the voice behind siri

Jon Briggs didn't even know he was the voice of Apple's Siri until he saw an iPhone 4S commercial in the UK the other day.

After recognizing his own voice, Briggs realized Apple wanted to keep the whole thing a secret.

In 2005, Briggs had done some voice recording work for text-to-speech company Scansoft, where he recorded more than 5,000 sentences, according to Business Insider.

Nuance, the company Apple uses for Siri's voice recognition technology, eventually bought Scansoft. And that's how Briggs' voice ended up being Siri's voice in the UK, also known as "Daniel."

Apparently, Apple didn't want anyone to find out about Briggs. The Cupertino-based company even asked him to keep his mouth shut, the Telegraph reports.

“We’re not about one person,” Apple told unsecured loans Briggs.

But Briggs reminded Apple he had never signed a contract, and decided to reveal himself.

Briggs is a tech journalist who has also done work for the BBC, Radio2, Garmin and TomTom. He didn't actually record all of the words in Siri's lexicon. Instead, Nuance chopped up all those sentences he recorded into smaller phonics, then put them together to create new words.

The person behind the female voice of Siri in the US is still a mystery. bad credit loans   Looking at Briggs' experience, perhaps she doesn't even know about it yet.

BBC iplayer

It sure took long enough, but now, years after the service has been available on devices like Nintendo’s Wii, the BBC iPlayer is officially launching on Xbox Live, for free no less.

Popular VoD service

The BBC’s iPlayer is easily among the most popular video on demand services in the UK, if not the most popular with over 150 million monthly requests. The advantage of the iPlayer isn’t just that it lets you view BBC content from the past week for completely free (minus the licence fee), but also that it’s available on over 450 different devices and platforms. Indeed, everything from televisions, to tablets, to smartphones to game consoles like the PS3 and Wii offer the BBC iPlayer. The one major device that was missing from that list, namely Microsoft’s Xbox 360, is now accounted for at last.

Available today

Beginning today, March 20th, Xbox 360 users in the UK will be able to access the iPlayer for free as part of Xbox Live’s free membership. The iPlayer is also taking advantage of some unique Xbox Live features, like voice commands and motion gestures for navigation, that is assuming you own a Kinect.

Voice and Motion commands

Actually, the Kinect controls apparently function very smoothly and have been well integrated with the iPlayer. You’ll be able to easily navigate through the iPlayer’s Metro UI menu with simple motion gestures. As for the voice commands, you can actually speak the name of a TV programme, like Top Gear, and it will automatically bring it up. Then all you have to do is say ‘play’ to start the TV show.

Advantage over PS3 version

One complaint that TechRadar had when trying out the app was that navigating solely through the touch gestures was a bit tiring. With that said, the feature itself still worked very well. Not to mention, it makes the Xbox 360 iPlayer version more compelling than the PS3 iPlayer app.

Photo: BBC

Other features

Aside from the motion and voice commands, which do require a Kinect, the iPlayer for Xbox 360 is roughly the same as always. It still offers features like letting you save your favourite programmes, search, or see what content is currently the most popular. unsecured loans Then there’s also an HD option for certain programmes.

VoD popular with Xbox Live

Already the Xbox 360 is easily the most popular next-gen console in the UK, but it’s also shaping up to be a popular video on demand service. Ever since the last Xbox Live dashboard update especially, there’s been a 300% increase in TV and video viewing with Xbox Live. To put a number figure on that, it seems that 42 percent of all Xbox Live Gold users view at least 1 hour of video daily. At the same time, people aren’t gaming less either, which means that users are bad credit loans simply spending more time overall on Xbox Live.

The future of smart TV?

With the launch of the iPlayer on Xbox Live, we can easily expect TV and video viewing on the Xbox Live platform to increase even further. In many ways, Xbox Live is already shaping up as the world’s premier smart television platform. It offers motion and voice control via the Kinect, gaming, already has millions of users signed up and, lastly, offers in demand apps like the iPlayer. Google TV and the rumoured Siri iTV definitely have a lot of catching up to do, since it’s clear that Microsoft maintains a lead in this smart TV department.

Track your ipad 3

Effortlessly, you can track shipments quickly from iOS devices (iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch). In addition to it, your iOS device is skilled enough to perceive the track number, which is initiated in – Emails, notes, paperwork, etc. And resolve them into a clickable link!

Note: This feature should work on any iOS device such as: iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. And it will run in IOS 4 or later iOS 5/5.0.1.

How to Track Shipments on iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch:

Step 1: Firstly, you will have to click on the “tracking number”.

Step 2: As soon as, you click on the “Tracking number” you will find one page displayed in front of you.

