On this episode of Spark: CAPTCHAs, data visualization and romancing the phone. Click to listen (runs 54:00):
Play audio:
- Luis von Ahn fights spam and digitizes books with CAPTCHAs and reCAPTCHA
- GWAP: Games With a Purpose
- Jon Lee plays matchmaker for mismatched shoes with unevenfeet.com
- Daemon Fairless investigates texting and dating, or in other words, “romancing the phone”
- Nora mentions her full interview with MIT AgeLab director Joe Coughlin (full interview)
- December’s issue of Esquire magazine has an augmented reality cover
- Hannah Classen wonders why we don’t have robotic butlers
- Rehman Merali, PhD student in Autonomous Space Robotics
- Fernanda Viegas visualizes data with Many Eyes
- Lawrence Lessig explains the perils of openness in government (full interview)
This episode features Creative Commons music and sound effects:
- “Butta Fly’s Jazz Handz” by KCentric
- “Wadidyusay?” by Zap Mama
- “At Last” by Glenn Miller and His Orchestra
- “Rest (For A While) (Demo)” by The Orchestral Movement of 1932
- Clips from Dating: Do’s and Don’ts (1949)
- “acclimate” by General Fuzz
- Clips from Leave It to Roll-Oh (1940)
- “Toboggan” and “Sunday Morning” by Podington Bear
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For more information (and instructions) visit cbc.ca/podcasting
[Original image by D Sharon Pruitt]
Hang on a minute! We DO have multi-tasking kitchen robots!
Listening to the piece about robotics in the home — past and future — I kept wanting to interject. So here I go now:
Remember the Cuisinart? Well of couse you do – because it never went away! It's here now in our kitchens, standing loud and proud on our counter-tops, ready to fulfill our every impulsive food-processing whim. But before it became ubiquitous, it was known and marketed as the "Robot-Coupe"… an unheard-of "robotic" appliance that acted as a culinary assistant for enterprising chefs and home cooks. The road from drawing board to almost every kitchen was long, but well deserved.
And today, we have the Thermomix. Not well known in Canada (yet!), but a "kitchen robot" so popular in Europe that it's on every wedding registry list and has earned the endearing nickname of "the Bimby". The marketing literature calls it "The world's smallest, smartest kitchen" and proud owners will agree this is no exaggeration.
The Bimby's abilities as a prize-wining, multi-tasking, time-saving, lifestyle-altering kitchen tool has spawned more than one study at the University of Lisbon in Portugal that scrutinized "The Bimby Phenonmenon" in European culture.
It's a simple appliance in appearance but it does a lot and it does it extremely well. Think "German engineering" and Mercedes-like quality construction. It boasts an ergonomic design that doesn't make sense until you try it, live with it, and then realize you can't live without it. Think "several innovative world-wide patents". It has a reluctance motor that goes backward in half a blink, and all the safety features of a Volvo. Think "excruciatingly high price tag" and an unabashedly adoring fan base of adventurous adrenaline-charged cooks of all ages and all walks of life.
Oh and… one of its most alluring habits is that it washes itself. But only when you tell it too. Like the roomba, it doesn't think for itself — which is probably a good thing.
The newest Thermomix model fits North American voltage (110v) requirements and is finally, (FINALLY!!!) available in Canada.
C'mon Sparkies, we DO have robotics in the kitchen worth celebrating!
Don't believe me? Think I'm exaggerating? Find out for yourselves. Lots of videos to watch on the (new!) Canadian fan blog at http://www.thermomixbimby.com. The techies won't wanna miss the category under videos called "just for fun!".
Cheers,
Helene Meurer
(absolute Thermomix fan)
I wonder if as the huge demographic moving into the retirements years we'll see an ad campaign that parallels the Real Beauty campaign where beauty was portrayed in all of its many facets with Age as the subject….
Very true, as technology gets better and we age, we all demand more.
I need to know, where can I get a robotic chicken that sings ring of fire? Great show! Seriously though, where?
No kidding!
The robot chicken was a Valentine's Day present from my mom, and has gone down in history as the best present I have _ever_ received. She found it at the Home Hardware in Lloydminster, SK. Totally worth a trip to Canada's border city. Thanks, Ma!
I don't understand the CAPTCHA idea of helping with the words, whenever I have encountered such a security question, the computer has to already know the answer in order to approve my typewritten answer. Or am I missing something?
Andre, here's how the reCAPTCHA site explains it:
"Each new word that cannot be read correctly by OCR is given to a user in conjunction with another word for which the answer is already known. The user is then asked to read both words. If they solve the one for which the answer is known, the system assumes their answer is correct for the new one. The system then gives the new image to a number of other people to determine, with higher confidence, whether the original answer was correct."
Thanks Dan,
Now « je comprend »
I had the same question! It was in the original interview, but we had to cut it for the final show.
Thanks, i didn't know about that proofreading-aspect of reCAPTCHA. I listened to the episode yesterday, blogged about it straight away but my librarian mind is stiil in the process of blowing up. Absolutely fantasic idea and implementation.
My girlfriend and I were listening to your show on the radio, and we both started to reminisce about how much we used our phones to communicate with each other while we were long distance.
She was studying in Montreal at the time and I was in London Ontario and through text messages and phone calls we would keep in touch. I would say we would text each other at least a 100 times a day or more, we would also talk to each other and once every two weeks or so I would fly up there for the weekend and then fly back for work on Monday morning, we did this for a whole year and through it all text messaging played an essential part in our relationship. We would both write down the messages the other had sent us down in a book because we didn't want to loose them, because our phones were both running out of memory.
My I remember my bill once being 4,000 dollars, I went for my limit of minutes, and then on top of that there was the fact that it was long distance and then it also happened that I was charged for roaming. This all led to text messaging becoming the major way we would communicate.
We now both live in Montreal and we are both going to school and I have to say, that without text messaging I don't know where we would be. I would text at work ( I got so good I didn't need to see the keys, I could do it with my phone behind my back and only using one hand) which often got me in trouble with my boss because I was texting too often.
We have been together for over fours years now, and last year I finally managed to pay off my 4,000 dollar phone bill for good. Without text messaging I don't know where we would be.
Very interesting story, Nelson…not to mention a cautionary tale about the $4,000 bill! I think there's something about the immediacy of texting, and the fact that it's on this little screen that only you see, that's distinctly romantic.
I'm with you Nora. Text messaging is terrifically romantic. It's pretty immediate, but still gives a thoughtful messager time to consider wording, in a way that face to face communication doesn't. Surely no one is as eloquent 'live' as they are with a couple of minutes to think.
I started getting serious with my boyfriend literally days before we both packed bags for very different destinations. We were only going to be apart for a month, but these were the heady goose-pimply days of our romance! SMS was our best form of communication, between intermittent (and unreliable) email access and one or two phone calls. We overcame a 10 hour time difference and a distance of more than 6000 kilometers. More importantly we were able to be more honest and, well, more romantic than we might have been face to face. And, as is often the case with digital media, we were also left with a record. Sure, the sms record in your phone isn't the same as a packet of scented love letters wrapped in ribbon, but for our first anniversary I transcribed all of those text messages in a little book, about the size of my cell phone.
Distance (and now text messaging) makes the heart grow fonder.
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