Terra Sigillata

Passionate scientific imagination, fatherhood, and Google voice search

Posted by Abel Pharmboy on October 26, 2009
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While working on a science-rich post and writing an exam, something came across Twitter that is, well, too good to just be seen only on Twitter.

i-4959c1bd8382be2e8999476c371330b4-Burp fullsteam tweet 515px.jpg

Fullsteam is the name of the plow-to-pint Southern microbrewery in Durham, NC, no-longer-in-planning-but-not-quite-done and I have written about the tweeter several times. The imagination behind brewing a beer with sweet potatoes (it’s awesome, btw) or kudzu comes from the very same mind that burped into his iPhone for the benefit of shared education with his daughters.

The result:

i-ec766515e9674e15d9271c3bdb85caaf-Burp into Google search.jpg

I use Google voice search all the time and have been very impressed with its accuracy and utility.

But now I’m not sure who’s more clever: Sean or the Google programmers.

(P.S. – but it didn’t work for me. I also tried to sneeze in it and it returned a search for “untouched.” Is Sean just taking the piss out of me knowing that I would be inclined to post this?)

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Comments

  1. #1 becca
    October 26, 2009

    1) that’s awesome, although I can’t imagine a use for it.
    2) when you can quote a movie line or song lyric into it and get the video on youtube, let me know.

  2. #2 hat_eater
    October 27, 2009

    I guess your burp isn’t pungent enough.
    What I’d like to see is Google recognizing a tune I can’t get out of my head and linking me to the relevant song…

  3. #3 Abel Pharmboy
    October 27, 2009

    Well, becca and hat_eater, Google doesn’t do it but the Shazam app for iPhone does. You do have to play the actual music for the app to recognize the song but it will put up a video link for the song. A review of Shazam is here

    I’ve tried to sing into it but, as you might guess, that doesn’t work.

  4. #4 Sean Lilly Wilson
    October 28, 2009

    Abel,

    Ah, I truly never know where my tweets will end up. I love it.

    To be clear, the odorous result may have been an anomaly. I do not believe it to be programmatic.

    My working hypothesis is that this was a crazy coincidence.

    I am now testing out this assumption on my new Twitter account, Daily Burp. I invite you to follow Daily Burp’s exploits to see whether there is a pattern to the results.

    We are aware that this test may fall prey to respondent bias, as I have been known to burp words. I will do my best to make my projections linguistically neutral.

    We may choose to expand Daily Burp by inviting guest participants.

    After a year of responses, we will analyze the words and see if we can include all 365 results into a compelling novella.

    Now if Daily Burp ends up getting more followers than Fullsteam, I might have to reconsider the business I’m (about to be) in.

    Sophomorically,
    Sean