Step 3: On the page you will have to tap on “Track Shipment” for tracking the shipment directly.

Once you are done with the above process – your device unsecured loans will automatically launch Safari. And it will further escort you to the proper shipping service tracking page!

Also, your IOS device is capable enough of making discriminations between DHL, FedEx, UPS, along with other tracking services.

If you choose ‘Copy’ instead of ‘Track bad credit loans Shipment’, your tracking number will be copied to the clipboard so you can track your shipment by an app or a webpage.

Change Your Clocks and Change Your Batteries

It's that time of year when we lose an extra hour of sleep. The time changes to Daylight Saving Time on Sunday, March 11, 2012. While you are changing your clocks, make another change that may save your life – change the batteries in your smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors.

"Changing smoke alarm unsecured loans batteries twice a year when changing your clocks is one of the simplest, most effective ways to reduce tragic deaths and injuries from fire. In fact, working smoke alarms nearly cut in half the risk of dying in a home fire," said Harrison Holt, Chester County Chief Fire Marshal. The peak time for home fire fatalities is between 10:00 pm and 6:00 am, according to the International Association of Fire Chiefs. Changing the batteries in your smoke alarms is an effective way to reduce home fire deaths.

To save lives and prevent needless injuries, the Energizer Company and the International Association of bad credit loans Fire Chiefs have joined forces for the 24th year of the "Change Your Clock Change Your Battery" campaign. The program urges all Americans to adopt this simple, lifesaving habit; change the batteries in your smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors when changing clocks back to Daylight Saving Time on Sunday, March 11th.

Apple Product update

Following Apple's iPad event this afternoon, they have released iOS 5.1, the newest iOS firmware for most of the newer iDevices. The new update doesn't really bring much in the way of new features, unsecured loans however Japanese 4S users will be happy to learn that Siri now supports their language. 5.1 is also the  update which is said to finally fix the iPhone4S battery drain issues for good. The iPad received some new updates as well, including a redesigned camera app and optimized sound for video and audio playback.

For AT&T iPhone 4S users, you will notice after updating that your network indicator now says "4G" when you are using HSPA+ Even though this is not true 4G, the speeds are nearly the same so bad credit loans Apple decided to change the indicator to distinguish between the 3G network and HSPA+.

You can download this update now for supported devices either by OTA directly from your device, or you can install it using the new iTunes 10.6 which has also been released today. Jailbreakers should NOT update to 5.1 as they will lose their jailbreak and there is no telling when a 5.1 jailbreak will be made available.

Unlock Samsung Galaxy Tablet 10.1

Since some mobile carriers provide cheap with contract cell phones, they should take actions to ensure their users use their services. There are some of mobile carrier in Nort America will lock digital devices to their unsecured loans  services. This will keep users from changing SIM card and ensure carriers’ profit.

There is also an app lock on Samsung Galaxy Tablet 10.1. This post will tell you how to unlock Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1.

1. Download & Install z4root.

2. Get root access with z4root. bad credit loans (Unlock Galaxy Tab need a permission to write in Root folder.)

3. Download & Install Root Explorer.

4. Back up all files under Galaxy Tab /EFS folder by Root Explorer(R.E. File Manager). 

5. Create a copy of /EFS/nv_data.bin file and edit with an HEX editor software.

6. Change the value of address “181469″ to “00″.

7. Change the value of address “18150e” to “00″. (Skip this step if it was “00″ there.) Save edited file. (Do not overwrite the backup file.)

8. Delete NV_DATA.BIN and NV_DATA.BIN.MD5 in Galaxy Tab /EFS folder.

9. Use R.E. File Manager to copy edited nv_data.bin to /EFS folder.

10. Restart your Galaxy Tablet.

NOOT: You may need to edit APN in order to avoid the situation of getting no network signal. Please backup important data before jailbreak.

Dual Screen how to use a different wallpaper on each desktop

Instead of paying money for software to use separate wallpapers, or creating a wallpaper in Photoshop, Jon Tackabury has created a Free piece of software that lets you easily set separate unsecured loans wallpapers for each desktop.

Once the software is installed, you’ll notice a new tray icon. Clicking the Desktop Wallpaper item from the menu will open up the dialog where you can set the wallpaper.

You can click on each desktop in the display, and set display settings differently for each monitor, or span the wallpaper across the two.

Or you can even load wallpaper from Flickr, which is an incredibly cool feature. Type in “vista wallpaper” for some really nice images.

If you chose the Settings from the tray icon popup menu, you’ll notice that this application also adds a set of shortcut keys that can be used to move windows from one monitor to the other.

This is now a must-have application for my multi-monitor bad credit loans configuration. This application is donationware, which means you don’t have to donate anything, but you really should consider it.