Uncovering Star Trek's Lost Series: Phase 2

Wow.  This explains a lot.

The Ubiquitous Alexa; is the Amazon AI assistant starting to be everywhere?

Kinda looks that way. The title of the article below refers to cars, but the article itself goes into much more. More about Alexa being incorporated into other appliances and, well, have a look:



Alexa will make your car smarter -- and vice versa
The integration into vehicles is yet another sign of how dependent we're becoming on AI.

[...] Within a span of just two years, Amazon's cloud-based voice service has spread far beyond the Echo speaker with which it first debuted. Alexa has gone from being an at-home helper to a personal assistant that can unlock your car, make a robot dance and even order groceries from your fridge.

At CES, both Ford and Volkswagen announced that their cars would integrate Alexa for weather updates, navigation and more. According to CJ Frost, principal architect solutions and automotive lead at Amazon, the car industry is moving into a mobility space. The idea isn't restricted to the ride anymore; it encompasses a journey that starts before you even get in the car. With the right skills built into the voice service, you can start a conversation with Alexa about the state of your car (is there enough fuel? is it locked? etc.) before you leave the house. It can also pull up your calendar, check traffic updates and confirm the meeting to make sure you're on track for the day.

Using a voice service in the car keeps your connection with the intelligent assistant intact. It's also a mode of communication that will be essential to autonomous cars of the near future. I caught up with Frost and John Scumniotales, general manager of Automotive Alexa service, at the Las Vegas convention center to trace the progression of the intelligent assistant from home speakers to cars on the road. [...]

The rest of the article is in an interview format, discussing where this is all going, and how and why, and what the future holds. Read the whole thing for embedded links, photos, video and more.

There have been lots of reviews on Youtube comparing Alexa with Google Home. People who use a lot of Google Services, claim the Google device is smarter and therefore better. But it's not that simple.

I have both devices. If you ask your question of Alexa in the format of: "Alexa, Wikipedia, [your question here]", the answer you get will often be as good or better than what Google can tell you. Alexa has been around longer, has wider integration, and more functions available. It can even add appointments to my Goggle Calendar, which Google Home says it cannot do yet!

Google Home does have some features it excels at, such as translating English words and phrases into foreign languages. If you own any Chromcast dongles, you can cast music and video to other devices, which is pretty cool. Presently it's biggest drawback is the lack of development of applications that work with it. However, it's POTENTIAL is very great, and a year or two from now we may see a great deal more functionality. It has the advantage of access to Google's considerable data base and resources. It could quickly catch up with Alexa, and perhaps surpass it. But that still remains to be seen.

It's not hard to make a video that makes one device look dumber than the other. But in truth the devices are very similar. Both can make mistakes, or fail at questions or functions. Sometimes one does better than the other. I actually like having both. It will be interesting to watch them both continue to evolve. To see if Google can close the gap created by Amazon's early head start. To see how the two products will differentiate themselves over time.

For the present, if you require a lot of integration with 3rd party apps and hardware, and if you are already using Amazon Prime and/or Amazon Music services, you might prefer Alexa. If you you are heavily into Google services, and/or Google Music or Youtube Red, you might prefer Google Home. Or if you are like me, an Amazon Prime/Music member and experimenting with Youtube Red and owner of chromcast devices, you may prefer both! Choice is good!

     

Is the Star Trek Communication's Badge Finally a Reality?

Yeah. Well, kinda, sorta, in a way... does Bluetooth count? You decide:

Published on Dec 15, 2016
To a Star Trek-obsessed kid growing up in the 90s, there was nothing cooler than the combadge, a communicator so small it fit into a Starfleet logo worn on the chest. I amassed quite a collection of combadge prop replicas over the years, but this isn’t just another hunk of chrome-plated potmetal: this is a communicator pin that actually works. (Well ... sometimes. And only with the help of your phone.) Join me for the MrMobile review of the Star Trek Bluetooth Combadge by Fametek!

An interesting first attempt, although apparently there is room for much needed improvements. Hopefully the manufacturers will learn from this, and the Next Generation of the device will do better.

