Instead of just setting the alarm with my voice and then confirming it, I have to use a click wheel to set the time, and it takes like three more steps.
This is part of a larger trend I've noticed where large tech companies use their market share to bully their users into adopting their other applications. It baffles me how any one approves these ideas. Isn't it pretty short sighted to cripple your own product, to break features that users love to promote another unloved product? Isn't that arrogant? I hope this trend passes, but my guess is that it effectively drives adoption, so to hell with everything else, right?
And this ecosystem thinking is why I'm shying away from Google products. I used to like them because each web-app had a different account tied to each one, and was standalone. And their android apps would let you pick and choose which app handled which jobs. But now they they are trying to move everything under one account umbrella, and force all of their apps to be the only one. No thanks Google, I chose android because you didn't do that.
I don't use iOS, so maybe it's different there, but other than storing the data in Calendar, I didn't notice much a change in how reminders are set from voice.
Disclaimer: I work for Google
In addition to the analog calendar on my kitchen wall, I also use the Google App for iOS. I came from Android, and it was really nice having some of the functionality that I once had on my HTC phone on my iPhone. One of the features that I was trained to use, that I really enjoyed, was the ability to set reminders from the Google App. I just said, "Remind to X at N." These reminders could be location based, such as "Remind me to get bread when I'm at Target." That was awesome.
Now, I just get this warning to move to the Calendar App, where I have none of this functionality.
See: http://doncodes.com/remind-me-to-get-bread.jpg
So, I'm fine with the Calendar App having reminders. Sounds like a good thing. But why break a feature that I love to force me into an app that I have but will never use?
Google attempts to do this by letting you stumble upon commands, but I don't think that is good enough. I don't think tutorials are either, but I don't have any solid alternatives.
Like if you ask Google Now "Can you help me set a reminder", it prompts you for details. That isn't discoverable per se, but it addresses a lot of the same problems, the user only has to understand that the system can answer questions about capabilities to have that conversation.
If I also use something that doesn't have a shortcut 3 times within the programs running then it asks me if I want to set a shortcut for that action.
I think as time goes on Google will eventually be on this route considering how well it works (at least with the first portion of showing the shortcut command whenever I use it).
However that still wouldn't solve the problem of the users having to learn the commands from scratch first so if they don't know it exists they would never learn the shortcut for it in "OK Google"
I wonder if we have to pass through all design stages every time something changes.
[1] https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/M_...
This is particularly frustrating with regard to my parents and their Android phones. I'll get them set on how to do something... and then it suddenly no longer works, anymore.
For a gang of kids or twenty-somethings who are constantly communicating about the tech in their hands, this... word of mouth / osmosis approach to adoption may work.
For many others, it's damned frustrating. Including for the techie family members who end up having to help them -- over and over and over...
The conversational UI in text adventure games was fun to explore because the fall backs were sometimes funny.
react redux reselect aphrodite material-ui stylz redux-form react-helmet webpack faker lodash moment
I mean the site comes in at around 500kb transferred. That's not small, but it's also not obscenely large. A single large-ish image can easily blow that out of the water.
Yeah, it could afford to lose some weight in the javascript (although looking at it now, i'm not sure they can. much of the size of the javascript is string literals for all of the options for each phrase), but for a one-off website that doesn't have any ads or source of income, i think it's great. The author clearly wanted to make something cool, and doesn't want to spend a significant amount of time or effort optimizing it perfectly since he probably won't make a dime from it.
With JavaScript turned off (an essential security precaution), no text is visible at all, which is a bit of a problem.
> I mean the site comes in at around 500kb transferred. That's not small, but it's also not obscenely large.
The actual content on the page really isn't that large. I got too bored to actually complete this, but you can see an example of what it could have looked like at http://pastebin.com/DBgK4Tv9
It could have progressively enhanced itself, taking the plain-text HTML page, parsing out the choices in the em tags (which could of course have had classes attached to mark them as choices, or even to indicate classes of choices, e.g. 'day-name'). It would have been a perfectly useful tool for people without JavaScript; it would have been perfectly useful printed on a page.
And, frankly, it would almost certainly have been a lot smaller than 500K.
That doesn't take away from how cool it is: the author did a nice, exhaustive job (so exhausted I got exhausted trying to recreate it). He should be commended for it. But we should all reflect on how we got into a situation in which the easiest thing for him to do was the wrong thing, and how we can instead get into a situation where the easy thing is the right thing.
User experience.
- long, unskippable animation on site load
- navigation keys (arrows, page up/down) do not work at all without changing focus first (which takes 4 tabs)
- navigation keys do not work at all in category list (items can't be selected or scrolled)
- mousing over items produces unexpected results (text changing, distracting animation)
These may not be caused by the technologies per say, but more generally by the 'form over function' attitude.
Why does everything on the web have to be so fancy these days?
> Do you actually have a problem that any of those are causing?
