Siri could be a game changer if it can be presented correctly. Vimeo has Tom Grubers presentation which is enlightening. He covers why Personal Virtual Assistants are much better than Speech to Text bolted on a search engine.
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How big of a deal is this Siri thing?
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Siri could be a game changer if it can be presented correctly. Vimeo has Tom Grubers presentation which is enlightening. He covers why Personal Virtual Assistants are much better than Speech to Text bolted on a search engine.
And easy to see your point, as a lot more can be said by voice in a short period of time than texting, but . . .
The person on the other end of the conversation isn't necessarily on a phone, they may be on FB at home on their laptop. It's still more 'impersonal' than a direct conversation, and younger generations seem to like to deal that way, and one can be in contact with many people at once instead of hanging up, calling someone else, or being in a conference call, etc.
So you want to give me an education on the history of speech-recognition technology? Because I guarantee that you'll tell me that it's never caught on, it's never been a loudly demand feature for computers or phones, and that it's existed for over 15 years already and never been seriously implemented into any OS.
Oh, and you want to give me a little update on phone usage -- because your research will surely tell you that tweeting and texting has grown exponentially over the last few years while actual voice talk time has been in decline.
But please, enlighten me on what I don't know about and tell me why Siri will be the first product that consumers give a fig about in the voice recognition genre and why it will succeed where Dragon Naturally and PlainTalk have failed.
Sure
http://tomgruber.org/writing/semtech09.htm
There's also a nice 43 minute presentation by Gruber that may be available still. Yes ...I will acknowledge that voice technology has been slow in maturing but we're now at a point where we need to start leveraging computers to do more.
A lot of people confuse speech to text with Siri. Siri is about Semantics and deriving meaning and then being able to actionable things based on voice input.
I have the Siri app on my iPhone and it doesn't work as well as I'd like but it's been over a year since this app really hit the floor. It will undoubtedly get better.
The reason why it's not gimmicky is because it's going to yield a LOT of power to whomever delivers a solution that consumers can use. Think about it...Siri abstracts the search from the end product. It's the bridge and suppose Apple corners the market they yield a lot of power on who connects to Siri on the back end.
That being said I will issue a public apology if Siri isn't in common use by iOS 6. Apple didn't spend an estimated 200 million on a toy.
Apple needs to set up a "Try Siri out" service like they did with FaceTime when it first came out. A site that you can visit (or even phone number you can call) and talk to, and try it out. That'll help sell it, if its as good as they say. Not everyone has an Apple store nearby. And this can be done PRIOR to them being on sale.
Siri sounds ground breaking, but I frankly wouldnt use it all that much. Siri can do everything that you can do with your fingers. The only time I would use it is when I am in the car... and that is not often. Cool concept, but I dont think the usability factor is enough to have ANY iphone 4 user upgrade at all!
iPhone 4S not enough
I was really dissappointed with the iPhone 4S announcement yesterday. However, Siri is a big deal. Some people say Siri will be like Facetime which I disagree. The biggest problem with Facetime is that it requires WiFi which makes it very limited. Siri doesn't have that limitation. Siri is not an app, it's built in the OS and it isn't just voice recognition. It's speach recognition with AI computation (that processs, finds, and remembers). The AI on Siri is backed by services in the cloud which makes it really powerful. It's not perfect, but it's the future; I SEE IT.
It's not just for when you're driving. Scheduling an appointment by pressing the home button and telling Siri will be much faster than unlocking your phone, tapping on your calendar, create an appointment, select your date and time. This is just one simple example, people will get faster at it as they use it.
I was really dissappointed with the iPhone 4S announcement yesterday. However, Siri is a big deal. Some people say Siri will be like Facetime which I disagree. The biggest problem with Facetime is that it requires WiFi which makes it very limited. Siri doesn't have that limitation. Siri is not an app, it's built in the OS and it isn't just voice recognition. It's speach recognition with AI computation (that processs, finds, and remembers). The AI on Siri is backed by services in the cloud which makes it really powerful. It's not perfect, but it's the future; I SEE IT.
It's not just for when you're driving. Scheduling an appointment by pressing the home button and telling Siri will be much faster than unlocking your phone, tapping on your calendar, create an appointment, select your date and time. This is just one simple example, people will get faster at it as they use it.
They're not making you talk ON the phone. They're making you talk TO the phone. There's a difference.
I think Siri could be a game changer in how we utilize our phones today. People that's used this type of technology before seems to have a "meh" attitude about it and I can understand why. It wasn't as interactive. It still required you to press buttons to confirm and overall just not as integrated with all the general applications in your phones. I understand that Apple did not create it but if there's one thing Apple is great at doing, it's streamlining and making it very user friendly. I can't make a definite conclusion based on a controlled demo they had, but if Apple can pull this off, I could see this getting big. More and more states are adopting a no phone while driving law and this could fix that. I'm sure that most of us are guilty of reading a text while driving. I like the idea of not struggling to click on a button while jogging to find a song or respond to people. People are spending too much time with their heads tilted down on their phones just to search for something. This has the potential to turn our phones into devices to get what we need quickly so we can get back to our lives rather than end up living in our phones.