Don't throw your smartphone away yet. ;-)

Source: Star Trek's Combadge Is Finally Real, But It's Got Some Bugs

     

Goodby Mr. Spock

Or goodbye Leonard Nimoy, actually:



Leonard Nimoy, Spock of ‘Star Trek,’ Dies at 83

Leonard Nimoy, the sonorous, gaunt-faced actor who won a worshipful global following as Mr. Spock, the resolutely logical human-alien first officer of the Starship Enterprise in the television and movie juggernaut “Star Trek,” died on Friday morning at his home in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles. He was 83.

His wife, Susan Bay Nimoy, confirmed his death, saying the cause was end-stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Mr. Nimoy announced that he had the disease last year, attributing it to years of smoking, a habit he had given up three decades earlier. He had been hospitalized earlier in the week.

His artistic pursuits — poetry, photography and music in addition to acting — ranged far beyond the United Federation of Planets, but it was as Mr. Spock that Mr. Nimoy became a folk hero, bringing to life one of the most indelible characters of the last half century: a cerebral, unflappable, pointy-eared Vulcan with a signature salute and blessing: “Live long and prosper” (from the Vulcan “Dif-tor heh smusma”). [...]

He was a man of many talents. He had a Master's degree in Spanish that he earned in his 40's, among many other accomplishments. Follow the link for photos, video and more.

     

Majel Barrett Roddenberry, 76, dies of Leukemia

Majel B. Roddenberry, wife of 'Star Trek' creator, dies

Majel Barrett Roddenberry, the widow of "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry and an actress whose longtime association with the "Star Trek" franchise included playing Nurse Christine Chapel in the original series, died early Thursday morning. She was 76.

Roddenberry died at her home in Bel-Air after a battle with leukemia, said family spokesman Sean Rossall.

"She was a valiant lady," Leonard Nimoy, who played Mr. Spock on "Star Trek," told The Times. "She worked hard, she was straightforward, she was dedicated to 'Star Trek' and Gene, and a lot of people thought very highly of her."

[...]

Roddenberry, whose pre-"Star Trek" acting career included guest appearances on series such as "The Untouchables" and "The Lucy Show," had no idea she was establishing a career path in science fiction when she took her first "Star Trek" role.

"Not at all," she said in a 2002 interview with the Tulsa World. "I certainly didn't have any idea that I'd be doing it this long, for so many different shows and films -- especially as a product of a series that was a flop. The original was only on for three years. It wasn't considered a success by anyone's standards."

The show took off as a pop-culture phenomenon after it went into syndication, however, and Roddenberry, who was married to Gene Roddenberry from 1969 until his death in 1991, attended her first "Star Trek" convention in 1972.

"You know, when the conventions started out, I'd attend four or five a month," she said in the 2002 interview. "But after a while, it got where there was no time for anything else. You'd just travel from city to city, making the same speech, answering the same questions."

Rossall said both Gene and Majel Roddenberry maintained warm relationships with "Star Trek" fans. And as late as August, he said, Majel Roddenberry attended a "Star Trek" convention in Las Vegas.

As she told the Buffalo City News in 1998, "It's been a hell of a ride." [...]

I didn't even know she was ill. I think she enjoyed her life, she had a lot of fans.



Star Trek Universe Loses Majel Barrett Roddenberry

[...] Majel Barrett Roddenberry reprised Nurse Chapel for brief appearances in 1979's Star Trek: The Motion Picture and 1986's Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. She played the recurring role of Counselor Deanna Troi's mother on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Gene Roddenberry died in 1991 at the age of 70.

After his passing, Majel Barrett Roddenberry helped bring alive one of his pet projects in the form of the 1997-2002 series Earth: Final Conflict but said she had nothing to do with running the at-times-flailing Trek ship.

"Gene sold out all of his rights to Star Trek way back 15, almost 20 years ago," she told SciFiDimensions.com in 2000. "So, they ask nothing. I volunteer nothing. They invite me to a few of their shindigs. I'll bet you I haven't been on that lot in two years."

Still, Roddenberry welcomed the recent digital remastering of the original series and Abrams' theatrical take, seeing them as validations of her husband's legacy.

"What's nice is you know a Star Trek movie is still one that everybody wants," she told The Hollywood Reporter in 2006.

