Interesting Links for 02-12-2011

[andrewducker]

• Apple: Siri isn't anti-abortion. Glad to hear it!
  (tags: apple iphone siri abortion )
• Ministers announce U-turn on mobility benefit cut - Yaaaay!
  (tags: benefits disabilities uk )
• A Londoner’s Guide to Living in New York: Part 1.1: Language (I laughed at the translations)
  (tags: language newyork london usa )
• Having problems motivating yourself to write? You need "Written? Kitten!", the world's best motivator!
  (tags: writing tools kitten cats motivation funny )
• HP Printers Can Be Hacked to Catch on Fire
  (tags: technology EpicFail )
• New Icelandic volcano eruption could have global impact (Just what we need!)
  (tags: iceland volcano aieeee! )
• What it's like to sleep with cats
  (tags: cats webcomic funny sleep )

Comments

[andrewducker]

Siri apparently gets its results from Google, which shows results for abortion providers in some of the areas that they're searching.

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

Getting them from google doesn't mean that they provide the same results as Google does. Remember, Google results are easily skewed by many factors including, but not limited to previous searches by the person doing the search. For example, if you and I searched the exact same search term we'd get different results.

Beyond that, it's possible to use code in your site to skew results so that they come up very differently on mobile devices than they do from laptops and desktops. Simply optimizing your site for mobile devices will skew it higher (something that well funded pro life people might think of, but that a local Planned Parenthood might not.) Cookies also skew results.

If they've managed to make it so that when someone accidently clicks on a pro-life place other than an actual abortion provider even once that it installs a cookie that redirects future searches to pro-life places that would explain it as well.

I'll give you an example from my own personal experience. A few years ago I did copy for a gay bareback dating site. As such I had to look at tons of other gay bareback sites. One of them must have put a search cookie on my machine because after that whenever I searched anything sex related gay results came up first. That is, until I had to do a bunch of stuff for female escort services. Again, one of them must have stuck a cookie on my computer because after two or three days of looking at female escort sites my sex related results were putting girls in the top results again.

I can't image a well funded pro-life organization couldn't use the same cookie approach to skew results their way.

[zornhau.livejournal.com]

I love your resume!

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

Bareback.com actually got written up by Rolling Stone Magazine after the launch as one of the most "immoral" websites in the world (which, of course, got tons of people to sign up for it and made my client a lot of money.) I was so proud.

What pissed them off, of all things, were our slogans which included "Who's afraid of the big bad bug?", "Condoms are for pussies" and "No matter what you promise, don't pull out of Dodge."

They also didn't like that we made the "I am 18 I want to enter" and "I am not 18 get me out of here" buttons read "Cum Inside" and "Pull Out" instead of the standard "Enter" and "Exit."

[undeadbydawn.livejournal.com]

Nope.

Siri primarily gets results from Yelp and Wolfram Alpha.
anything that isn't easily found there get a quick Google.

the problem is parsing. Siri has to be able to figure out what you're asking for - and if that's not easily found via the first two, it gets a bit stuck.
asking for Planned Parenthood, which is there in the Yelp directory, gets an instant accurate answer.