[Vogue’s story below is about the use of presence to enhance the experience of drinking fine liquor. Forbes has additional details and Paste’s coverage includes this: “Currently, Rare Journey is only available at Baptiste & Bottle; however, [national brand ambassador] Raies says similar experiences will likely appear elsewhere once it has been fine tuned. For those looking to create an approximation of the experience at home, Raies recommends The MacallanVR app, which features the Rare Journey VR video. All you need is the cardboard VR viewer for your phone, a bottle of Rare Cask, and the sherry. If you don’t…

[This short story from iLounge summarizes and links to a detailed post by Apple about how the company is improving the “naturalness, personality, and expressivity of Siri’s voice” for iOS 11; click through to the bottom of that post to listen to several audio clips of Siri in iOS 9, 10 and 11 to hear the impressive differences. For other recent presence-related Siri news, see “AI Programs Are Learning to Exclude Some African-American Voices“ from MIT Technology Review and “To Win The AI Assistant Wars, Apple Is Melding Siri With Its Other Services” from Fast Company. –Matthew] Apple publishes details…

[Precise and explicit definitions are essential for scholars (a quest close to my heart when it comes to presence). Especially in the last decade the evolution of the technologies that evoke presence has raised challenges for defining the nature and categories of the technologies and even for defining and measuring presence (e.g., many questionnaire items don’t apply well to augmented reality). This column from Computerworld outlines the situation and argues that despite the important distinctions, soon the technologies will all be commonly known as “virtual reality.” The original version of the column includes a second image and a 4:28 minute…

[This story from the Irish Independent describes several ways presence experiences are becoming more common at restaurants; the original version includes two more pictures and for more information check out the websites of Shanghai’s Ultraviolet and Ibiza’s Sublimotion. –Matthew] [Image: Sea food: Diners at Shanghai’s Ultraviolet restaurant take in an underwater experience. Photo: Scott Wright of Limelight Studio] Out for a byte: dining is now a feast for all senses Technology à la carte will whisk you away to a Tuscan garden while kitchen robots flip your burgers. Sue Quinn savours the thought June 7 2017 Have a taste of…

[As this story from Wired notes, in the possibly-near future a virtual layer of experience will become overlaid on and intertwined with our nonmediated world, with lots of potential uses and impacts. The new Mirage app is an early step toward that future. –Matthew] Finally: An Augmented Reality App that Injects the Internet into Real Life Peter Rubin August 8, 2017 When Ryan Staake and Patrick Piemonte first worked together, they helped you get around: Both were interface designers at Apple, with Piemonte working specifically on the iPhone’s map technology. Now, nearly a decade later, the two are working together…

[This big picture perspective on the future of mediated experience from Forbes makes a compelling case that today’s technologies are leading us toward what has only been considered in science fiction, raising some of the same intriguing philosophical questions about the nature of humans and how we would use or misuse such technologies. –Matthew] [Image: A picture taken on June 8, 2016 in the gardens of the Chateau de Versailles shows ‘Waterfall’ installation by Danish artist Olafur Eliasson. The spectacular installation cascades into the Grand Canal of the famous royal gardens outside Paris. Eliasson created eight works for the palace…