For an Apple event, it was pretty dull. Nothing terribly new and I wasn’t impressed with the new iPhone but the following just blew my mind but technology has certainly come a long way and it is certainly a bit freaky.

The following is from New York Times’ live blog of the Apple event earlier today discussing the new feature on the iPhone called Siri — a personal voice-control assistant that Apple purchased last year. I will try to find a video of it if I can, otherwise the text is plenty enough.

“We left one thing out,” says Mr. Schiller. “It’s about our voice.” This is the fruit of Apple’s acquisition of Siri, a startup that has been working on voice-control features. Siri is now a feature on the iPhone. “It’s an intelligent assistant that helps you get things done, just by asking.”

“Probably the craziest thing you can do is do a voice-recognition demo on stage, live,” says Mr. Schiller. “But we’re going to do it anyway.”

Scott Forstall, Apple’s iOS chief, is back on stage. He asks the phone, “What is the weather today?” The phone replies, “Here is the weather for today,” and displays the weather screen.

Mr. Forstall asks, “Do I need a raincoat today?” The phone replies, “It sure looks like rain today,” and shows the weather screen again.

“What time is it in Paris?” he asks. The phone replies with the time in Paris and shows a clock. “Wake me up at 6 a.m.,” says Mr. Forstall. “O.K., I’ve set an alarm for 6 a.m. tomorrow,” the phone replies. This is amazing. And freaky.

Apple’s set up a partnership with Yelp as well. “Find me a great Greek restaurant in Palo Alto.” The phone says: “I’ve located 14 Greek restaurants. Five are in Palo Alto. I’ve sorted them by rating.”

You can ask Siri for directions. It can read text messages to you. You can reply or ask it to read them again.

Mr. Forstall: “Do I have any meetings this Friday at noon?” Phone: “You don’t have any meetings on Friday at noon.”

Siri can schedule events in your calendar, read messages, take dictation, all by voice. You can create a reminder by voice. “Remind me to call my wife when I leave work,” says Mr. Forstall. Siri, based on previous conversations, knows who your wife is and uses geolocation to remind you when you leave a location. You can search Wikipedia by voice.

Apple has also linked up with Wolfram Alpha to provide data and definitions for Siri to access. “Define mitosis,” says Mr. Forstall. Siri generates and reads back a definition.

We are clearly headed to Terminator/HAL territory here. Humans are doomed. Deal with it.

Mr Forstall asks Siri, “Who are you?” Siri replies, “I am a humble personal assistant.”

That’s just chilling.

Jenna Wortham adds: Will this kind of personal assistant technology turn into the latest battleground between Apple and Google? Android has already baked several voice-recognition features into its software, including transcribing voice messages to text and letting users browse the Web using verbal commands. But Siri could help nudge the technology into the mainstream.

More voice recognition: Anywhere a keyboard appears on the phone’s screen, there will be a microphone button, so you can dictate anything. Siri will initially support English, French and German. It will be released in a beta version, with more languages and features added in time.

Every now and again, there is a strong lesson taught my man-made technologies that we still don’t completely understand their potential or destructive nature and that our severe reliance of them, for all its benefits, does come at a cost. Regarding these technologies, there are times when no matter what you try to fix a problem (technical or not), it will not resolve itself in any understandable manner. You can spend as much time on it as you wish and then when all hope seems lost, a solution appears out of something where you did not think possible.

That was my situation for an excruciating 90 minutes yesterday afternoon. I had gone to my khala’s house for a good part of the day since my family has been over visiting and it was a long weekend here in Ontario for Civic Holiday. It’s really a holiday that is as made up as it comes simply because there aren’t any statutory holidays between Independence Day (July 1st) and Labour Day in the first week of September.

Even before arriving, I had heard from an uncle that she required some ‘simple’ computer assistance and that’s always okay with me as long as it doesn’t become a weekly or monthly chore. All I had to do was change the default browser from Internet Explorer to Mozilla Firefox and check the computer for a few minor setting changes. It seemed simple enough. What took place next was one of the most stressful 90 minutes of my life. First I ran a quick scan just to see if there were any bugs or ‘virus’ existent on the computer as they had claimed. Everything seemed okay, so I proceeded with the business of downloading Firefox, installing it and imported the favorites through the regular option. That’s it, I was done.

Now my uncle said, that there was some error that comes up every time he reboots so I restarted. Now a little background on this PC, it is a little bit on the older side with RAM well under 1GB and the processor a notch under 2 GHz. It was understandable that the computer was taking its sweet time rebooting.

First thing that went wrong was an error in DOS saying “Hard Disk Error”. I have no idea where that even came from and there was no where to proceed with my dad and uncle watching me perform a ‘simple’ fix on the computer. Quickly, I did a Ctrl+Alt+Delete hoping that it was some random glitch that would be fixed on a restart but that failed me yesterday. I went into BIOS to review the settings and in the CMOS settings, the SATA Hard Drive would be present but in the Boot Devices, it was no where to be found – I could either boot to a CD/DVD drive or a Floppy Disk. I played around with a couple of settings, even loading the ‘optimal’ default settings in hope that the hard drive would show up in the boot devices but nothing worked.

