Remember that SIRI is American, so use your best Call Center Accent

If you were Willie Revillame and you spent a tiny portion of your millions to buy an unlocked iPhone 4s and brought it to the Philippines to use, would that much hyped up voice recognition assistant Siri understand you?

Probably not. Also expect tough going if you talked like Mikey Bustos. Or Jimmy Santos for that matter.

“Siri, plis tex my iswithart hokey?”

“I’m sorry Jimmy, I don’t understand, but I can look it up on Google for you.”

In this case, Siri is more like “Sirit na.”

Siri is American. At least according to its default settings. So it expects to be talked to like an American. Or according to the settings, in “U.S. English”.

I saw this amusing video on CNET Asia passed on by +Jonas Reyes on Google+ that shows how an iPhone 4 with its default settings (US English) can be totally flummoxed by Asian accents. They used native Asian speakers with four English accent variants, Filipino, Malay, Singaporean-Chinese, and Indian. The results, as you can expect, were less than stellar. Click here to see that video. 

On the other hand, this YouTube video by Appchat shows how Siri can adapt to specific accents like UK English, Australian English, and even German, by modifying the accent settings. However, it appears there is no option for Singlish, lah. Or Taglish.

So if you’re serious about using Siri, go off and practice your best wersh-wersh spokening dollar arreneow accent as if you were applying for a call center job.

This shouldn’t be too much of a problem for some Filipinos. I notice when traveling abroad that Filipinos tend to be somewhat of a chameleon when it comes to accents. In an attempt to be better understood, we can adapt to the accent of a speaker. This can mean going totally wersh-wersh in the US, adopting a more halting barok style when haggling in Hong Kong, switching back to a native Noypi accent when conversing with other Filipinos, and so forth.

So if you’re lucky to be able to unbox an iPhone 4S this early in the game, remember, she’s American.

Jejemon and Bekimon variants of Siri are unfortunately not in the cards for those native speakers out there.

It’s Steve Jobs Day at the Power Plant Mall, Rockwell on October 14

Just when you thought it was finally safe to use your Macbook Air without slipping on a black turtleneck to show your bereavement, we’ve received word on Google+ from premiere Mac User Elbert Cuenca that Philippine Apple fans will be celebrating Steve Jobs Day at 5:30pm on October 14 at the Rockwell Tent by the Power Plant Mall in Rockwell, Makati.

The event will be organized by PhilMUG, the venerable Philippine Mac Users Group.

I asked +Elbert Cuenca what’s on the program:

For now, a simple organized free-for-all.  We’ll sort out the details tomorrow. What we had in mind was a series of eulogies, and tributes in any form, be it in written or spoken word, dance, song, visual arts, etc. Essentially, this is nothing more than a celebration of the life of Steve Jobs.

It turns out that this is a global event. There is an official Twitter account (@SteveJobsDay) you can follow, a Twitter hashtag (#SteveJobsDay), a Facebook event page,  and a tribute website at stevejobsday2011.com that describes the event in detail.

The website suggests that one way to pay homage to the man on this day is to dress like Steve:

If you’re wondering about the best way to dress like Steve, StevesOutfit.com lists the key items for that quintessential Steve Jobs Keynote look:

This is what you might see at Rockwell: (from Tauntr.com)

Everyone has a Steve Jobs Story: Here’s Mine

Where were you and what were you doing when you learned that Steve Jobs died? For people who either work in tech or have a great personal interest in it, this is probably on the same level as hearing of the passing of JFK, Martin Luther King, John Lennon, or Ninoy Aquino. As odd as it may sound, it hit you on the same personal level.

It’s unexplainable – he was just a tech CEO. If Larry Ellison of Oracle were to drop dead, it would only be a footnote, but this was majorly different.

Like millions of people around the world today, I learned of the passing of Steve Jobs through Twitter that morning, which nowadays breaks news across the globe faster than CNN.

