Siri Responds To Long Questions With Quotes On Brevity→

Phil Dzikiy:

In a quiet server-side update, Apple has given Siri the ability to respond to requests with quotes, notably to suggest that the user is being too long-winded. When asking the assistant a question — presumably one that Apple’s servers find too long or difficult to parse — Siri responds with William Strunk and Thomas Jefferson quotes alluding to brevity.

Certainly a better user experience than simply returning an error for longer questions.

Unsurprisingly, Italian Siri doesn’t come with quotes from renowned Italian authors or historical figures. Siri does have a similar behavior, though: in my tests, Italian Siri always commented on the length of my questions, and even told me how one of them was “kilometric”.

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Philips Releases Hue 1.1, Announces IFTTT Integration→

I keep being intrigued by Philips’ smart lighting system. Philips released an official API with iOS SDK in March, and today’s update brings great new features such as geofencing, which you can use to automatically activate your hue lights as you walk in or out of your house.

In terms of automation, hue is now officially integrated with IFTTT, which should allow for some interesting “workflows”. Examples mentioned by Philips include changing the color of your lights based on Instagram pictures, the weather, or your favorite sports team. I can’t wait to get a hue set and start playing around with IFTTT triggers.

You can read more on hue/IFTTT integration here.

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Limelight: A Beautiful Showcase of Movies for the Discerning Film Lover

I’ve been watching more films this year, although all of them predate 2013 as I play catch up with 2012 box office hits and similarly popular movies from the past few years. But this has made a nice jumping off point for someone who’s now regularly keeping track of movies seen and unseen, helping me avoid articles from some film fanatic’s website titled, “20 best movies of ‘x’ year!” which, I’ll be frank, doesn’t help me that much.

Then there’s Limelight, a social bookcase for displaying film posters and ratings for movies you’ve seen and want to see. It’s an app that’s inherently social, meaning anyone who knows your username can follow you to discover new films and garner recommendations for their To Watch lists. Which is why I say it’s an app for discerning film lovers — for people who genuinely enjoy watching films, who want to proudly share their collections with the world. Limelight is very open – at least, it’s meant to encourage you to discover something new within its small social network. Social is mandatory.

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Play Breakout In Google Search (Also On iPad)→

Drew Olanoff, writing about Google’s Breakout easter egg:

The game’s introduction was 37 years ago today, in 1976. Google decided to commemorate the occasion with a little easter egg in image search that will suck all of your free time from you. It’s good to see Google doing these kinds of things away from their normal doodle, especially since a lot of their users might not remember Breakout.

You can also play it on the iPad. I tried with Google Chrome, but Safari had much faster, smoother scrolling (I guess because of Nitro). Alas, I couldn’t find a way to get an iPhone-optimized version.

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1Password 4.2 Brings 1Browser, Login, and Search Improvements

1Password for iOS, AgileBits’ excellent password manager, has been updated today to version 4.2, which brings some notable improvements for login management and 1Browser, the app’s built-in web browser for the iPhone and iPad.

On the iPad, Go and Fill bookmarks have been added to the browser, making it easier to quickly open a previously saved login and directly log into it using the (also new, and not iPad-only) auto-submit option for login filling. Bookmarks are available in a popover and they can be searched: in both bookmark and regular search, you can now expand search to all fields if you remember a piece of information of a specific item that doesn’t show up in regular search.

Bookmarks aren’t available on the iPhone’s smaller screen, but, both on the iPad and iPhone, login filling now uses the same sweet animation that was brought to the desktop extensions a while back. Combined with auto-filling and the aforementioned animation (which can be disabled in the new 1Browser settings), logging into websites with 1Password 4.2 is now a faster and more enjoyable process.

In my original review of 1Password 4, I lamented the lack of options for creating new logins from the embedded browser. While the app still won’t prompt you to save a new login, 1Browser for iPad does have the same strong password generator found elsewhere in the app, with the same amount of options to control repeated letters, pronounceability, and more. Two small touches that I particularly enjoyed while testing 1Password 4.2 were the smart clipboard detection when launching the app (1Password will ask if you want to open a URL in your clipboard) and the fact that the app will return to the Vault after closing the last 1Browser tab. I look forward to seeing if and how AgileBits will figure out a way to port the new 1Browser features to the iPhone.

Thanks to the latest updates, 1Password for iOS is reaching the same degree of functionality of the desktop app with browser extensions. In some areas, I actually prefer using 1Password for iOS: the URL scheme makes it extremely easy to find and open login items; 1Browser for iPad is a great tool; the new sharing options of version 4.2 include tappable 1Password links that you can send to your spouse or colleagues to let them easily add a shared item to their Vault.

1Password remains one of my must-have iOS apps that I use every day, and the additions of version 4.2 are welcome. The update is now available on the App Store.

Sponsor: Smile

Our thanks goes out to Smile this week for sponsoring MacStories with TextExpander.

TextExpander saves you time regularly spent writing out the same addresses, signatures, and prose when composing emails, replying to business correspondance, and helping customers. Instead of copying and pasting common replies, TextExpander becomes your magical shorthand for quickly typing out paragraphs and signatures with just a few key presses. By setting up small, text reminders and snippets, you can quickly expand bits of text into long paragraphs, addresses, symbols, boiler plate text, code snippets, and more. Inserting dates, creating statements with customized form fields, and fixing common misspellings will make TextExpander an invaluable tool as a part of your daily workflow. Plus, you can sync TextExpander with Dropbox for keeping shortcuts shared between the office and your personal devices. TextExpander is also integrated into over 140 iOS apps, giving you the option to use your shortcuts anywhere with your iPhone or iPad.

TextExpander is available for only $34.95, and the complimentary version of TextExpander touch for iOS is only $4.99. You can learn more about TextExpander and a download a free trial for your Mac here.

Vector Tiles for MapBox Streets→

MapBox is a platform for creating custom maps, integrating with social networks like Foursquare and services like Hipmunk to provide relevant points of interest on top of data sourced from the OpenStreetMap project. MapBox Streets is a component of the platform that lets developers beautifully stylize OpenStreetMap data, providing an opportunity for businesses to customize map views to better fit their brand.

MapBox is announcing vector tiles for MapBox Streets, which will offer developers working with the platform a single format for powering custom maps that can be shared on mobile devices and on the web.

TileMill, our open source design studio, is going to relaunch with vector tiles fully integrated to be a powerhouse tool for custom cartography. Design iterations can happen in seconds and be applied to a full global vector tileset without lengthy downloads, imports, or time spent tuning database queries. In short, anyone will be able to make a totally custom branded map, of the entire globe, that is lighting fast on every device.

As we’ve seen with Apple’s Maps and Google Maps, vectors make for a lightweight, data efficient way to display what’s around you. Vectors load much more quickly than rasterized images, and their small footprint allows map data to be cached on devices without taking up lots of storage space. MapBox claims that, when powered by vector tiles, their MapBox Streets’ dataset of the entire world can fit onto a single thumb drive.

[via Daniel Jalkut]

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