AI, Mobile, and Eveything Around the Cloud

I am using DragonDictate on the iPhone right now. That new iPad, introduce on March 7, will have its own needed dictation function. There are a couple issues we want to examine. One is why does the new iPad not have Siri. The other issue is why dictation function not extended to other iPhones and iOS devices. My iPhone is the CDMA iPhone for Verizon. Using Dragon dictate, it works perfectly well. As a matter of DragonDictate seems to work the same way Siri's dictation works by sending information to Apple's servers to process the voice information. From what I can see, both Siri dictation and Dragon Dictate work in the same manner. Therefore I cannot understand why the new iPad does not have full Siri, and why older iOS devices like the iPhone 4 cannot have needed dictation. One possible explanation is that Siri simply is not ready yet. Siri was a beta function when it was first introduced during the iPhone 4S event last October. The status of Siri has not changed. I am sure ...

The iPad 2 coming in at $399 after the introduction of this year's new iPad with it's Retina Display and awesome new features came as no surprise.  At this point, the $399 iPad 2 is going to have a huge impact on the sales of tablets priced between $299 and $399.  Unless you're stuck in time, $100 isn't that big of a deal as it was even when the original iPad came out in 2010 or even ten years ago.   Now, consider this.  Suppose Apple keeps the iPad 2 around for another year next year's 2013 iPad comes out and the current iPad goes down to the $399 price now occupy by the iPad 2.  that could mean the iPad 2 could potentially drop as to as low as $299.   Don't think it'll happen. The iPhone 3GS has been around since 2009 and continues to be a hot seller, this is a full two years after two new iPhones has been on the market.  So, there is precedent for Apple to keep products around just to capture lost sales while still maintaining its profit margin. The...

For those of you who are still on the first-gen iPad like I am and are looking to upgrade, a quick note here.   eBay is offer a trade-in for cash. Not a bad deal if you're looking to upgrade to the 2012 iPad. As you can see, for my 32 GB iPad, I'm able to get $215.  Not a bad value.  Not great either.  At the end of the day, I'm still very fond of my iPad so I think I'll be keeping it.  I don't know if I'll be upgrading to the 2012 iPad yet.  I might after I've seen the awesome Retina Display and feel the speed of Apple's latest magical tablet. But if you're up for it, eBay is willing to pay you for your older gear. Note:  Even if I decide to get the new iPad, I'm not letting this one go.  It's like the original Mac, an antique.

This proves it. AT&T sucks big time while VZW is using this opportunity to stick it to them. When Apple unveiled the latest iPad on Wednesday, there was a scramble for info on the LTE data plan. As things began to be sorted out, we learned that AT$T is unsure about wireless data tethering while Verizon is stepping up and offering it for free as a part of your data plan. I am sure VZW will extend this offer to other tablet users like those with Android in the coming weeks as well. It doesn't make my issues with the evil wireless providers any batter as far as VZW goes but it does make them less evil for now than AT$T. - Posted using BlogPress

Zynga's social gaming platform is a very interesting take and it marks the ability for the Z to break away from its reliance on Facebook for gamers.  And while Zynga's new social gaming platform (SGP) has a good future, I wonder if it's creating more of a Hulu-like environment for gamers and developers? It just added three new studios, Konami, being one of the biggest and baddest in the video game arena.  And likely, we'll see Z announce more partners in the future.  And I'm liking this quite a bit, much more than Hulu's ad-based and subscription business model. As we know from mobile gaming on Apple's iPhone and iPad and Google's Android, in-app purchases has become very popular and is one of the preferred business models.  This is a recurring revenue that is just right for picking from developers. I'm no stock guy but if I had some money that I don't need, I would consider buy Zynga stocks because of this huge potential.  And as this SGP grows,...

When the news of Michael Jackson's death hit the web, millions flocked to Google to see if the news was true. It was assumed a massive denial of service attack was on-going.  Now, there's anther kind of event that can bring websites to their knees: Apple media events. When the iPhone 4S was introduced, many live blogging sites failed.  You'd think live blogging sites have learned their lessons.  Have they? I started off the day with 7 blogs running simultaneously because I knew most of them will fail by the end of the day.  By the time Tim Cook wrapped up the event and said "expect more innovation from Apple" in 2012, I was down to two blogs because the other sites failed. This gigaom post gave a detailed account of what happened.  So, the answer to the above question is: no. Trust me when I say that the next Apple event this fall for the unveiling of a potentially redesigned iPhone (no more iPhone 5 as Apple has gotten rid of the numeric suff...

The 2012 iPad has 42.5-watt battery compared to the iPad 2's battery coming in at a mere 25-watt.  And yet, the new iPad manages only to meet the battery life of the iPad 2 - coming on at 10 hours of use on WiFi and the same cellular use at around 9 hours.  The main difference here is the vastly improved Retina Display on the 2012 iPad versus the iPad 2. The question is just how much of a big deal is LTE use for the new iPad versus the 3G in the iPad 2?  With both coming in at 9-hours, you have to assume the power consumption are the same.  And the only other factor that might impact the extra power use would be the new display. And you have to marvel at Apple's engineering for managing to fit such a bigger battery inside the 2012 iPad.  You can almost correctly say that the iPad is a battery that happens to have a dense multi-touch screen that runs iOS. A further thought along this line is that the Retina Display is not very efficient.  We already know the...