IVR Deconstructed

Three—

A couple years ago, Google got busted in a federal sting operation that involved a convicted con artist, advertising for illegal online pharmacies and a $500 million settlement. Crikey, it sounds like a movie script.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the feds used a “convicted fraudster,” in prison at the time, to pose as a businessman running illegal online pharmacies.

At the request of the feds, grifter David Whitaker set up fake businesses pretending to sell first steroids and human growth hormones and then “prescription narcotics, Prozac and Valium without prescriptions.”

Whitaker recently told the Wall Street Journal that Google’s ad executives didn’t go for it initially, but then they worked with him to try to circumvent the laws governing this type of activity. Oooooh, that’s totally Dark Side.

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

Most damning of all, Whitaker told the Journal that he made phone calls in which he walked through the illegal parts of his fake Web sites with Google execs, and once told them that one of his clients wanted to become the biggest steroid dealer in the U.S. The calls were recorded.

All this happened two years ago but is news again after Whitaker talked to the Wall Street Journal. The timing on it couldn’t be worse for Google, what with the other Dark Side things on the company’s dirty laundry list in the news right now.

People are jumping on the hypocrisy of it all considering Google’s slogan, which now just seems to be a tongue-in-cheek inside joke—either that or the company just doesn’t operate under the same guiding principles it used to. No matter what, it’s definitely Dark Side. Yoda would never do that.

But there’s still more…

Four—

Google is being roundly criticized left and right all over the newswires and tech blogosphere for changing their security policies and giving their users a take-it-or-leave-it choice.

Basically, Google users have to accept sharing of their information between many of Google’s various products (Gmail, Google+, et cetera). It’s either that or users close their accounts—they can’t choose what information they want to share.

You know who else gives take-it-or-leave-it choices? The Emperor, that’s who…

“If you will not be turned, you…will…be…destroyed.” (In that waaaay creepy voice.)

Don’t do it, Luke. The Empire might have better pay and bennies, but you’re gonna hate the work. Same to you, Google.

The analog way for families to keep track of soccer practice, ballet and flute lessons is a calendar tacked up on a wall in the kitchen. But, as we all know, we don’t live in an analog world anymore.

If families were like companies, they could keep track of things with iCalendar or Outlook, but that would require laptops or smartphones for everyone in the family, along with some tech savvy.

A study by Iowa State University researcher Mark Monroe proposes something much simpler—using a voice interface system to do the job.

“[Feature] cell phones have enabled communications between family members but don’t provide access to systems such as email and the family calendar,” Monroe writes in his report, Remote Voice Interface for Home Communication Tasks.

Let’s face it, what dad or mom wants to buy $600-$800 smartphones for every member of the family? A much less expensive and simpler approach could be to set up a voice interface system.

“The proposed system is a home information system focused on improving family communication and control of household tasks. A core set of communication functions includes voicemail, email and calendar.”

With the advances in recent years in voice-interface technology (particularly the advent of VoiceXML IVR and improvements in speech recognition software), such a system is possible.

“In order to make these functions as available as possible, they must be accessible in various forms, via various means.”

What Monroe proposes is a centralized system that resides in the family home but is accessible from a variety of devices. Family members could access the calendar or emails on the family home computer, via a PDA, by calling into the system for audio messages or even with a “portable screen in the kitchen.”

It’s an interesting concept—kind of like the systems used in the corporate world, just scaled down for the family.

CNN special contributor A.S. Hamrah, a film critic from Brooklyn, thinks we’re attracted to the film The Artist because of our desires for more things tangible in a digital age.

I think he’s probably right, but I don’t see technology as counter to our nature. As Hamrah even suggests, technology may provide use with both the cause and the cure.

The Artist is a silent black-and-white about the transition from silent to talking films—talkies. It comes at a time when we’re transitioning from projection films to digital and 3-D, and it’s evidently scratching and itch because it’s up for 10 Oscars.

“As digital imagery takes over the movies, filmmakers and audiences seek to reconnect to an analog, hands-on world,” Hamrah writes. “One in which machines are understandable and fixable.”

