east of Moscow, are up three times compared to 20 years ago, with scientists estimating that there is a current population of at least several dozen in the area.

Other evidence of the existence of the creatures — such as basic twig huts, twisted branches and footprints of up to 35 centimeters (14 inches) — also has been found in the area.

Wood Goblins are next.

[Fox News]

If you think American schools have problems, take a look at Botswana:

Schools in Botswana are infested with devil worshippers … Operating more like drug-dealers, they get instructions from up the rungs of the ladder of Satanism. And travelling to meet their leaders is not an issue as they can simply summon a slice of bread, a needle, a blanket or mealie meal bag and instruct it to take them to the depths of the ocean where they hold meetings with their leaders and receive instructions. The girls even have the power to resurrect dead bodies after they exhume them and then take them along to the meetings in the ocean. … The devil worshippers said they often find willing recruits among youngsters because they are fond of alcohol and always engaged in brawls after bingeing. At school, devil worshippers are encouraged and even participate in fights in which blood ends up being shed. Then, when nobody sees them, they lap up the blood of the protagonists.

An underwater conspiracy of portkey-wielding schoolgirls who are obsessed with the dark arts are terrorizing the impoverished African nation. Neither The Boy Who Lived nor You Know Who could be reached for comment.

[The Monitor]

When Jack Bauer says it, it must be true.

Actor Kiefer Sutherland was asked if he believed in aliens and here’s what he said.

“When I look up at the sky on a clear night and see the wash of stars and planets, and everything that is outside our universe, I have to believe there is life everywhere.

“It would be very arrogant to believe this is the only planet that could sustain some kind of life.”

Although we want to learn how he looks up into the sky and sees beyond our universe, we are totally on Team Kiefer.

[Contact Music]

Songbirds and Snakes thought they were really awesome with their superfast muscles. But we mammals, we are not to be left out, no. Bats have now been proven to use the special class of muscle to help create their echolocation calls.

The discovery of superfast muscles in mammals may also help scientists disentangle the muscles’ evolution overall, Elemans said.

For instance, researchers will now be able to compare the bat genome with other genomes of superfast-muscled animals—such as songbirds and snakes—to figure out when and how the muscles evolved.

What’s more, Elemans suggests that the tracking boost afforded by terminal buzz helped bats flourish when they first evolved 50 million years ago.

“You need these buzzes to catch stuff,” Elemans said. In addition to flight and “regular” echolocation, terminal buzz is “the third reason why they’ve been successful evolutionarily.”

[National Geographic]

Who doesn’t love Remember The Titans. A story of redemption, hope, togetherness and the cheerleader from Heroes when she was like, 9.

You know who really loves Remember The Titans? High School football coach Jim Marsh. On the way back from a loss, he decided to inspire his team in the style of that film by pulling all of his kids off the bus at a cemetery, telling them to lie down and giving a motivational speech.

The same way Coach Boone brought the kids to Gettysburgh and encouraged his team to learn a “lesson from the dead“? Right?

The only difference is that Coach Boone’s team took that energy, conquered racism and won the championship and Coach Marsh just got suspended for two weeks thanks to some parental complaints.

As for the people in the graves that were walked upon, they had no comment. Because they are dead and dead people don’t give comment.

[CBS]

Andrew has a mystery present for the boys which leads to Brian whispering to fish and Justin leering at strangers from a tree branch, waiting to strike. The gang finishes talking about faster than light neutrinos. The gang begins talking about faster than light neutrinos. Andrew struggles with his decision to go green. Brian’s theory on sacrificing his body for trans-planet teleportation is put to a disgusting test.

Support the show by purchasing Andrew’s new book The Chronological Man: The Monster In The Mist for only 99¢ at Amazon.com by clicking the image below!

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Florida Panhandle resident Stephanie Pistey is currently on trial as an accessory to the murder of a 16-year-old friend. When explaining to a local television station her role in the death, she cited a supernatural bloodlust:

Cracking a smile, she said: ‘I know this is going to be crazy. But I believe I’m a vampire – part vampire and part werewolf, so it’s not really a cult, it’s more just like my personality.’

Pistey’s fiancee is accused of murdering 16-year-old Jacob Hendershot.

The Daily Mail reports that Pistey posted the following on her Facebook page days after the alleged murder:

On August 20, days after changing her relationship status to ‘engaged,’ she posted: ‘Yea were merryied and hes going to die hes the one that killed jacob hendershot well i let him i wanted the blood.’

Pistey has since claimed her account was hacked.

[Daily Mail]

If you’ve used hallucinogenic mushrooms (active ingredient psilocybin) in the past year, you could still be feeling the effect. Long past peaking, 60% of participants in a Johns Hopkins study found a marked rise in openness a far as a year past initially tripping their faces off.

Openness is defined as such:

…traits related to imagination, aesthetics, feelings, abstract ideas and general broad-mindedness.

The changes were measured against the normal shift in adult personality. Researches said that openness is traditionally something that decreases as one gets older.

Here is another fun fact to the study, more than half of the 51 participants had postgraduate degrees. Higher learning, indeed.

[Science Daily]

At a National Press Club luncheon today, Elon Musk, head of SpaceX announced plans for a reusable rocket that could dramatically lower the cost of going into space by a factor of 100. By amortizing the hardware costs over a lifespan of 1,000 launches, the capital costs per launch would be $50,000 (plus $200,000 in fuels costs and support). He compares the goal of the rocket to achieve the same level of reliability as a 747.

SpaceX envisions a three stage rocket where each stage returns to Earth via powered flight, as opposed to crashing into the ocean or burning up in the atmosphere.

In a speech that outlaid his goal of seeing humanity becoming an interplanetary species, he explained the need for this technology to help humanity make a permanent settlement on Mars. Musk suggested the cost of such a trip could eventually fall to the price of an ‘average California home’.

SpaceX

Click the image below for an awesome animation of their space flight mission profiles: