Crashed Pips - Computers, politics, emetic trash

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Google and naming inconveniences

Filed under: Internet, Politics, The News — Tags: , , , , — Jonathan Rothwell @ 22:34

I have made a discovery on the Internet. It is Very Very Interesting. So Very Very Interesting in fact, that I have decided to write a blog post about this Very Very Interesting topic. That said, I won’t do a Jeremy Clarkson style “I had a look on the Internet this week, and I found this! <audience laughs, gasps in shock, groans in revulsion>”. It is simply a Very Very Interesting topic.

As you may well know if you live in the Glasgow East parliamentary constituency, there will be a by-election tomorrow. Labour are expected to perform poorly, and the Lib Dems are expected to come either third or fourth.

Most agree that one day, the Liberal Democrat candidate, Ian Robertson, will become a successful politician. Indeed, I hope he does: the Liberal Democrats are currently the least BS-filled political party about.

However, whilst looking for information on him this evening, I found something Very Very Interesting.

I decided to use a FWSE* to query “Ian Robertson” in said FWSE’s index. The FWSE returned a results page, which I found Very Very Interesting.

There are no less than eleven other Ian Robertsons who appeared before the Mr. Robertson’s little corner of the WWW protocol network. These Ian Robertsons include a psychology professor, a sports newsreader on BBC Radio Five Live, an obscure actor, a Kiwi photographer, a landscape gardener, and, perhaps most bizarrely, a man who is a masseur, yoga teacher, photographer and Unix expert all at the same time. The last actually lives in Scotland.

This is, of course, not a new phenomenon. James O’Malley fashioned an entire post out of name-sharing, entitled Picking on people who share names with bastards. However, with him buried so deep in Google search results, it’s no surprise he’s not likely to win the by-election tomorrow.

Interestingly, Mr. Robertson has a Twitter feed. Is the image of ‘over capacity’ and ‘unreliable’ and ‘cute’ one Mr. Robertson wants to portray to voters? Oh, well. Barack Obama’s going through it too.

*Don’t get this? You haven’t been reading the New Scientist for long enough.



Thursday, May 3, 2007

Voice-recognition call centre thingies

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , — Jonathan Rothwell @ 19:49

Google has launched “GOOG-411″, a phone version of its business search that uses voice recognition to work out what you’re trying to find. A bit like directory enquiries, but run by a robot.

At the moment, it’s only available in the US, so I used Skype (which retains the toll-free status of calls around the world, regardless of which country you’re calling from, in my case the UK). The number is +1 800 4664-411.

Here follows a transcript of the conversation.

GOOG: Calls recorded for quality. (beat) GOOG 411 Experimental. Which city and state?

ME: (pause) San Francisco, California.

GOOG: (electronic garble, synthesised voice) Torrence, California. (real voice) If that’s not right, say ‘go back’.

ME: Back.

GOOG: What business name or category?

ME: Go back. Go back. Go back.

GOOG: Going back. Try again.

ME: Manhattan, New York.

GOOG: (electronic garble, synthesised voice) Manhattan, New York. (real voice) Which business name or category?

ME: Hotels.

silence

ME: Hotels.

GOOG: (garble, synthesiser) Hotels. (real voice) Top eight results. (synth) (reads out results)

Computers will be computers.



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