Siri - page 32

While speaking today at the All Things D conference, Nuance CEO Paul Ricci confirmed that Nuance does indeed help power the voice recognition service for Siri.

Since Siri’s launch in 2011, many people assumed that Apple had formed a partnership with Nuance, but neither company has officially confirmed the relationship.

During the his interview, Ricci was asked whether it’s his company’s fault if the iPhone doesn’t understand a user’s voice. Ricci confirmed that Nuance does power the voice part of Siri, but the company is not involved in speech-recognition efforts with Google.

Sometimes when you can’t decide between two things the easiest thing to do is flip a coin. Don’t got a quarter? Well, Siri can now create some random numbers for you via the command “Roll the dice.”

The litter Easter egg might also come in handy if you’re Monopoly board is missing its shiny white dice. But then again, you’ll probably be playing a game on your iPhone by then.

Oh, and if you just want Siri to flip a coin instead, she can do that too:

Microsoft has released a new TV ad that slams the iPad touts Windows 8 on an Asus tablet. This is the most directly targeted attack campaign on Apple in recent memory—even the Samsung Galaxy ads had more tact.

The tagline of the ad is “Less Talking, More Doing,” a.k.a using apps like Powerpoint. Siri is used to mock the iPad, ending in the virtual assistant giving up with, “Should we just play chopsticks?” in Garageband.

You have to give it to Microsoft for not pulling any punches. It will be interesting to see if Apple responds. Remember the good ol’ days of Mac vs. PC?

Via: The Verge

Apple began adding the Galaxy S4 to its ongoing patent-infringement case against Samsung last week, and it has now specified five patents which it believes the device is breaching. The Cupertino company has also taken aim at Google Now, which allegedly infringes its unified search patent.

When Siri was updated along with iOS 6, we showed you a bunch of ways to use Apple’s personal digital assistant the right way, like using punctuation and finding out the weather.

Yet time marches ever onward, and we’ve compiled yet another five tips and tricks to help you master Siri, whether you’re looking to create a secure password or just pass the time with a few laughs. Enjoy! Discover even more secret siri commands to improve your Siri experience here.

If you’ve tried to use Siri to call or text someone, you know it’s pretty simple. Just say, for example, “Call Joe Smith,” and Siri will call the person named Joe Smith in your Contacts App.

But did you know that Siri can also identify people via their relationship to you? You can say, “Call my brother,” or “Text my daughter,” and Siri will call or text that person, provided you’ve done a little set-up in the Contacts app.

You can also use Siri to define these relationships, so you don’t even have to open Contacts. Here’s how.

There are plenty of funny things to ask Siri. One of my daughter’s favorite things to do with Siri on my iPhone, besides rename me all sorts of ridiculous names, is to ask it questions.

“Siri,” she’ll say, “what is your real name?” Siri will reply with how she really doesn’t like talking about herself. Hilarious, right?

I’m almost afraid to show my daughter this tip, because she’ll now have a ton of funny questions to ask Siri, getting truly cute and laughable responses along the way. I may never get my iPhone back.

Here is a list of some of the best funny things to ask Siri. We’ll leave finding out the answers to you.

As you may know, Siri is backed by the seriously amazing knowledge web site, Wolfram Alpha, which makes dynamic computations about your search terms based on a its own collection of built-in data, special algorithms, and other secret fancy methods. Or, to put it another way: magic.

Anyway, Siri taps into Wolfram Alpha and can come up with some great stuff, like calculating tips for you, for example. Siri’s connection to Wolfram can do even more than that, like generating a secure password for you. Here’s how.

Google Now was already pretty awesome, but now it’s getting even better on both iOS and Android. And it’s coming to the desktop as part of Google’s Knowledge Graph.

Siri’s got a ton of talents. She’s an amateur movie critic. She knows all about robotics. Plus, she’s pretty decent at her main job as a personal assistant.

Siri’s never been a great comedian, and whoever was put in charge of making Siri more witty and conversational  is just making her look more dorky. Now whenever you ask Siri to tell you a joke, she replies with, “Get Siri-ous. Ha ha!” The joke is bad enough, but the little “Ha ha!” at the end makes Siri sound like some high school nerd at open mic night. Hopefully Tim Cook and the gang will teach Siri some better jokes before WWDC 2013.

Source: Reddit

Talking to Siri can be either an exercise in frustration, or a miracle of modern technology, depending on your mood and how successful the Apple digital assistant is at interpreting what it is you’re asking. Typically, when you activate Siri with a long press and hold on the Home button, the input is collected via the microphone built into your iPHone or iPad.

If you have a Bluetooth accessory, though, you might not know that Siri can listen through that device as well. Here’s how to get Siri to do just that.

Apple’s got to keep the ever-mounting demands on its Siri servers down somehow, so here’s a new one. If you ask her something too long, Siri will respond with trite quotes upon the power of brevity, such as this one by William Strunk of Strunk & White fame:

A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.

