SIRI

The Siri Assistant is one of the most exciting features of the new iPhone 4S. In many ways it is a rehash of technology that has been done before, but in many other ways, it is quite revolutionary, in fact, I believe the 'S' in iPhone 4S stands for Siri (Apple has not defined the 'S' as of yet.)

Let's do some background. Siri was a spin-off of a company called SRI International, which is an offshoot of a DARPA funded project that some say is the largest artificial intelligence project ever launched. It doesn't specialize in voice recognition persay, it specializes in interpretting the meaning behind what you say.

Siri eventually wanted to use this technology for consumer use and they developed a 'personal assistant' app for the iPhone. This app could understand 'normal' english questions and commands and find things such as movie times, directions, nearby gas stations, and also do things like make reservations to a restaurant, all hands-free. It was quite impressive and shortly after the app's release, Apple made a move to buy Siri and in April of 2010 they made the deal final.

Apple had grandiose plans for Siri and decided to fully integrate the Siri personal assistant technology into their upcoming iOS, not only connecting it to information like movie listings, but also tying it into various apps.

Nuance, a company who has long been involved in voice recognition technology specifically, is being coupled with Siri, which then interprets the words and takes action. With these powers combined... the Siri digital personal assistant for iOS is born.

To give you an example of some previous attempts of this sort of technology, you could actually look no further than Apple itself. In iPhone 3GS, voice control features were added, and they worked somewhat decently. You could press in the home button and say something like "Call Mom... Mobile" or "Play album...Abbey Road" and it would do it, but beyond a few simple parsed phrases, it was useless. I highly doubt many people did actually use it except to show it off once or twice.

Some companies have similar programs integrated within their devices, but for the most part you still have to remember a slew of specified commands, and cannot speak naturally or it will have trouble understanding you. The Siri Assistance is not perfect either, but it seems pretty remarkable at understand your everyday speech and interpretting it.

For an example of this technology, let's say you wanted to find out what the weather was going to be like today. You could ask Siri in multiple different ways and it will bring you the same info. You could say "What's today's weather forecast?" or you could ask "What will the hourly temperature be?" or even "Will I need an umbrella today?"

It doesn't stop there. Siri is connected to a service called Wolfram Alpha, which can calculate and give you information about almost anything. If you were to ask it "How many days until Christmas?" It would give you the answer right away. You could ask "Who is Chester Copperfield?" and it will tell you that he is a character from the movie Goonies.

There are unlimited possibilities for what info you can ask it to get for you, and instead of turning on the phone, opening up an app, searching for info, finding an article, etc...etc... you could technically ask it a question without pulling the phone from your pocket and have the answer in the time it would have taken to turn on the phone.

That is great and all, but those things could be done with the Siri app alone... the integration into Apple's iOS is what makes Siri even more powerful.

Siri has connections with numerous apps in the iPhone, including SMS, Mail, Calendar, Reminders and more. This means that you can compose text messages or emails by dictation and then send it out, no fingers needed (well maybe one finger needed to press the home button.)

You can tell the phone "Remind me about the football game tomorrow at 7 p.m." and it will set a reminder. You could say "Please schedule a meeting for July 13th at 2 p.m." and the phone may talk back saying 'You already have an appointment scheduled for July 13th at 2 p.m., shall I still schedule meeting?" and you can answer back, "No, move meeting to 4 p.m." and it will move the meeting.

It also retains information and learns the more you use it. Here's an example given during the presentation, Siri was tasked to read back a text message that just came in which said 'When do you want to go out to dinner?'... Without responding, Siri was asked 'Do I have anything on Friday?' Siri responded with 'No, you have no appointments for Friday?' without telling it anything else, the presenter then said "Ok, reply... how about Friday?" and Siri automatically composed a reply text message that said 'How about Friday?' he could then either hit 'send' or tell it to send.

Please note that Siri is still in 'Beta' phase, which means it will only get better, but starting next Friday, I will have a chance to test it myself.