intelligent

SAN FRANCISCO--When Swiss developers designed the QB1 robot, they weren't going for human-like looks or cute puppydog mannerisms.

Instead, they're hoping QB1 will hook people in on a more meaningful level--by providing a handy music-suggestion service--and thus giving the robot continuous exposure to data stemming from real human interaction.

Artificial intelligence "systems need to learn in the real world, from real people. You cannot program them with knowledge from the real world," said Frederic Kaplan, CEO and co-founder of QB1 developer OZWE.

The QB1 was showcased to the public last weekend at Swissnex, an annex of the Consulate General of Switzerland here that's dedicated to bridging knowledge in science, education, art, and innovation between Switzerland and North America.

QB1 is what Kaplan calls a "robotic object"; people interact with it through gestures. In its first application, QB1 is loaded with a kind of disc jockey feature because that invites people to spend time with it.

Kaplan got this idea out of his experience working for 10 years with Sony's world famous dog-like AI robot, Aibo.

"What was frustrating was that nobody was interacting with it long-term. There are so many objects in your house, so why interact with an object that is only for pleasure?" he said. And as Aibo needed time with humans to learn, this was a fundamental problem.

"The limit for AI is not computing power, it's getting experience," Kaplan said. So QB1 tries to steal your time doing something useful, playing your music. The AI system incorporated into QB1 has about five different strategies to intelligently predict what music you want to listen to at the moment. … Read more

What is the point?

No, no. I know that the ultimate goal is to have computers far more clever than humans so that humans can relax and be just as stupid as they already know themselves to be.

Still, one can't help but feel a shudder beneath one's shirt at the prospect of an IBM computer program beating 74-time champion Ken Jennings at "Jeopardy."

I was fine with IBM's Deep Blue taking on chess champion Garry Kasparov. The man had been fighting Deep Red all his life, so he was hardly going to be intimidated … Read more

Some of today's DVD and Blu-ray soundtracks are so densely mixed that dialogue can be hard to understand.

When actors' lines are obscured by onscreen mayhem, you may miss important plot details. The dialogue intelligibility problem is even worse for people who are hard of hearing.

Here's a simple fix to improve intelligibility that also works like a charm for quiet, late-night movie watching.

Turn up the center channel volume level. Please understand, that's not the same thing as cranking up your receiver's volume control. Raising the center channel volume relative to the left/right and surround channels makes dialogue louder than the music and sound effects, so it's easier to understand what the actors are saying.

The easiest way to make the adjustment is with your receiver or home theater-in-a-box system's remote control. Check and see if your remote has a button marked "Channel Select." My Onkyo TX-SR805 receiver's remote has such a control, marked "CH SEL". It toggles through left, right, center, etc., and once I got to the center I used the "Level -" and "Level +" buttons to adjust the center channel volume.

Experiment to figure out how much louder you want the center channel speaker to be, but start with turning it up by three decibels. That might be enough, but don't hesitate to turn it up higher if that's what you need.

Of course, you can also use the CH SEL feature to boost subwoofer volume to taste whenever you switch movies or CDs. Or adjust the surround channels volume. … Read more

Even though this pop-up ad blocker is nicely designed and easy to use, the trial version doesn't allow users enough time to fully test its capabilities.

Family PopUP Blocker has a clean, simple interface that anyone in the family can understand. Generally situated in the system tray, it emits a short beep when it detects and stops a pop-up ad. The program offers several options for customization. Users can choose to have the program run automatically upon startup, which saves a few clicks each time you turn on the computer. In the setting, users can specify certain sites to … Read more

It's never too early to know your organs of state. To this end, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is hosting what it calls the Intelligence Agency Community Kids' Page.

The page offers roughly a dozen links to U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agency sites, where children can learn about the institutional layout and various skill sets of each department.

For example, the NSA offers a primer on cryptology, led by a collection of trademarked characters like Crypto Cat and Decipher Dog. Youngsters can race through timed puzzles and try their hand at photo analysis with … Read more

BumpTop replaces your desktop with a visual environment unlike any you've used. It's a bit like a futuristic gesture-based interface, but it's tied to your mouse. Were it capable of simultaneous Web browsing, its utility would be much more apparent.

BumpTop makes the items on your computer's desktop more like their real-world counterparts. Icons and folders are assigned a virtual weight based on the amount of memory they take up and their importance to you. You can move them by click-and-drag, or fling them across the BumpTop space. The program determines their importance based on how … Read more

Grilling can be a messy thing. We all know that. Just using charcoal and lighter fluid is sloppy enough, but when you consider the myriad of sauces, glazes, and marinades, it really becomes clear just how much of an ordeal it can be. Many opt for propane as a means to cook, thereby limiting at least some of the standard requisite mess.

Personally, for me, it is almost always worth it to suffer through a little mess for delicious grilled meats and vegetables. Messy or not, a good barbecue provides a unique way of cooking that's ingrained in all … Read more

INDIA--Technology has made possible better management of cities and their amenities so that citizens can enjoy better quality of life. To this end, Cisco Systems unveiled in Bengaluru city on Thursday, its "Intelligent Urbanization" blueprint.

Through this global framework, Cisco plans to help cities around the world use the network as the next utility for integrated city management, better quality of life for citizens, and economic development.

Intelligent Urbanization brings together Cisco's products and services, partners, and other technologies, with an initial focus on public safety and security, transportation, buildings, energy, health care, and education.

Cisco Chief … Read more

This is a guest post by Jaspersoft CEO Brian Gentile. The views expressed are his own.

I know it's the dead of winter when Gartner releases its report "Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms." Since its release in mid-January, I've had some time to talk to a variety of colleagues and to think about its accuracy, and wanted to share some of my conclusions.

Gartner receives a lot of criticism about these reports, especially from open-source vendors, but my views are mixed. I believe that this new report on business intelligence contains solid insight on what … Read more