Next, I went in search for a Windows XP CD that I could just pop in, run a Repair on the OS and it should be back but even that was full of trouble. The complete installation would not load stating that some file was corrupted and that the “Error Code is 7”. A quick Google search on that will tell you a whole range of solutions from either reseating your RAM to your Hard Drive being set a Slave instead of a Master. I had no idea how to proceed now and I think my dad picked up on that, getting my uncle to go downstairs with him to watch the “news” and buy me some extra time – mucho kudos for that move in the clutch.

I decided to give a cousin of mine in New York a call but he’s at work and didn’t pick up. Next on speed dial was my old suitemate Mr. Feraudo who I discussed several options with without arriving to any solutions. Now usually if Brian can’t solve a computer-related problem, it is either ridiculously rare or it can’t be resolved. A couple of the options were to reseat the RAM and check the cables/jumper settings inside the computer but that was so unlikely as everything was working fine just an hour ago.

This is when a little panic mode sets in because a simple Firefox fix has led to a Hard Drive error and nothing loading and I even began preparing on what to say when I went downstairs to explain that their computer was no longer functional. As I turned the computer completely off for the first time since the ordeal began and sat there, I thought about turning it back on again to give one change of some miracle by the grace of God working. It turns out, that was the solution – Windows loaded up normally without any errors, everything on the desktop was as we last left it meaning no hard disk error. I did recommend to them that maybe the Hard Drive is starting to fail and backing up important documents and files is highly recommended as well as upgrading their computer relatively soon.

The entire time (or so it seems), all I had to do was a hard reset. I continuously did a soft reset and never actually turned the system off. Maybe those of you out there who are more technologically-able than me can explain the reasoning for that solution on why forcing it to shutdown and then starting it up again would work instead of what I was doing. Either way, I felt like an idiot for well over an hour and a half and when I was completely put to shame, a solution appears out of nowhere and all is well again – for now.

Exact Link: Google facts and figures (massive infographic)

It’s no surprise the economy is shrinking and so is the number of presents under most people’s trees but thanks to one Web site, nearly 3,000 people will have one special surprise from someone they’ve never met before. The members of Reddit.com, a Web site where users share links to breaking news stories, photos and more, have gathered together in what they believe is the biggest secret Santas ever and I participated in the event along with a roommate of mine, both of us who have been members of the site for a couple of years now.

The idea started simply enough, with one member “kickme444″ asking if anyone was interested in a gift exchange and, like most social media, the idea exploded in just days. I am really excited to see the idea take off and see some of the press coverage it has received over the past week or so including the ABC article and CBC clip I have attached at the bottom of the post.

Kickme444 and members of the site designed a site, wrote programming to match up givers to receivers and come December packages will arrive from around the country and possibly around the world. Unofficially 3,500 participants are from the United States, but the rest of the 1,000 members hail from 53 other countries varying from Canada to Australia to Japan and beyond.

The current Guinness Book record holder for the largest secret Santa is more than 1,500 people, held by the staff at UK’s pharmacy chain store Boots. This exchange is set to double the number and smash the record.

This Secret Santa is unique in its relative anonymity. When signing up, Redditors could volunteer information about themselves and participants can look at their recipient’s past comments to get an idea of their interests and personality.

Suggested value of gift and shipping is around $15 but so far the average gift has cost about $27 with another $10 spent on shipping. The organizers have stated, “Handmade awesomeness is suggested, thoughtfulness is required!” Some are opting for homemade gifts – original art, photos, mix CDs, pepper seeds or items unique to their area. Discussion of ideas and requests have been flying on the site for the past few weeks.

Initially I did not know what to get as a present for my Secret Santee as he had very limited participation on the community site but a submitted form allowed everyone to enter some items they are interested and it listed a couple of television shows they were interested in and they wanted a poster from those shows. That made my

Gifts were scheduled be shipped out by Dec. 10 and assuming plenty of redditors are procrastinators, a lot of gifts including mine were shipped out on the last date. Upon receiving the gift, community members have begun posting photos of their present on a thread for Reddit Gifts for the rest to see.

Another noteworthy piece from an ABC affiliate out in Seattle titled “Web Site Runs Elaborate Secret Santa Gift Exchange“.

It was only a matter of time before someone combined the likes of Google Maps with live video to provide a greater perspective of what is going on in our communities. There was always a concern on what this might to do privacy in public areas as well as the privacy of the individuals just walking or driving around in those areas.

Well the video below shows how computer scientists at Georgia Institute of Technology combining all those aspects and concerns with cameras around the city and their augmented version of Google Earth animates all these. They include sports scenes, traffic flows, the march of pedestrians and weather in addition to masking identities of people and vehicles for statistical purposes.

For a better perspective and a more in-depth look at the new innovation, check out: Live Video Makes Google Earth Cities Bustle.