Ferris Jabr reports on a press conference where neuroscientists try to come to terms with some of the problems in their discipline that we've covered over the past few years ("Neuroscientists: We Don’t Really Know What We Are Talking About, Either", Scientific American 4/1/2012):
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The folks at Google Labs pulled out all the stops to show off some of the Really Advanced Search capabilities that we can look forward to in coming months…
Farhad Manjoo, "Apple Doesn’t Need To Make the TV of the Future: The revolution is already here—and it’s called the Xbox", Slate 3/27/2012.
If the rumors are true, Apple will release a television set later this year that it will tout as the most amazing boob tube ever invented.
The biggest selling point will be Apple’s promise to make navigating our viewing choices easier. Say you want to watch Tower Heist on a Saturday night. You’d first check Netflix, because if it’s there, it’ll be streamed free for members. If it’s not, and if you subscribe to Amazon’s Prime service, you ought to check there, because you might get a discount. If that fails, you’ll look for the movie on iTunes, Hulu Plus, or Comcast in whatever order is most convenient for you. The whole process is a frustrating mess, one that Apple will likely try to solve by building a cross-platform search engine into its TV. Instead of going to every service separately, you’ll just say, “Hey TV, I’d like to watch Tower Heist!” and the screen will show you where the flick is playing, and for how much. You’ll just have to choose one and press Play.
When CEO Tim Cook shows off Apple’s TV set this fall, I bet he’ll call voice-activated universal search a revolutionary way to interact with your television. What Cook probably won’t mention is that it already exists. Indeed, much of what Apple is likely to build into its TV is available today on a gadget whose interface is just as easy to use as anything Apple will cook up. The device is called the Xbox 360.
Over the last few months, Microsoft has turned its video-game console into your TV’s best friend.
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