All posts tagged Siri

Siri Accounts for Nearly 25% of Wolfram Alpha Queries

By | February 8, 2012 | iPhone | 1 Comment

Apple’s new voice controlled AI assistant Siri accounts for nearly 25% of Wolfram Alpha queries according to New York Times. Apple partnered with the answer-engine for Siri that was launched with the iPhone 4S and since then, the Wolfram Alpha staff has grown to 200 employees.

Wolfram Alpha was launched back in 2009 by a British scientist Stephen Wolfram. Wolfram|Alpha introduces a fundamentally new way to get knowledge and answers— not by searching the web, but by doing dynamic computations based on a vast collection of built-in data, algorithms, and methods.

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Why Siri is Exclusive to iPhone 4S

By | February 7, 2012 | Apple, iPhone | No comments

One of the main selling points of iPhone 4S over iPhone 4 is Siri apart from better graphics and processing power. Well there is no apparent reason why Siri is iPhone 4S exclusive, folks at appleinsider have done some digging.

“Audience” a third party noise reduction circuitry exist in iPhone 4/4S but the one found in iPhone 4S has a noise reduction technology that works in a similar way human brain works.

Audience’s noise reduction chip works similarly to how the human brain processes audio. By sampling audio from multiple sources (the iPhone’s main microphone and the noise-cancelling mic), the Audience chip is able to filter out background noise and deliver only the user’s voice, just like how your brain filters out noise in a crowded room to focus on a person talking to you. The newer noise reduction circuitry in the A5 chip is better at “far-field” noise reduction than the circuits in the iPhone 4. Essentially, the iPhone 4S can achieve the same or better noise reduction when held at arm’s length that the iPhone 4 gets when held directly in front of a user’s mouth.

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Siri Command Guide – Some Examples

By | January 30, 2012 | iPhone | No comments

Have you recently got iPhone 4S and wondering what to say to Siri apart from some obvious commands. Below are a list of Siri commands that you can use to interact with different apps on your iPhone 4S.

Address Book

Querying Contacts

  • What’s Michael’s address?
  • What is Susan Park’s phone number?
  • When is my wife’s birthday?
  • Show Jennifer’s home email address

Finding Contacts

  • Show Jason Russell
  • Find people named Park
  • Who is Michael Manning?

Relationships

  • My mom is Susan Park
  • Michael Manning is my brother
  • Call my brother at work

Calendars

Adding Events

  • Set up a meeting at 9
  • Set up a meeting with Michael at 9
  • Meet with Lisa at noon
  • Set up a meeting about hiring tomorrow at 9am
  • New appointment with Susan Park Friday at 3
  • Schedule a planning meeting at 8:30 today in the boardroom

Changing events

  • Move my 3pm meeting to 4:30
  • Reschedule my appointment with Dr. Manning to next Monday at 9am
  • Add Lisa to my meeting with Jason
  • Cancel the budget review meeting

Asking about events

  • What does the rest of my day look like?
  • What’s on my calendar for Friday?
  • When is my next appointment?
  • When am I meeting with Michael?
  • Where is my next meeting?

More commands below

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Siri Competitor Evi has Arrived on the App Store

By | January 26, 2012 | iPhone | No comments

Siri is Apple’s artificial intelligence speak recognition software which currently runs only on iPhone 4S and was one of the highlighted feature when it is launched in October last year. Siri showed all of us a glimpse of future and how we would interact with digital devices in the coming days. Siri is very powerful tool but it has limitations like running only on iPhone 4S and data returned by Siri is poor outside US.

Evi is an attempt by True Knowledge. It runs on iPhone and Android and is in beta phase. “Based on very deep, patented technology around language and knowledge understanding, the iPhone app couples a licensing of Nuance’s voice recognition technology (the small charge is to cover this license) and True Knowledge’s engine.”
Evi is unable to integrate with your calendar and reminders like Siri but it has some great capabilities. Even in beta it’s improving every day. TechCrunch has posted following comparison on their website.

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Siri Can Play Yamaha Piano Now

By | December 20, 2011 | iPhone | 2 Comments

The Siri hack is specially developed by Yamaha and send a special MIDI version of the song to Airport Express which then sends additional information to piano. Ask for any song in your library. It even plays foot pedals, pretty cool, huh!. Well to see it yourself check out his YouTube video.

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Best Buy public API Uses Siri to Search Wolfram Alpha Inventory

By | December 17, 2011 | iPhone | 1 Comment

TUAW: Siri can now search 35 thousand Wolfram Alpha inventory including computers and home appliances using Best Buy public API.

Within search queries you can ask Siri to search for “Wolfram, tablet computers”, “Wolfram, iPhone 4S” and inventory information along with price will show up on your iPhone.

Wolfram’s official blog explains,

We’ve taken the strengths we’ve developed in math, science, and socioeconomic data and created something equally unique and useful for online shoppers.