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Android's "Siri"

By | Apple, Apps, Droid, Google | No Comments

An Android App’s Answer to Siri

Android phones have always let you speak to type. But they’ve never had anything like Siri—or so I thought.
Then I got this note in my Inbox from a PR guy:

“Android users curious about the Siri have been flocking to Speaktoit, a free Android personal assistant app that’s already doing many of the things Siri will start to offer. In the past week, Speaktoit downloads have vaulted into the tens of thousands, growing 400% in seven days and adding 3k users a day based on word of mouth and rave reviews on the Android Market.

Like Siri, Speaktoit’s assistants can: send emails, send texts, post to Facebook, post to Twitter, check you in places, look up information, find news, look up traffic, look up weather, call people, take notes, add things to your calendar, translate foreign languages, help you find nearby places like bars (but not without reminding you to enjoy responsibly…), and tons more.

Versions for iOS and Blackberry are coming soon.”

Well! Considering all the fuss over Siri, it would seem only fair to try out an app for Android that purports to do the same thing — especially since it’s a free app.

As it turns out, SpeakToIt is indeed the same idea as Siri, but it’s nowhere near as well done. Part of that, of course, is that it’s a third-party app, not built into the phone. For example, on the iPhone, you can make Siri start listening just by holding the phone up to your ear (if you’ve turned on this option in Settings), or by holding down the Home button for a couple of seconds. SpeakToIt, on the other hand, isn’t built in—it’s an app—so you have to open it manually before you can do any voice commanding.

Once it’s open, you see a cartoon of a woman wearing a halter top and short-cropped hair — an unconventional choice, to be sure (although you can change the cartoon character). She speaks with a synthesized voice, as Siri does, and even makes a little effort at having a personality. She says something like, “Welcome back! How can I help you?”

At this point, you tap the microphone button. And you wait — much longer than you would with Siri — until the “Speak now” logo appears. Here’s what I tried to say, and what SpeakToIt’s responses were:

Me: “How do I get to the San Diego airport?” Her: “San Diego Airport Sedan is the nearest one to you.” (Huh?)

Me: “How many feet are in a mile?” Her: “One mile equals 5,280 feet.” Bingo.

Me: “Are there any good Thai restaurants near here?” Her: “This map will show you the nearest ‘are there any good thai restaurants’ to your location.” (She then showed me a tiny Google Maps map — except that it was blank. Just empty inside.)

Me: “What’s 43 times 7?” Her: “43 times 7 equals 301.” Correct.

Me: “What’s the meaning of life?” Her: “The meaning of life is a bit outside my range of expertise. For now.” Ha! Good one! (Siri has about 10 different answers to that question; SpeakToIt gives you the same reply every time.)

Me: “How are you?” Her: “Lovely, thanks.”

Me: “Remind me to bring my wallet.” Her: “Do you want me to memorize your note or do you want to save them in Evernote?” Me: “Memorize my note.” Her: “I don’t think I’m qualified to answer that yet.”

Me: “When was Abraham Lincoln born?” Her: “I couldn’t get an answer at this time.”

Me: “Where is the closest Starbucks?” Her: “These are the nearest Starbucks to your location.” (A Google map appeared, covered with pinpoints.)

Me: “What’s on my calendar today?” Her: “First things first: let’s sign into your Google calendar.” (After we did that, she would show me my appointments.)

Me: “What’s the temperature outside?” Her: “The current weather is clear, 63 degrees Fahrenheit.”

Me: “Make an appointment with Robert for 7:00 Friday.” Her: “I’m going to save ‘with robert at 7:00 Friday.’ Is this right?’”

Me: “Send a text to Casey Robin.” Her: “What would you like to say?” “Me: “I’m running late (comma), but I’ll be there as soon as I can (period). Don’t start the party without me, O.K.? That’d be terrific.” Her: “I’m running a little bit late but I’ll be there soon as I can Don’t start the party without me O.K. Deb terrific.”

Me: “Play some music.” Her: “What song would you like to listen to?” Me: “Anything.” She chose a song at random and started playing it.

Me: “Will you marry me?” Her: “I’m flattered, but surely you can find a better match than a virtual assistant.”

Me: “Wake me up at 8:20 a.m.” SpeakToIt told me that she couldn’t do that now, but that I could download a free update that would add this feature. (The company says that it plans to add new capabilities all the time.)
So I downloaded the update and opened it. But now, whenever I tapped the microphone button, SpeakToIt said only: “Sorry! The application Speaktoit Assistnat (process com.apseaktoit.assistant) has stopped unexpectedly. Please try again.”

I did. I tried over and over, and always got the same message.

Thus ended my SpeakToIt adventure, but I got the idea: SpeakToIt works, sort of. She’s slow and a little bit mentally challenged. She’s less convenient than Siri, less capable, less comprehending, less accurate, less useful, less polished, less classy, less human.

I’m not sure how many Fandroids will really incorporate SpeakToIt into their daily phone lives; the sluggishness and unreliability are a powerful disincentive. But she’s free, she works most of the time, and she brings a taste of the new virtual-minion world to the millions of Android phones.

