How to view Wikipedia during the 24 hour SOPA Blackout (FYI – i still don’t support SOPA)

So in my attempt to research “dependency injection” tonight, I was met with this wikipedia page:

Don’t get me wrong – I totally support Wikipedia in raising awareness as so many of my friends had no idea WHAT SOPA was, and why it was harmful to the internet as we know it (ironically, check out this wikipedia link, which of course works during this 24 hour black out, to learn more)

But in case you still needed to view the wikipedia article (as was the case for me) I found a quick workaround:

Just before the data is finished loading for the wikipedia page you want to go to, simply click on “ESC’. Yup. It’s that easy.

On safari, you can tell as the blue bar in the URL is almost done loading:

As a caveat, it worked for me on Safari 5.0 on a macbook air running mac osx Lion – YMMV.

As for SOPA, the idea to stop piracy is definitely good. However, I believe the private sector is much more equipped @ solving this issue (think iTunes, Netflix, Hulu) then simply legislation that could cripple so many potential web startups. I like what Alexis Ohanian (reedit co-founder) said on CNBC:

“I just can’t understand why congress can’t seem to agree on anything the matters in this country, whether employment or the deficit – they’re totally deadlocked. But when Hollywood lobbyists pay them $94 million dollars to write legislation, people from both sides of the aisle line up to co-sponsor it?”

Here’s the CNBC link w/ ads
Here’s the YouTube link w/ out ads (which would be illegal if SOPA happens)

My take on the iPhone 4S and how to turn on Siri in Canada

So to my surprise, our family was interrupted w/ a loud “Package for Jonathan Chui!” through our front door @ 9:30 AM this morning.

I had been following the UPS delivery status of my iPhone4 since Wed, when it left China, then hit Hong Kong & landed in Anchorage, Alaska.

 

The nice UPS delivery man told me I was the third person to receive it on his truck & that he had 40 others to deliver. One person even ordered 10 (i don’t know how that’s possible, but whatever). I was so happy I took his picture:

One of the first things I tried to use was Siri, the famous voice assistant and 1 of 3 reasons to get the 4s (the other two being an A5 processor, 8 MP camera with 5 “amazing” lenses – I’ll talk about them in another post).

I was surprised when I held down the Home button, just like the demo, and I got the regular old Voice Control!! I searched “Siri not in Canada” & found this link from Gary Ng on iPhoneInCanada, which had suggestions from people who had spoken w/ apple PR reps who said it wouldn’t be available.

Let me dispel all rumors & myths & say, it definitely works in Canada. However, not by default: you have to enable it in Settings, under General & Siri:

Phew.

Furthemore, some features in US don’t work in Canada (more later).

I was also a bit surprised they didn’t have English (Canada), but did have English (Australia)!?!?

So how well does it work? Well, for the most part, okay.

My first attempt to send a text message to Vicki went something like this:

Hmm…. interesting that it doesn’t know it’s own name is in fact “iPhone 4S” not “iPhone Ass”.

Other than that, I asked it what time it was, to call/txt people, to set reminders & alarms, and finally to check Apple’s stock prices, etc. All the usual stuff. It’s probably the best Voice Recognition software I’ve used so far (compared to Dragon Dictation iPhone app & the windows tablet speech recognition stuff)

In general, it seems to give funny/vague/witty answers to some specific questions:

Me: “Where are you made?”
Siri: “I’m not allowed to say, Jonathan”

Me: “What’s the meaning of life”
Siri: “I don’t know, but i think there’s an app for that”

Cons:
– When I asked it “what good movies are out”, i got the response:

“Sorry jonathan, I can’t look for places in Canada” – nuts.

– When I asked it to route me to “Calgary”:

“Sorry Jonathan, I can’t provide maps & directions in Canada” – really? even though I can open up maps & search that?

– However, when I asked it “show me directions to apple”, it actually opened up the maps app & directed me to apple! (i guess cause it’s not in Canada).
– “Read my emails” – simply tells you how many unread emails. it can’t read it yet.

– When I asked it to open an application, it said:

“I’d like to, Jonathan, but I’m not allowed to. Sorry about that” – polite, but doesn’t make it any more useful, haha.

Other cons: It doesn’t seem to read text messages automatically – you have to specifically ask “read my text messages”.

All in all – pretty fun. Will be playing with it more.