Knowledge Navigator Redux
Every time I see the video of Apple's Knowledge Navigator, it becomes a bit less fantastical, doesn't it? Yeah, we're not anywhere near where we need to be in terms of voice recognition (I think...) but the document searching capabilities have definitely caught up, as has the communication capabilities - including voice, video and application sharing. If you took out the guy in the bow-tie, you could simulate much of the same functionality shown in the video using Web and Desktop Search, and a modern IM client with VoIP, no?
The Agent technology is still out there, though. Both the voice, and just the general "intelligence" of the agent itself to do things with your data such as summarize an email or leave messages for others, and having you be fine with that. Looks like we still have some work to do. Maybe it's time for Agents to become the Next Big Thing (again)?
Cool stuff...
-Russ
P.S. I can't seem to figure out how to copy a .mov file to my iPod w/video... so I included this video as an enclosure and will be subscribing to it in iTunes. :-) Probably an easier way, but this way you get to share in the fun!
Update: Oops. I guess that doesn't work.. That's weird. According to the FAQ, it says: " Basically, if you can view a video in QuickTime Player, you can view it in iTunes."
Hmm. That doesn't seem to be the case, does it? And wow! Converting it to an .mpv using QT 7.0.3? I waited 30 minutes and only converted 10% of a 50MB file. That's ridiculous. (Have I mentioned that Macs are slow lately? I think I have....)
Update 2: Sam Pullara helpfully explained to me what the deal was in my comments. I converted the video to m4v using Quicktime's "export to iPod" (not mpv, duh) and uploaded it. This reduced the size considerably without much if any loss in quality that I can see. -R