Meet my lovely (virtual) assistant
Who wouldn't like a personal assistant? You know, someone you ask to make dinner reservations in your name, find movies playing nearby, get you lists of what's happening this weekend, call a taxi, find the nearest gas station or send you a reminder for your spouse's birthday or a business meeting.
If you have an iPhone with the latest software update, you're in luck. Your assistant is just a download away and it won't cost you a dime. Yep, it's a free application called Siri. (Sorry if you expected someone samed Sarah or Suresh.) It's getting rave reviews.
A Facebook friend alerted me to the app earlier today, so I did some research and downloaded it. Installation took less than a minute, and although the support page at
says the app is designed for the iPhone 3GS, it seems to work fine on my 3G. I did update the operating system to the latest 3.1.3 version, which was released last week. BlackBerry and Android versions are coming soon.
Siri works either by speaking into the phone's microphone or by tapping through some preset options. The voice recognition is extremely accurate; I got very good results when I asked it to find the movie "Crazy Heart" playing near my home. I had to enter home and work addresses into my Siri settings, and it also stores credit card information, but I haven't added any yet.
An example used in the video demo below has a user asking Siri to find a romantic place for Italian food near his office. The app looks at multiple information sources and returns several options. The results can be e-mailed from the app. Siri also can make dining reservations through Open Table. You never have to make a call and a single click confirms the reservation. The same holds true for buying movie tickets. You ask, Siri works.
You can search any location, although the app does ask whether you'd like it to use your current location via the GPS on the iPhone. If you're planning a trip and want to see what's available in another city, tell Siri the location and it will deliver results for that locale.
Here's a sampling of reviews of Siri:
"This is a game-changer. This will replace multiple apps on my iPhone and do it all more seamlessly."
"I typically do not write reviews for apps, but this app is fabulous! You can find and look up practically anything, and the app understands everything I say! It will find anything from nearest gas station to closest Pinkberry to weather in Santa Monica (Calif.) to affordable sushi in Los Angeles. I love this app and definitely recommend it!"
"I've been around since Day One of apps, have about 150 now. Lots of junk, lots of good ones out there, but this is simply the BEST! Won't do everything, but sure comes close. Easily replaces half dozen or more other apps. It sits on Page 1 of my iPhone. This is the only app I would give TEN STARS if Apple would allow it." (Five stars is the maximum rating for an app.)
A team of designers and engineers with experience at Google, Yahoo, Apple, Motorola, Netscape, eBay, RealTravel, SRI, NASA, and Xerox PARC developed Siri. CEO Dag Kittlaus founded the company as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at SRI. He has worked in the mobile Internet world for 10 years in Scandinavia and the U.S. You can see more about the team behind Siri here:
http://www.siri.com/about/team
See it in action, then download it, and let me know what you think.
