The Joy of IPhone

I played with it for hours and hours. It’s a joy to hold its stylish body, to type in my notes, to browse the web and to read email. The small screen is no longer a limitation. By its zooming and moving capability, iPhone makes browsing much more fun that I expected. In fact, it is more fun than browsing in a large window on a desktop. I feel that I have more control on where I want to look on a webpage. By zooming in, I completely ignore the irrelevant information.

I love the notes function. Each note is designed like a real note pad. Your typed words become the stylish handwriting-like words on that yellow notepad. The high resolution allows many words appear on one note page, thus achieving efficient display of information on a small screen.

How much I like the email function. All my Gmail and Yahoo emails are downloaded. When i delete an email, it is also deleted from my web-based window. In fact, the email itself is probably just a nice way to re-arrange web browser display. But it makes me feel so personal and so easy to read my emails.

I love the world clock section, where I have San Francisco and Beijing time displayed side by side. The real-life graphics of a clock with its red tip moving is so enjoyable to look. The timer function is great. It counts down like a real digital watch, and chimes when the time is up. I found it such a good friend: loyal, on time and trustable.

Do I have to mention the calendar function? It helps me to organize my days in a way that I feel completely relieved. All the appointments are here, in this tiny personal PDA. I look at them in awe. Now I realize I talk like a person who never used a smart phone before. This is the truth. My experience with iPhone is a leap from dumb cell phone to smart phone, and to other iPhone fancies. No wonder I am filled with so much joy.

A Memorable Speech

In the summer of 2001, I attended the International conference of Artificial Intelligence in Seattle. It was a time of excitement. The Internet had reached many households, computers were getting cheaper every day. Those who attended this conference were mostly university and industrial researchers, whose want to build intelligent robots and computers.

Our keynote speaker was Bill Gates, which was a natural choice given that Microsoft was based in Seattle. By that time, Bill Gates had been ranked as the richest man in the world by Forbes magazine for continuously 5 years. The lecture hall was fully packed. There were more than 2,000 people waiting for him to show up. I was very curious: What is Bill Gates like? Is he like a typical rich man who is normally very showy and gets excited over a large crowd?

Then someone called out, “there he comes”. All the heads were turning and flashes were everywhere. I finally saw him. Bill Gate wore a pair of thick glasses and had a head of poorly cut hair. He didn’t look like someone who is rich and famous. He was extremely calm and relaxed, as if none of the attention existed. I suddenly realize this is man who has never chased after big crowds. He is not into fame and is not affected when fame is chasing him. I am looking at a man who has no personal vanity at all.

Bill Gate stood in front of the podium, with his thick glasses and flat hair. He started to talk, with a disappointingly flat voice. You could never think of him as an inspiring speaker. However, two big screens behind him displayed his talking points, which were very easy to read. The audience was hanging on every word he said.

Bill Gates started his speech with some flattering comments on artificial intelligence. He said when he decided to drop out of Harvard in 1970s, he was afraid that he would miss out the big breakthrough of AI. He had wanted to be part of that excitement.

To reinforce his points, Bill Gates said that Microsoft has a research department that is completely dedicated to pure research and putting AI in the computer products. He then called out researchers by name to demo their program to the audience. Five big monitors were set up on a long table next to the podium. One person showed a digital camera on you computer that can track you. Another researcher showed a speech recognition device.

Finally Bill Gates came back to Microsoft business, which you can really tell is his baby.Bill Gates put out a new slogan, “One PC on every desk”. It seems unrealistic and grand, yet Bill Gates was backing it up with numbers, facts. Slides after slides, he showed how much computer sales are going up, and how cheaper computers became, and how Microsoft is helping in that direction. In the end, you understand Bill Gates never put out empty word. Behind a grand slogan are concrete actions and plans.

I came away with an understanding of Bill Gates, his lack of vanity, his love for artificial intelligence, and his big vision backed by action. Whether he is rich or not, he is so unique that you will remember this man long afterwards.

The Active Research Community on Dialog Systems

SigDial (Special Interest Group on Dialog System) is a branch of Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL). Each year, SigDial holds a workshop for Dialog and Discourse. It started from year 2000, and continues every year. The most recent one is held in 2006, the 7th workshop of SigDial.

Researchers from industry labs such as BMW and Honda Research present results on improving in-car talking system. Most papers are high-quality and with certain amount of mathematical formula.

The natural language research itself is a very active domain, boosted by the exploding text on the Internet. The booming of ACL activities on text retrieval and question-Answer systems is a reflection on this aspect.

Building a Realistic Dialog System

Dialog systems are still in hand-craft stage, where codes are through together and special-domain knowledge is crammed to get things work. In order to build a general-purpose, large scale system, we need to improve the current dialog system in the following ways: 1. Scalability 2. Portability 3.Flexibility 4. Adaptivity. Let me explain them in detail next.

The Dream of a Talking Character

She smiles, she laughs and she talks. As you are deep into the conversation, you forget you are talking to a computer. The conversation is so engaging and interesting. She brings you the news on the Internet, and the updates on your favorite sites.