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Apple Purchases iPhone 'Personal Assistant' Company Siri
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Does this mean we'll finally have iCal integrated To-Dos?
Siri does have a nice feature where you can email yourself reminders. It would be great if they could integrate this with iCal To Do to be able to dictate to do items. We can always hope.
See this link... it's not 'just' what you think it is...
http://vimeo.com/5424527
Great early demo from last year that starts to get into the technologies going on behind the scenes. I'm ashamed to admit this was the first I heard of this and was floored at how good it was.
Think: "Apple Knowledge Navigator" (c) 1987
P.S. Am I the only one who raced to the APP Store to download it now while its still online?
yeh that would be good to know...
write a successful app, make some $$...
write a REALLY successful app, get bought by apple, make even more $$.
It's funny, when I first played with Siri I thought it reminded me of (what I believe was, if memory serves) a Copland marketing video I saw back in the mid-90s. It featured a digital personal assistant doing exactly these kinds of things... making reservations for you, buying plane tickets, etc. It was interesting, but obviously way before it's time. (Now I know why Copland never got finished, wasting time on such flights of fancy) Jobs wasn't back at Apple yet, but perhaps someone put the Intelligent Agent bug in his ear. I think these kinds of Intelligent Agents are the next Big Thing. We have all of this information, but it is piecemeal. Let computers do the work for us.
AFAIK, the tech for Siri started with a DARPA research project.
AFAIK, the tech for Siri started with a DARPA research project.
If this App recognizes voice as well as the video, Apple will figure out a way to make some money from this purchase!!! I'll have to check it out while the App is still Free.
I've sent a couple feedback messages to Apple on this one. I've got it on my jailbroken 3g now and will jailbreak it again (if I upgrade) to get that feature back if Apple doesn't provide it natively.
Google Voice isn't anything like Siri. It's more that they banned it likely because of it offering phone functions and plus there's the feud between Google and Apple as well. Pity though since the voicemail transcription is far more useful.
No I had the site correct. Siri was spun out of SRI International and its core technology is based on the ambitious DARPA-funded CALO artificial intelligence project.
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/apple_has_acqurired_personal_mobile_assistant_siri.php
Nah they will let it through to the app store to just stop the same ppl who cried about Opera mini and we know how great opera turned out.. forgot I even downloaded it now
Isn't this the same concept as "Computer" on Star Trek NG? Is this where they got the idea from?
I hope they don't put too much AI into this product, or we'll have apps that spawn from it like "Cyber-nag", or "Insta-b*tch". Situation goes something like this:
User: "Oh, I'm too drunk to drive."
SIRI: "S.O.B. ... Didn't I tell you to quit after the third drink? No porn access for you! You are sleeping on the floor tonight!"
I hope they don't put too much AI into this product, or we'll have apps that spawn from it like "Cyber-nag", or "Insta-b*tch". Situation goes something like this:
User: "Oh, I'm too drunk to drive."
SIRI: "S.O.B. ... Didn't I tell you to quit after the third drink? No porn access for you! You are sleeping on the floor tonight!"
Neat concept. I'm not sure how the IP is different from others that are available. Also, it thinks I'm in Maine when I'm actually in New Brunswick.
Anyway.... I'm sure that this will be a cool application in about 5 years.
Cheers.
Anyway.... I'm sure that this will be a cool application in about 5 years.
Cheers.
So the research was funded with taxes, and now a private company will profit off of it? Yay America
So the research was funded with taxes, and now a private company will profit off of it? Yay America
Like the internet you're using to post on this forum? There are so many technologies that come from government research and funding.
Hmmmm... If it works as good as Dragon Dictation, I'll pass. (The voice-recognition function in SIRI is provided by Nuance, the company that makes Dragon.)
The Google app, on the other hand, actually does a reasonably good job of voice recognition, perhaps because a server does the voice recognition. Too bad it's UI is so unresponsive. If they'd rip the voice stuff out of Google, it would make a decent search app.
So, as it is, I haven't seen a voice recognition app on iPhone that does anything useful for me.
And I don't find booking a taxi or making a dinner reservation particularly difficult tasks that I need any "help" with. If I did, I have a credit card with a "concierge" feature where a real, live person will do this for me. But I've never used it.
Maybe this does something useful, and the examples chosen were just poor ones?
Finally, I think I'll avoid this app for the same reason I've chosen to be a Facebook nobody.
Well yes but who made Pacman?
Oh wait it wasn't steve....
On the other hand Apple have been putting R&D money over the years in to ideas that they have put out in the wild to see what comes of them.
So buying up the ones make something of the idea before they get to big would seem to be a very wise move.
Exactly. Google Voice's voice recognition actually works.
Dragon Dictation for iPhone hasn't gotten a single sentence or search for me right yet. The voice recognition technology in Siri is from Nuance, the company that makes Dragon.
Now, I'm not anti-voice-recognition or anything. I know the technology works, given sufficient processing power. (Which I'm not sure iPhone has. The only successful implementation I've seen - Google's - sends audio to a server for processing.) I'm a software engineer, and I've integrated TTS and STT functionality into Linux-based systems, where it worked well. But this was on a 2gHz PC.
Whoops, sorry. I meant the Google Search app. Yes, Google Voice has nothing to do with this, it's basically a VOIP service.
I think the basic idea of this goes back further than Apple's concept piece. My (purchased in 1974) copy of Ted Nelson's 1974 Computer Lib/Dream Machines ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Lib/Dream_Machines )walked off years ago, but I'm pretty sure the concept was mentioned there as well.
If you really want to go back, go back to 1945:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memex
OK, OK, so they want to use some AI to recognize patterns of task management and execution, leverage the computer and Internet to provide whatever assistance might be possible, and use a voice interface to make it as seamless as possible, and the current app is a technology demo. I get it.
The potential mis-use of gathered information is scary. But I guess I'd rather have Apple owning the technology than, say, Google or (gasp!) Facebook. But given where it comes from, I've concerns about where the back door leads.
Wake me up in a few more decades.
FWIW, Dragon's iPhone app uploads everything to a server for transcription too. (Thus the minor controversy when people discovered that it was uploading names from their address books so that it could recognize them later on.)
Dragon's transcription is indeed crummy.