So without knowing what's on it, maybe a smaller size could have kept it from falling over.
Looking at the source, I guess, for example, that the questions "How old is X" are all where X is
"Adam Sandler", "Adele", "Akon", "Alec Baldwin" "Alicia Keys", "Alyssa Milano", "Angelina Jolie", "Ashton Kutcher", "Avril Lavigne", "Barack Obama", "Barbra Streisand", "Ben Stiller", "Beyonce", "Bill Gates", "Bob Marley", "Brad Pitt", "Britney Spears", "Cameron Diaz", "Carmen Electra", "Catherine Zeta Jones", "Charlie Sheen", "Chris Brown", "Christina Aguilera", "Cindy Crawford", "Daniel Radcliffe", "David Beckham", "David Duchovny", "Demi Moore", "Dr House", "Drake", "Drew Barrymore", "Eddie Murphy", "Eminem", "George Clooney", "Gwen Stefani", "Halle Berry", "Hugh Grant", "Jack Nicholson", "James Cameron", "Jason Statham", "Jay Z", "Jennifer Aniston", "Jennifer Lopez", "Jennifer Love Hewitt", "Jessica Alba", "Johnny Depp", "Julia Roberts", "Justin Bieber", "Justin Timberlake", "Katherine Heigl", "Katy Perry", "Kelli Williams", "Kesha", "Kevin Costner", "Kim Kardashian", "Kristen Stewart", "Lady Gaga", "Leonardo DiCaprio", "Lil Wayne", "Lionel Messi", "Madonna", "Marilyn Manson", "Marilyn Monroe", "Megan Fox", "Michael Douglas", "Michael Jackson", "Michael Jordan", "Michelle Obama", "Mike Tyson", "Miley Cyrus", "Muhammad Ali", "Nicki Minaj", "Nicolas Cage", "Nicole Kidman", "Oprah Winfrey", "Paris Hilton", "Pink", "Reese Witherspoon", "Rihanna", "Robert De Niro", "Robert Pattinson", "Roger Federer", "Ronaldo", "Sandra Bullock", "Sarah Jessica Parker", "Scarlett Johansson", "Selena Gomez", "Shakira", "Stephenie Meyer", "Steve Jobs", "Steven Spielberg", "Taylor Swift", "Tiger Woods", "Tom Cruise", "Tom Hanks", "Tyler Perry", "Uma Thurman", "Whoopi Goldberg", "Will Smith", "Woody Allen",
It's easier to look at the list than to click every time for one random item from it.
Interestingly, the first person Google recommends to me when I type "how old is" is not on the list.
All this for a static list, he could have just faxed us all this list instead like in the good old times.
Since we're going there - bloating your website for no reason whatsoever wastes electricity. Not just for the mobile users who may be annoyed by fast-draining battery; also in general, you're literally wasting coal.
It's worth at least keeping in mind when deciding to include that another JS framework to save yourself 10 minutes of typing.
I am pretty sure plenty of people are missing tons of features because they don't know it exists. I don't think trying everything (with some latency) until you got some good answer is a nice way to discover/explore.
So thanks to op to provide a starting point. I'll definitely use it.
For people like me, without documentation it's just another pile of garbage on the side of the road.
As a side note, it makes me wonder that with all the brainy AI, it's we who are still learning computer's language instead of the other way around. I hope that'll change in the next 3-5 years, where we don't have to memorize the syntax & limitations of voice commands.
I use that function while on my motorcycle through my helmet a bunch, and breaking it up like that allows me to confirm/deny each step because often the wind noise makes it impossible to hear what i said.
"Turn on the coffee machine when my alarm goes off"
"Turn the stove down in 5 minutes"
"Is the dryer done?"
"OK google brightness boost" might work too if it lasted a bit longer. (There's a Brightness boost button, but it reverts back to lower brightness before I can finish whatever I wanted to do, so it's not very useful in practice. It doesn't even stay on long enough to open the settings and manually set the brightness to max.)
(Oh, and if anyone from Google happens to read this, PLEASE fix reminders to appear at the correct time instead of 3 hours early.)
remind me [time] to [something]
wake me up at [time]
countdown [amount] minutes
add [something] to my shopping list
I still get happy every time Google Now recognizes them correctly (75%). Being a native speaker and having a faster phone (Moto G) would add a few % I guess.
A small typo I noticed is under "Device Control", an option is "Turn on/off Flaslight" rather than "Flashlight"
Voice commands sound great in theory but the worst part is that you have to press the hardware back button to fix it when it (invariably) stuffs up. It's an absolute showstopper when trying to use it in the car.
Or am I missing something interesting by using Firefox?
For example the case of YouTube mp3 (http://www.youtube-mp3.org/).
In past Google tried to stop YouTube mp3 because of violations to the YouTube Terms of Service, but, if it is true that it only suffices using someone else's trademark in a domain for the owner to shut your domain down, then why did never Google attack it on this side?