5 Siri-like apps for iPhone 4, iPod, and iPad

• By Sebastian Anthony 
• From http://www.extremetech.com/

Share This article

One of the biggest puzzlers surrounding the release of iOS 5 is the iPhone 4S’s exclusive ability to use Siri, the voice-controlled virtual assistant. At first we had assumed that Siri requires special hardware — the A5 processor and oodles of RAM, perhaps — but it turns out that the iPhone 4S and iPad 2 are virtually identical. Then there’s the fact that Siri, the standalone app that Apple acquired earlier this year, worked just fine on every iOS device, including the iPhone 3GS and 4, and iPod touch. Still, Apple undoubtedly has its reasons, and who are we to question a higher power?

Fortunately, thanks to a thing called the App Store, there are a few Siri alternatives that you can install. By virtue of being apps, rather baked into the OS like Siri, these alternatives won’t be quite as smooth or fast as Apple’s new wunderkind — but they should be more than capable of sending an email or text while driving, or looking up directions while on the move.

Vlingo (Free)

By far the closest comparison to Siri is Vlingo, an app that has its own voice-recognition engine, a powerful cloud-based back end, and almost all of Siri’s functionality, including booking restaurants. The two caveats are that it can’t set reminders (though a new release might fix that), and unlike its Android brother there doesn’t seem to be a voice-activated mode for hands-free in-car mode.

As an added bonus, there’s also a Vlingo app for just about every platform under the sun, including BlackBerry and Nokia phones, and even Windows; but not Mac, unfortunately.

Google Search (Free)

You probably already have it installed, but the Google Search app for iOS includes the same Voice Search feature found on Android devices. As the name suggests, the app only lets you search using your voice, and there’s absolutely no integration with any other services — but it’s a nice stopgap until Safari innately supports voice searching. Just like mobile website, the Google Search app uses your location data to make sure that the results it returns are contextual, too.

Dragon Go! (Free)

Here’s a fun one: Siri herself doesn’t actually manage voice recognition — a module provided by Nuance does that, and then hands your utterances along to Siri once it’s worked out what you’re trying to say. Dragon Go is made by Nuance, and thus it is just as accurate as Siri… but it’s no where near as polished or full-featured.

Dragon Go is basically a voice interface to a bunch of web services, including Wolfram Alpha, Google, Yelp, Google Maps, and so on. It also interfaces with Pandora, Spotify, and Netflix if they’re installed. There’s also Dragon Diction, which is all about dictating messages or longer notes. You can then send your voice-recognized musing via email, Twitter, Facebook, or SMS.

Built-in Voice Control (Free)

If you want to make (almost) hands-free calls in the car, iOS’s built-in Voice Control is your best bet: press and hold the Home button (or the equivalent on your headset), you’ll hear a beep, and then speak your command. If you want to call someone, say “call” or “dial” followed by their name or number, or you can even initiate a FaceTime connection by saying “FaceTime” and then a name and location (iPhone, home, and so on).

Built-in Voice Control can manipulate your music playback, too (but only the iPod app). Use “play” followed by the name of a song, album, playlist or artist — and you can also “what” and “who” to find out what song/artist is currently playing, or “genius” to have your iDevice pick a new, similar song for you.

Voice Camera Pro ($1.99)

Finally we have the only non-free app on the list: Voice Camera Pro, which does exactly what you think, plus a little bit more. First, you can say “camera” to turn the camera on and “shoot” to take a photo, but you can also say “double,” “triple,” and “quad” to take a series of sequential photos.

You can’t avoid the fact that you have to launch the app before you can use it, though — this isn’t going to let you whip your phone out and magically take photos from the lock screen by shouting “TAKE A PHOTO!” Also, it doesn’t seem to have the ability to shoot video, which seems a little weak for an app that costs money.

Apple iPhone 4S Siri demo

Uploaded by stuffmagazine

Apple's decision to embrace artificial intelligence with its new voice-controlled Siri personal assistant was undeniably a good shout. We could go on and on about how Siri-ously awesome Apple's new iPhone 4S feature is, but it's really something you've got to see for yourself. Don't forget to visit http://www.stuff.tv for your daily gadget fix

Apple Predicted Siri 24 Years Ago So Perfectly It’s Scary

From: http://gizmodo.com/



This just blew my mind. Back in 1987 Apple made a video about a future computer that would have a touchscreen with a computerize assistant you could talk to. They were off in their prediction by only 18 days. Wow.

In 1987, former Apple CEO John Sculley wrote about a concept called the Knowledge Navigator. It was a far out idea that was way ahead of its time. Its time, evidently, was today. The Knowledge Navigator features a digital assistant that is almost identical to Siri, which just launched hours ago, though Siri is a disembodied voice, not a guy in a bow tie. Less bow tie is always good. Check the video and tell me it's not eerily similar.
Here's the kicker, though. Andy Baio of Waxy.org noted, "The date on the professor's calendar is September 16, and he's looking for a 2006 paper written 'about five years ago,' setting the year as 2011." September 16th, 2011. So, twenty-four years ago Apple predicted that there would be a magical, touchscreen device, that could do video calls, that would have a digital assistant you could interact with, and that would pull down data from a massive network (coughTheCloudcough)... and they were only eighteen days off? That's fucking crazy.

What kind of dark magic is at work here? Does Apple have a time machine (other than their product, Time Machine) or a crystal ball? Is that how they rule computers? Time travel? Absolutely nutso. [Waxy.org and BYTECellar]

Update: To clarify, the video is not from 1987. The video was made in the mid-90's. The 1987 date was when John Sculley wrote about Knowledge Navigator is his book Odyssey. Sorry confusion be banished!

UPDATE 2: To avoid confusion and on the advice of Andy Baio, I've swapped in an edited segment of the video. To be clear, this video was produced in 1987. The previous video was produced in the mid-90's and contained this 1987 video in it. So they're still time-traveling warlocks. Everybody got that? Okay, good. Thanks, Andy!

Google's iPhone Voice Search Mobile App Now Available

By Jason Chen,

That Google Mobile for iPhone with talky talky search action is now up. Our own impressions of it are good. When you're not in a noisy place (or another phone is ringing in the background) it can pretty much translate anything you say into a meaningful phrase. "Gizmodo" was understood, surprisingly, as was "bear market" and "bare ass". That's right, it was smart enough to tell the difference between the words bear and bare, depending on the context. Also super cool? The jibberish noise it makes when it's searching for something. If you're an iPhone user, you should go get it now right here.