The Braindumpery

Dear Wolfram Alpha,

Every so often I decide that I’ve found a query that Wolfram Alpha might actually be able to answer, and every time it fails. Tonight it was “What movies have both Mae Whitman and Michael Cera?” (Yes, I tried lots of terse and not-so-terse forms of the question.) Fortunately I found the IMDB page which supports this particular type of query. Here’s the answer.

I wonder if a more “exploratory” interface might be useful. For example, I start by querying for one actor, and with the basic results I get a list of related queries that I could try, one of which is “What movies has Michael Cera acted in?” (or equivalent). The resulting list of movies is accompanied by a list of suggestions for narrowing the list, one of which is “starring ?” (in addition to “directed by ?” and such).

With each refinement of the results the interface could update the query to reflect the new parameters so users could learn to write the “magic bullet” queries that will yield these advanced results.

I hope you’re way ahead of me on this.

-Michael

I left this as a comment on David Pogue’s review of some smart phone apps that detect when you’re driving and disable most or all of the phone’s features. Then I remembered that I have this neglected blog and my comment was long enough to constitute a quick post. Come to think of it I leave a lot of long-ish comments on web articles; maybe I should put more of them here. But I digress.

I’m guilty (not in the legal sense) of using my phone too much while driving, but these “solutions” are too expensive and flawed. And good luck with making an iPhone version, even with iPhone OS 4.0; I just don’t think Apple is going to allow one app to inhibit others. Maybe they’ll let it change the pass code temporarily so you can’t get past the lock screen?

A better solution would involve the car manufacturers working with the cell phone makers, but the best solutions, I think, are those that make it possible to perform the distracting operations hands- and eyes-free: voice control, audio feedback, text-to-speech, even speech to text. Granted this may still distract and may even increase the temptation to play with the phone for some, but I think it’s a net improvement and an easier sell than telling someone to pay to brick their phone.

By the way, I’m excited about Apple’s purchase of Siri today (ok, it was just barely yesterday). This will lead to far better hands-free functionality, if only to spare us having to type as much on a tiny touch-screen keyboard.

I’ve never been happier with my cell phone features than I am right now, but apparently that has just made me more demanding. Two issues have caught my attention lately and I decided to throw my support behind them. Here’s what I left on Apple’s iPhone feedback page regarding their recent rejection of the Google Voice application, which I would really like to use.

I am disappointed with the rejection of Google Voice applications from the iPhone App Store. I assume the rejection is rooted in the interests of AT&T or other iPhone carries since Google Voice provides alternatives to their services. AT&T has denied that they are responsible for the rejection, though I believe their statement is deliberately ambiguous and leaves open the possibility that they are indirectly responsible.

As a consumer I don’t really care who made this decision, but I know that Apple has to be involved in correcting it. The innovation provided by Google Voice applications will be available in cell phones sooner or later, and I really hope the iPhone isn’t late to that party.

-Michael Askew

This issue has generated such ire that the FCC is investigating. I’m not sure I want the government interfering on this one; all I really want is the features offered by Google Voice available on my iPhone, and integrated as seamlessly as possible. This could mean that Apple and their carriers implement their own version of these features, or they work with Google to make an application that adds features without circumventing too many of the carriers’ revenue streams.

The second issue was brought to light by David Pogue; he wants cell phone carriers to turn off the idiotic 15 seconds of instructions that play between outgoing voicemail messages and the beep that signals you to start talking. He solicited suggestions for a campaign motto and chose “Take Back the Beep.” Read his article for all the reasons why, but to put it succinctly this stupid message

• Is obsolete
• Wastes everyone’s time
• Generates tons of extra revenue for carriers by using up your cell phone minutes

Something I’ve been pointing out whenever I post comments about this issue is that I don’t just want the option of turning off this message on my outgoing greeting, I want it off by default, on all existing and new voicemail accounts. Since people started being vocal about this issue Sprint has tried to placate its customers by telling them that they already have the option to turn it off, and Verizon has even lied about offering this feature (and subsequently back peddled and said they just meant you could turn of voicemail, lame!). This sort of pandering just makes me more angry.

So I’m cranky, and complaining about small annoyances. Join me if you want. That’s all.

I have crunched the numbers. And it doesn’t look good for Frank. That’s right, Frank, the one sung about in Weird Al’s ballad Frank’s 2000″ TV (lyrics) has reason to worry now that Jerry Jones has installed two record-breaking high definition TVs in the Cowboy’s new football stadium in Arlington, Texas. The TVs measure 160 feet wide by 72 feet tall, which works out to a diagonal measure of 175.45 feet, or, wait for it, 2105.44 inches.

To be sure, Frank has got to be upset; this knocks a bit of the luster of his legendary TV, especially considering his TV couldn’t have been high def since it was around before Al’s 1993 song about it. But that brings up an interesting point: what shape was Frank’s 2000″ TV? The song doesn’t say what shape it was but it does refer to it as a “TV” and not a “movie theater.” This tells me Frank’s early-90s monster probably had an aspect ratio of 4:3, you know, the older, squarer shape before 16:9 became all the rage. And therein lies some hope because a diagonal measure isn’t directly proportional to area. So time to calculate area.

Jerry’s 2105″ TV is 160 feet wide by 72 feet tall. Multiplication, and Wikipedia, tell us his screen’s area 11,520 square feet. Now to brush off the trigonometry book; if the ratio of the width of Frank’s TV to its height is 4:3, then its two sides plus diagonal form a right triangle whose hypotenuse is 5, forming a classic 3:4:5 triangle. 5 is to 4 as 2000 is to 1600, and 5 is to 3 as 2000 is to 1200, so Frank’s TV was 1600 inches wide and 1200 inches tall, or 133.33 feet by 100 feet. And that makes the area of Frank’s TV 13,333 square feet, and still the winner.