He has an excellent point. For all our emphasis on the mind and thought, humans tend to forget we’re animals as well. The mind can’t make the body forget about itself—not a body whose main purpose is to exist and thrive in a very physical, tangible way.

The mind’s wanderings are secondary to our body’s need to go on, and our instincts take over whenever there’s doubt about survival, overriding the mind quite easily and surprisingly (just ask people who’ve endured extreme hardships and done things they never thought themselves possible of to survive).

And the thing is, our natural selves need tangible, need to touch and feel. While our minds are understandably bewildered and awed by the magic we call technology, our natural selves don’t really care.

But to say that technology is ruining us or taking us away from our true nature is to simplify the point. While this is certainly happening to some degree, we’re also quite aware that it’s happening. And we’re not idly standing by while it does.

Stay tuned for the second part of this post…The Artist vs. Avatar

“Social media is just how people interact now.”

It’s a fairly obvious statement, but where it came from is interesting—Taulbee Jackson, head of the marketing firm that will be running the “social media command center” for Super Bowl XLVI.

What?

Yes.

The host committee for this year’s Super Bowl two weeks from now in Indianapolis has acquired 2,800 square feet downtown and hired a digital marketing agency to provide across-the-board social media support for the event, according to CNN.

“We felt it was critical to have some horsepower behind that aspect of the Super Bowl here,” Jackson told CNN. “Versus what you might have seen from other Super Bowls.”

Evidently Super Bowls are competing now too. But the idea is inventive, and the first time it’s been done. (Actually, it seems really obvious now that they mention it, like someone should have thought of it sooner than now. But that’s how the best ideas are.)

In a nutshell, the social media command center will monitor traffic on Twitter, Facebook and other sites to make the Super Bowl more user-friendly for the lucky few thousand people who will attend.

A team of over 20 people will operate the command center 15 hours a day, helping the 150,000 people coming downtown that weekend with logistics such as parking, according to CNN.

It’s kinda cool, actually. The team will be using “advanced search tools and analytics” to monitor Twitter and Facebook. If a fan tweets how bad the parking is, one of the team members can theoretically tweet back to them, telling them where to park.

It seems we’re breaking new ground here. And some see this as the first of the event-targeted social media “war room” efforts—a precedent.

I like the idea of replacing schoolbooks with iPads. Books are clunky and effectively outdated (although I still prefer to read a novel on paper than on a screen). Digital offers a lot more. Yeah, I like that idea.

In theory.

Yesterday, Apple announced they would start selling iPads and electronic textbooks—e-textbooks—to high schools around the country. The books include biology, chemistry, algebra, environmental science and so on.

Now it’s not that I think iPads aren’t useful in schools—they offer flexibility that paper textbooks can’t match (videos, tools and search features embedded in the learning software). It’s just…well, you know kids.

Scenario One:

A study group is “hard at work” over at Taylor’s one night, up in her room. Taylor’s mom is impressed at how quiet the kids are—they’re not usually this quiet.

They’re quiet because they’re studying very hard…on how to bypass the security features that prevent downloading videos freely from the Internet…on the iPad one of them snuck out of Old Man Johnson’s study period (Old Man Johnson is 78, still “going strong,” except his study periods are like Animal House).

Scenario Two:

Last day of school. Actually, last day of high school forever for seniors Raj and Tim. Naturally, the two boys are outside before school throwing a Frisbee around. Except it’s not a Frisbee.

See what I mean? I ask you, who would feel good about lending a 16-year-old kid their brand new iPad 2 for a few months? Any takers?

Don’t get me wrong, I really hope this whole thing works. The more technology kids use, the more versed they become. Also in this case, the fewer trees we cut down. I really do hope Apple can sell iPads to schools.

But that’s the other thing that strikes me about this venture—what school districts will be buying these $600-$800 iPads? Even at cost, they’ll be a couple hundred bucks each at least. I’m sure textbooks are a fraction of that.

Are we talking Cupertino, California schools or Dupree, South Dakota schools? Because Cupertino, one of the wealthiest school districts in the country (and also Apple’s home base, by the way), could probably pop for a couple thousand iPads. Dupree, one of the poorest (with only 300 students total)…not so much.

Anyway, hopefully it all works out. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. I doubt iPads fly all that well anyway.