7 posts and columns on natural language

Sell Me an iPhone, Siri

in Mobile on November 2, 2011 at 3:30 am PT

Siri is proving to be quite the driver of iPhone 4S sales.
Siri_schiller

Apple’s Siri: Game-Changer, Not Gimmick

in Mobile on October 10, 2011 at 3:10 am PT

Just what do you think you’re doing, Dave?
hal9000_Siri

I'll Take Computer Company PR Stunts for $1,000,000

in Enterprise on December 14, 2010 at 7:06 am PT

This company built the supercomputer that beat the world’s greatest chess player and has now built one that plays on TV game shows. Answer: What is IBM?

D7 Tech Demo: Siri

in D7 on May 28, 2009 at 12:00 pm PT

Many would-be augurs have been trying to pinpoint the moment the artificial intelligence overlord known as Skynet gets its start: Some may one day point to the launch of Siri. Siri is a virtual personal assistant, for your iPhone or computer, with a pedigree: It originated at the Stanford Research Institute and was spun out as an AI project financed by DARPA. Now, as an alternative to search, Siri is supposed to carry out tasks like finding your next outgoing flight or ordering a pizza by crawling the Web and conversing with the user, processing requests, responding and learning from the interaction. It will do this via a combination of technologies, including speech recognition, natural language processing and semantic Web search.
siri1

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer: Bing!

in D7 on May 28, 2009 at 8:10 am PT

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer introduced the software giant’s relaunch of its search offering, dubbed Bing, onstage at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference. Bing is Microsoft’s biggest and priciest attempt yet to catch archrival Google and Yahoo in the search business. It is a market where the typically dominant Microsoft is a mouse in comparison. But, no surprise, that did not stop Ballmer from doing some roaring about Bing.
Steve Ballmer at D7

Microsoft Reaffirms Lack of Commitment to Yahoo

in News on July 1, 2008 at 3:05 pm PT

Jerry Yang and Co. say Microsoft was never committed to a whole-company acquisition of Yahoo. But if that’s the case, why is it that Microsoft seems entirely committed to a whole-company acquisition of another search company–Powerset?