Hurricane Trackers: Survival tools for iPad, iPhone and Desktops

By | Apple, Apps, Droid, Google, iPhone, Microsoft, New Orleans, news | No Comments

Here’s a list of essential Apps and websites that we recommend the next time a big storm starts heading your way, so you too can make more informed decisions about whether you stay in place or evacuate.

With Hurricane Irene veering towards the east coast of Florida and potentially making landfall this weekend in the Carolinas, you’ll want to be prepared.

NOAA National Hurricane Center

If you’re going to have ONE application or website that you use for relying on projected storm tracks, then the NOAA National Hurricane Center Website is the one you should have bookmarked on your PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone or other smartphone device. It costs you absolutely nothing and if you really want to learn about hurricanes, this is definitely the place to go.

The National Hurricane Center is the central source of data that just about every other application listed in this article uses as a data source.

The NHC website contains a massive wealth of up-to-date information. You can track and monitor the progress of every single storm in the Eastern Pacific and the Atlantic, read various types of graphical computer models and watch animated satellite and radar maps.

Unfortunately the NHC site looks like it was designed in the early 1990s — there’s no cool Web 2.0 point-and-click GUI, but all the data is there if you want it. They’ve got a PDA rendered version of the site which you could use on an iPhone or an Android device, but unless you’re the type that likes to page through raw data, it probably won’t be of much use to you.

However, the basic charts and storm projections should be enough to give you a very good idea of where the hurricane is heading and to give you up-to-date and reliable information on how its behavior might change.

StormPulse

StormPulse is a great site if you’re planning a trip on a desktop or laptop computer, as the website is Flash-based, so it won’t run on an iOS device.

Like the National Hurricane Center, the website is free and you can sign up with a free account, which will allow you to look at projected storm tracks using different computer models but it has more advanced Premium features for those that are more storm and hurricane enthusiasts or even meteorological professionals, such as moving satellite imagery loops, “Super Radar” and customizable alerts.

iHurricaneHD by HurricaneSoftware.com

iHurricaneHD is a free App for iOS devices and is distributed as a universal binary for the iPad, iPod Touch and the iPhone.

iHurricaneHD allows you to track the progress of current and past storms and uses projection data from the National Hurricane Center. Using the interface, you click on each projected location where it displays the hurricane’s estimated speed, heading and approximate distance from your location.

It also allows you to view various static satellite maps from the US Navy, GOES and METEOSAT, and provides a better interface to warning and alert information from the NHC than the NHC does with its own website.

The Application also allows you to register your email address for hurricane alerts. An in-app purchase of $1.99 removes all advertising from the program.

Hurricane/HD by KittyCode LLC

Hurricane and Hurricane HD, distributed by KittyCode for $3.99 for the iPhone/iPod Touch and iPad respectively is probably the most sophisticated of the “Apps” for iOS listed in this article. It has by far the most exploitative user interface on the iPhone and iPad and makes very good use of the multi-touch capabilities of iOS.

Like HurricaneSoftware.com’s iHurricaneHD, Hurricane/Hurricane HD makes use of data from the National Hurricane Center, but presents it in a very easy to navigate and visually pleasing way and allows you to seamlessly switch between satellite and map modes for storm tracking as well as moving radar and satellite imaging loops.

As with iHurricaneHD, this app allows you to track current as well as past storms, going back as far as even 1851 using available data. The software also provides video updates for storms that are currently in progress.

Hurricane Tracker for iPhone/iPad (iPhoneEZApps)

Our last iOS “App”, Hurricane Tracker for iOS is something of an odd-man-out, as it isn’t really a native “App” per se, even though it is sold on the App Store for $1.99. It’s actually a very clever “mashup” of various web data from the NHC and other sources that allows it to be presented in sort of a browser-wrapper on an iOS device.

That being said, any clever individual could easily make this run on their PC, Mac or their Android-based smartphone, once they know the basic URLS:

Current Storms (Smartphone Version)

Current Storms (HD/Tablet)

Moving Satellite Maps (Smartphone Version)

Moving Satellite Maps (HD/Tablet)

Tropical Outlook Page

2011 Storm Names

Saffir-Simpson Scale

I was able to make all of these pages work on my Windows and Linux-based PC provided I was running Chrome (which is WebKit-based, like the iPad’s browser) and they they will work on the Mac’s Safari as well.

I was also able to make the smartphone versions of the pages work flawlessly on my Android 2.3-based phone, my Android tablet and I suspect they might even function on the Palm Pre/TouchPad or even the latest BlackBerry 6/7 and Windows Phone devices if they are WebKit/HTML5 compatible.

The main “Current Storms” page includes a daily updated hurricane YouTube video and audio forecast that appears to be narrated by the application’s author, who is a talented storm expert. The daily YouTube video update in the page uses HTML5 video embedding, and it works fine on both Chrome and Froyo’s web browser.

I haven’t seen a native Android version of this particular web mashup yet on the Android Market, but I’d gladly pay the app developer the $1.99 for his work if I could use it on my Droid without having to switch manually between bookmarks.