New Android Unlock Feature Trickery!

If you follow Android news, you'll know that one of the big features rolling out with Ice Cream Sandwhich (from here on will be called 'ICS' for short) is the Face Unlock feature being included in the Samsung Galaxy Nexus.  So here's the deal, the device will use facial recognition to unlock your device.  That's awesome and it doesn't impede upon one of Apple's patents, right?  Sure is.

Or at least it was until some wiseguy decided to try and beat the feature at it's own game.  And let's just say, he won.  It was posed as a question from Twitter to SoyaCincau as to whether or not the Galaxy Nexus face unlock feature could be unlocked using a printed picture of the owner's face.  In his test, he didn't even need to kill a tree or waste ink on printing a picture.  He used the Galaxy Note device and took his own picture.  And guess what, it worked.  The Samsung Galaxy Nexus unlocked.

It has also been called to question as to whether he setup the device to unlock with the picture or setup the phone to behave the way it did.  His answer is that he setup the phone to unlock using his face, not the picture.  And he is sticking to that story.  Which in my opinion is completely believable.  After all, facial recognition isn't doing anything other than comparing a fresh image of your face with one on file somewhere in a database tucked away inside the operating system on the phone (all geeky references to how the technology actually works aside, this is basically it).

So, the concept that this could be tricked makes a lot of sense to me.  What do you think?

I can see a couple of ways this could be a pain for someone.  Say someone is having a meal with you and snipes a picture of you while you're waiting for your meal using their iPhone 4S (for example).  You get up and go to the restroom and while you're gone they use the image of you on their device and unlock your phone.  For kicks they now set your unlock screen feature to match their face. It seems you'd be locked out of your own phone right?

I like the concept of facial recognition for unlocking the device.  However, I don't see how this is anymore secure than a lock screen pattern or passcode.  Both of which can easily be circumvented should someone be attentive enough to watch you unlock your phone.

If you'd like to watch the video yourself check it out at:
http://youtu.be/BwfYSR7HttA

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Kind of Slow...

Not much of interest going on today in the tech world.  I guess it's been kind of slow on that front.  Aside from recent flooding in Thailand possibly having an impact on hard drive manufacturing/availability for the first few months of 2012.  And the Siri outage for iPhone 4S users this week.

On the gaming front, be sure to checkout DC Universe Online which went free to play this week.  And early numbers report this was a success and already showing a rather large increase in the game's population/sign-ups.  So go check it out: http://www.dcuniverseonline.com/

This means I will hopefully be able to get caught up on my emails and make some videos this weekend for the YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/techiesmarts

Check back soon!

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Is there a Siri for Android? Part 2: Skyvi

Skyvi was the second app I tried out during my quest for a 'Siri-like' app for Android devices.  You can read my post below about my hands-on with Iris incase you missed it (click here: my hands-on with Iris).  I have to say I kind of like Skyvi a little better.  The interface is a little more cluttered and not quite as slick looking as Iris.  However, it is very clear from the get-go what you can do with Skyvi.  When you launch the app, the initial screen you are taken to has a series of categories or buttons you can use to explore assorted questions and tasks you can have Skyvi do for you.

In a similar test to my use of Iris, I started off by asking some simple questions pertaining to things like the weather, my location, etc.  And all seemed to work much like Iris.  But where I really started having fun was letting Skyvi post status updates on Facebook and Twitter for me.  After pairing your Facebook and Twitter accounts with Skyvi it is literally as simple as tapping the microphone icon and saying "Update my Facebook Status".

You will get a voice prompt from Skyvi asking what you want your status to say and a voice box will pop up.  Simply tell it what you want and it will automagically send your status update to Facebook (it will read it back to you once it's posted, so be careful what you say first time around).  The Twitter update works the same way.  Out of the four updates I posted through Skyvi only one of them seemed to be misinterpreted.  Pretty much the same rule of thumb applies to Skyvi as with Iris.  Speak somewhat slow and very clear to get the proper results the first time.

You can even have Skyvi read your Facebook and Twitter updates from friends and you can use it to write a comment on a Facebook friend's wall.  Pretty awesome!  Skyvi is free and is a lot of fun to play with.

To check out Skyvi for yourself, swing by the Android Market at: Skyvi for Android

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Is there a Siri for Android? Part 1: Iris

One of Apple's biggest advertised features of their new iPhone 4S is Siri.  If you have been living under a rock and not sure what Siri is, I'll fill you in.  Siri is basically a virtual personal assistant that recognizes your voice.  Basically you queue up Siri and tell it what to do.  It can do web searches for you, answer questions, give you information (like what your weather is), schedule calendar events, set alarms, etc.  In short, it's pretty freakin' cool.  And I'm not a huge iPhone fan; but Siri is pretty sweet.

So naturally I set out to see if the Android Market had anything similar to Siri available (knowing I wouldn't find much).  Right off the bat I was surprised to find two apps that claim some of the features that Siri includes.  Both allow for speech in and speech out controlling.  In short, you can chat with the app and it can physically talk back to you.  Fun and yes, a little creepy.  I'll be splitting both apps into two articles.  This is the first.

The first I tried was 'Iris'.  Iris is still in Alpha Development as of this writing but it is fun to play with.  As far as being a productive tool, I can't quite call it that yet.  But it is a blast to screw around with.  The first few minutes spent with Iris was full of laughs and learning.  You can ask Iris to tell you what your local weather forecast is and it will return in voice results with your local temperature, etc.  If you ask it a question about a movie or song it will return information about the source material in question.

The app is somewhat slick looking with a solid, black background and only a blue orb on the screen.  You simply press the orb and when the speech box pops up on screen fire a question or comment at Iris.  Your searches and results will build a list down the screen keeping track of your discussion with Iris.  Within the first few minutes Iris has correctly returned search results about several songs and television characters.  My next question was asking it for the phone number for a local pizza restaurant, which should have been simple enough via a quick web search.

Instead Iris informed me that she "wasn't going to give me her phone number..."  Which was hilarious since I have never tried to "pick up" and electronic device before.  I have noticed with Iris that the correct searches are driven from very clear spoken word.  You also have to go slow sometimes for Iris to understand you.  But the fact that this works as well as it does is crazy.  It's almost like having Jarvis (Tony Stark's AI voice from Iron Man) in your pocket. 

But considering the story behind Iris, it is amazing that the app is already this far along in progress.  Simply put the initial app was developed in around 8 hours by the folks at Dexetra.com.  I look forward to seeing how development on this app progresses.

And if you haven't noticed yet, Iris = Siri spelled backwards. Clever!  It also works on both phones and tablets.

Anyways, if you'd like to check out Iris then swing by the Android Market:
Iris (alpha) on Android Market

Click here: to see my hands-on with Skyvi (another Siri-like app for Android)

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