Of course, it’s not up to a voice-recognition program to dictate what is an unnnecessary word or sentence, any more than it is up to a pencil which line in a drawing is “unnecessary”, or an engine schematic which part isn’t needed.

But here’s something ironic! Take that exact quote above by Strunk and modify it into a question. “Siri, should a sentence contain any unnecessary words, or a paragraph any unnecessary sentences, for the same reasons that a drawing should not have any unnecessary lines or a machine any unnecessary parts?” And guess what! Siri will accuse Strunk of being long-winded. Take that Elements of Style!

Source: iLounge

Have you ever had one of those Siri moments, where you ask her to search for something, and she interprets your speech incorrectly? I’m guessing all of us have, at one time or another.

One thing Siri doesn’t do very well is provide for “no I meant…” error correction, at least using speech. Next time you use Siri and the result is something you didn’t expect, don’t just press the home button in frustration, but correct Siri using your iPhone or iPad keyboard instead.

Siri’s good at simple things like creating appointments, sending texts, calling people and looking up random bits of information on the Internet, but what I really want Siri to be great at is managing stuff in my house.

One Redditor decided he was tired of turning his Philips Hue bulbs on and off all on his own, so he employed some clever hackery to get Siri to do it for him. In the video above you can see that the results are a little bit clunky, but it makes us drool for Apple to release a Siri API so other smart products can be controlled through Siri.

To complete the Siri Hue Bulbs hack, a jailbroken iPod was hacked to re-route Siri functionality to a Siri proxy. The iPod’s Siri beeps were replaced with WAV files for Iron Man’s Jarvis, which adds a little flair to the project.

Source: YouTube

Via: Reddit

Samsung loves bashing its competitors, and it often does so in advertisements for new Galaxy products. So it’s no surprise that the Korean company has programmed its S Voice assistant to bash the iPhone. Ask it if it’s ever used Apple’s popular smartphone and S Voice delivers a scolding response.

Slip on your Nikes and grab your Kool-Aid, dear brethren, it’s time for a new episode of The CultCast. This time around, iOS 7 takes over your car; 5S gets better at selfies; Jony Ive is under pressure; Tim Cook really doubles down on secrecy, ya’ll; and we pitch our favorite tech and apps on an all new Fave’s ‘N Raves.

All that and more on this week’s CultCast! Stream or download new and past episodes on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing now on iTunes, or hit play below and let the good times roll.

Break on through to the other side for the show notes.

There was a study by the Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI) last week which concluded that voice-to-text apps, like Siri, offer no benefit over standard texting. In fact, they say, reaction time nearly doubled when using these types of apps.

Adam Cheyer, one of the scientists that helped create Siri, however, begs to differ.

Do you think Siri instantly forgot all those strange questions and requests you asked it the moment you pressed your home button, then you’re wrong. Siri remembers. Well, Apple does; the Cupertino company has confirmed this week that it stores every Siri request you make for up to two years.

Siri hasn’t quite lived up to the hype that most Apple fans bestowed upon it after it debuted with the iPhone 4S, but it’s still a magical piece of software, and Apple’s competitors want their own version of Siri.

Adding to months of speculation that it’s working on its own smartphone, Amazon just bought a  Siri-like app called Evi, for $26 million. 

Ever been driving along when inspiration strikes? When the perfect line for that song you’ve been writing appears in your head and you just have to write it down? How about when you’re listening to the radio and you want to remind yourself to look up a book you’re hearing about on NPR?

You could pull over and rummage around your glove box for a pen that works and some paper, or pull out the Moliskine notebook you carry around everywhere (you hipster). Or, you can just have Siri create a Note about it on your iPhone. You can even have Siri add stuff to Notes you’ve already made. That way, you can just make a note of it, using your voice and the power of Apple’s personal assistant, and it will sync to iCloud (if you have it enabled), ready for action when you get home, or back to your Mac.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Ku0H10_G1X4

One of the curses of being an innovator is every time you innovate, someone comes along and says they had a patent on it first. Apple knows this dilemma well, and the latest patent infringement claim Cupertino has to defend itself against is in China over Siri, Apple’s virtual assistant.

What if Siri tried to kill you? That’s the plot of a new Dutch horror film called App that features a malevolent Siri clone called IRIS (get it?) that starts killing people. And as a cool twist, App allows you to download a free app to use while you watch the film.

In response to Samsung’s Galaxy S4 announcement last Thursday, Apple has updated the iPhone 5 pages of its website to remind visitors why people love the iPhone. “Loving it is easy. That’s why so many people do,” the landing page reads, before going on to list all the reasons why the Cupertino company’s smartphone is so popular.

I love being able to whisper instructions to Siri as I walk along the street. My favorite trick is to get her to play a song, album or playlist. “Play something by Daft Punk,” I order, and off he goes. The problem is that I use Spotify and Rdio for most of my music, and Siri doesn’t talk to either of them.

But this neat hack will get her most of the way there.

Siri does a pretty good job right now of figuring out what you are saying to her, but one senior iOS architect over at Honda R&D has figured out a way for Siri to understand what you think at her. That’s right, Siri has gone psychic.