In a statement today on Roddenberry.com, her son, Eugene Roddenberry Jr., said his mother appreciated the role fans played in keeping the Trek franchise running for 40-plus years.

"It was her love for the fans, and their love in return," he said, "that kept her going for so long after my father passed away."

You can read her biography at The internet movie data base.



Majel Barrett-Roddenberry - RIP
     

Lt. Uhura and I have something in common

No, I haven't gotten big boobs or a red mini skirt. But like she, I too now have a silvery metal thing sticking out of my ear. Yesterday I got a bluetooth device to use with my cell phone.

I wasn't particularly keen on getting one. I had been using a wired earphone set with my old cell phone that worked just fine. But then our cell phone company, Edge Wireless, was taken over by AT&T.

At first, they changed nothing. But eventually, we got a letter saying they would be closing down the Edge Wireless net, and we would have to transfer to AT&T or lose our service.

When we went in to their office in town to transfer our account, they said we would need new phones, because our old ones were not supported. We got nice new Samsung phones, which were better than our old Motorola models. But my old wired earphone set did not work with the new phone, the plugs were different. Suddenly, I had to hold the phone when I was using it, and I missed having my hands free to do work while I talked.

I paid $8.00 for a wired earphone set for the Samsung phone, but everyone complained it was hard to hear me. The folks at the AT&T store suggested a blue-tooth device. They let me try it out in the store, and I got a decent Samsung model, the WEP 301, for $40 bucks.


It seems I'm not the only one to make an Uhura-Bluetooth connection. Interestingly enough, Nichelle Nichols, the actress/singer who played Uhura, has herself been seen apparently using a bluetooth device at a NASA event:




What can I say; everyone's doing it? But I didn't do it to be trendy, it's actually quite practical. I can tell you though, I won't have it glued to my head 24/7. But some people who do use cell phones a lot, wear them all the time. Probably because of the fear of brain cancer from constant exposure to intense radio waves so close to the brain, as well as the convenience of having one's hands free. But not everyone is happy with this new trend:




Bluetooth Anti-Fashion
Star Trek nostalgia meets the pragmatic dilemmas of suburban life

As weird as they look, I have a certain fondness for Bluetooth headsets because they always make me think of my childhood heartthrob Lt. Uhura, everyone's favorite communication officer on the Starship Enterprise. Besides being a pioneering role model for African-American women, her low-cut uniform and high-tech headset presaged the geek-chic look twenty-five years ahead of its time. While we may not be able to open a hailing frequency, or decode an Antarean sub-space transmission, with the Bluetooth headsets that have blossomed lately in so many ears, they certainly give us a taste of what the future may look like. And now that reality is bumping up against fiction, I've got mixed feelings about the whole thing.

[...]

... I find it hard to completely condemn those little headsets -- even though I don't own one. I certainly agree that the damned things look terminally dorky and are probably inappropriate in many of the situations people insist on wearing them. I wonder if one of the reasons you see people sporting those headsets in restaurants, bars and other social venues is because it's sort of like the old days when pagers were new and having one on your belt meant you were important (I seem to remember they were called chick magnets for a little while, although the term quickly shifted to electronic leash). Hopefully, the status factor will fade quickly so that half the people I see at my kid's lacrosse games won't look like the Borg with those chunks of metal and plastic jutting out of their skulls. [...]

The article goes on about people wearing them in "inappropriate" places. Apparently this annoys a lot of people. The guy who wrote this article was discussing it nicely, compared to some of the really nasty stuff other people have written elsewhere on the internet.

Well for me it's not a fashion statement, I'll be using it in the farmyard mostly, where only the chickens, ducks and dogs will see it. I doubt it will become a Borg-like attachment to me; I don't generally like to talk on the phone all that much. Fortunately I don't need to be on the phone that much as part of my job. But for someone who does, I can understand why they would wear it a lot.

Will practically everyone be wearing them eventually, most of the time, almost constantly "plugged in" to... whatever? I don't know. But I suspect, we shall see. Brave New World, and all that.


Related Links:

Star Trek Communicators - Star Trek Communication Images

Cell Phone Dangers: how true are they?