My reaction was muted. Chette was checking her tweets and told me just as I was on the way out to walk the dog, as I do every morning. “Steve Jobs just died.”

I remember thinking the most mundane thing, like “Well at least he waited till after the iPhone 4S announcement.” I knew the news was of enormous import, but it had not yet sunk in.

Who cares about the iPhone 3G? The iPhone HSDPA is better

Practically any American news media/blog item you will read about today about the new “3G iPhone” will be yakking about the “3G speeds” that you can get out of this baby. In reality, the 3G speed limits you’ll be reading about are imposed by the AT&T network. Hence, even Apple’s own iPhone 3G site talks about being 2.4x faster than GSM/EDGE.

How fast is that exactly? AT&T news releases have pointed to a speed limit of about 1.4 MBPS. Any Philippine 3G junkie will tell you that’s way out of the ballpark for 3G, which tops out at 384 kbps. That is HSDPA territory, baby. High Speed Download Packet Access. Three-point-five G.

Why aren’t they calling it iPhone HSDPA or 3.5G then? Marketing. Look, it’s bad enough that the average Joe Shmoe in America doesn’t know what “3G” is and you’re going to confuse him with this HSDPA business?

“3G” has the right amount of tech-iness assigned to it, is a little snappier, and is easier to remember than “HSDPA” or even “HSPA”.

Let’s see how much mileage Apple and AT&T get out of the 3G cachet. In the Philippines, Smart Communications and Globe have figured out that the Juan in the street responds to the term “mobile internet” better than 3G and have shifted marketing gears accordingly. It’s just emerging player Sun Cellular who still trumpets “3G” for its upcoming 3G service (Soon in *Ortigas* and *Makati*!)

But back to the iPhone’s speed limit.

The published specs on Apple’s site give us the tale o’ the tape:

• UMTS/HSDPA (850, 1900, 2100 MHz)
• GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz)

Engadget has gone so far as to the publish the internal hardware that hints at the device’s speediness:

• Infineon PMB6952 / S-GOLD3 six-band UMTS / HSDPA transceiver
• Murata LMRX3JCA-479 tri-band amplifier
• Sony SP9T antenna switch for GSM / UMTS dual mode
• Skyworks 77427 chip – UMTS / HSDPA tx 1900MHz, rx 2100MHz
• Skyworks 77414 chip – UMTS / HSDPA 1900MHz
• Skyworks 77413 chip – UMTS / HSDPA 850MHz

So it’s a quad-band GSM phone, which means it should provide GPRS and EDGE service in Asia, Europe – and the rest of the world — as well as the land where standards forgot (i.e. North America).

More interesting is that it supports all three UMTS frequencies – 850, 1900, 2100. Now this is the icing on the cake, and begs one to ask how fast the iPhone will really go. These frequencies are not North America specific. But they are the frequencies being used in places in the world where mobile carriers are maxing the bejeezus out of UMTS.

In many places around the world (the UK and Singapore for example), you’ll get a speed limit of 3.6 MBPS. Some territories are providing 7.2 MBPS. And at least one territory, Australia, has a carrier providing a blistering 14.4 MBPS nationwide. In fact, it’s so fast they don’t even bother calling it 3.5G, they’ve adapted the monicker “Next-G”.

If the iPhone carries the full gamut of UMTS frequencies, will it scorch by at these speeds worldwide or will it squeak by at the AT&T imposed speed limit?

Well for one thing AT&T is already planning it’s next moves – and plans to evolve into LTE (Long Term Evolution) eventually. I anticipate that as data demand picks up because of the iPhone, AT&T will start moving closer to the international speed limits.

Conventional thinking would have it that Apple is privy to AT&T’s plans – so I’d say they’ve planned that the iPhone will keep up with the mother network.

Now to the question on everyone’s minds – how will Globe’s HSDPA infrastructure handle this baby? Well you’ll have to ask Globe Visibility users how they’re coping. And I will leave it at that.