Siri’s first real competition hits Android phones today [video] | Hacker News Reader

Siri’s first real competition hits Android phones today [video]

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It looks to me like this is a front end for "personal assistants" sitting in a call center somewhere, perhaps with some real algorithmic stuff mixed in. I might be wrong, but if I am right, this is not really the type of product as Siri, though they are obviously trying to ride Siris hype.

I'll be interested in seeing what people think about this. Some of what Siri does is trivially easy, but the completeness and polish of it is what makes it special.

Siri's intentionally crippled in most countries, so there should be lots of room to move in the "trivially easy" department too.

"I'm sorry, I can't provide directions in Canada"

Despite having Google Maps and able to provide directions by typing, iPhone 4S is incapable of providing directions if speech-to-text is used.

Is that a constraint of local laws aimed at safe driving?

I doubt it. My Android phone can handle getting direction by voice just fine. Also, wouldn't it be "safer" to ban directions by keyboard rather than ban them by voice? It's a very odd situation, really.

Yes, but your Android phone does turn by turn spoken directions right?

No. Google Navigation works perfectly in Canada, as do countless other voice-controlled navigation products.

One of the nice things about Siri is that you can ask the same question multiple ways. A single person might not switch up the way they ask something, but you can use your preferred way with Siri rather than being forced to learn Siri's way.

From looking at Cluzee's (broken under load) page, it looks like you need to learn the correct syntax in order for it to work.

I'd go a little bit further: the ability to "understand" a command stated many different natural ways is exactly what makes Siri special. This app is not much different than the numerous voice command apps that existed long before Siri. The author completely misapprehends what makes Siri state of the art.

That matches my experience with Cluzee so far. Asking, say, "What does Person XYZ do?" usually gets an answer, but asking "Where does Person XYZ work?" is an unrecognized command. Allowing more flexibility in phrasing the questions would be a big win. The app has potential, IMO.

I was somewhat dissapointed with Siri a few days ago. I asked it what 350/16 was. I was expecting it to read back the answer to me and I could get on with my day. Instead it displayed a giant page of equations showing every possible answer to 350/16.

I really don't think that's the answer people want to quick calculation questions.

Impossible to tell what it really does from a sales/concept video. Will need to see it actually in action.

'Siri' sounds like someone's name. 'Cluzee' sounds like the result of a failed marketing meeting.

Useless factoid of the day: Siri is a spin-out from SRI (Stanford Research Institute), which can be pronounced as "Sirree".

Also, "Siri" is Hindi for "head" and comes from the Sanskrit root meaning "radiant". It's a common Hindu female first name.

No its not a common hindu female first name. Its not even a name. The word you are looking for is "Shri"/"Shree"/"Sri" which is used as a prefix for the male name, like Mr., Mrs. etc.

It's not a common name, you're right there. However, it is a name. At least in India. For example, it is a word in the South Indian languages of Kannada and Telugu derived from Shree/Shri (which in turn stands for wealth, prosperity, the goddess Lakshmi, etc). Arrgh, why am I going down this path!

It's certainly not a common name, if even that. I'm Indian, and have never heard of someone called siri. "Shri" is often a part of longer names, though it's almost never used in isolation (I can't recall anyone whose first name was simply Shri), because it is also a word used in the same sense as "Mr." in English.

As for being a word in South Indian languages... it's possible that it's an archaic word, but it's certainly not used commonly, at least in Kannada (which is my first language).

Anyway, my point is that it shouldn't have been there in the wikipedia page as a "common Hindu name", but I should probably be discussing this on the wiki talk page rather than HN. ;-)

If not, then it should be taken off Wikipedia.

"Siri, a common Hindu female name, meaning "Goddess Lakshmi, Wealth, God's gift of love."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siri

Besides that, I know several Sikh women whose first name is Siri.

I do agree that Siri and Sri are the same, it's just a different way of spelling it.

Well...they're not Hindu, they're Sikh. Never heard of Siri referred to has a Hindu name, but India is a big country...

Did you check the reference for that?

Wikipedia simply points to a website full of names with no reference as to where they come from or statistics to back up the claim of it being common.

Siri is a name, it's fairly common in Norway where one of the co-founders of the company that built Siri comes from. [Dag Kittlaus]

In this* article Dag says that he was going to call his first child Siri, but it turned out to be a boy.

* http://e24.no/it/norges-ukjente-dollar-multimillionaer/20119...

I was pretty excited to test this, but unfortunately it's not available in my country (Norway). Siri is available for iPhone users here.

When they do, I'll be buying it for iPhone 4.

Siri is technically a beta product. There's still a small glimmer of hope that they might backport the final version to older devices once 4S sales have plateaued, and/or once they've ironed out all potential problems with current 4S users.

So it's a free app... Can I assume they're angling for money from businesses the app recommends then? Or just looking to get bought?

(or is there some subscription which isn't immediately apparent from the Android Market page?)

Not sure what it says about me that I don't trust this whatsoever.

I advise everyone to play on this and see how not to implement a Siri competitor.

Android Market link: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.tronton.cluzee.ui

Seriously question for the iPhone toters among HNers -- do you actually use Siri? Anecdotally I've found that many of my 4S equipped peers have already abandoned it. After that brief excitement over Easter eggs, it just doesn't excite them.

I use my Android's voice control daily. It follows a different philosophical model (as the Google guy said, it's the Star Trek versus the Star Wars model, which is a comparison that is apt), however the result is a device that does the majority of what I want perfectly. I am never guessing at the limits of its lingo (all current natural language systems have limits, which is why they are so uncommon) because I know the specific commands that do the things I want.

The real competition to Siri is that people don't want to treat their phone as a human. That the slow imprecision of spoken language is only a worst-case substitute for alternative options.

My wife uses Siri several times per day to add events to our shared family calendar.

And I have to say, even as an Android zealot: I'm jealous. It's a far superior interface for entering calendar events. She can say things like:

"Harper has ballet at 4:30 on Thursdays and a Dentist appoint on December 7th at 1pm."

or even

"There's no ballet on December 22nd or 29th"

A part of the reason my peers might not use it often is perhaps simply because they don't need to schedule very much. My wife I could imagine enjoying such functionality.

The thing about some of the more complex scenarios, however, is that for me it would have to be 100% reliable and trusthworthy. If it were only 99% reliable and trustworthy, or even 99.5%, the lack of faith and the need to double check would remove its utility.

It confirms with you, no trust required.

I would love to see the confirmation for a command like

"Harper has ballet at 4:30 on Thursdays and a Dentist appoint on December 7th at 1pm."

I use it several times a day for:

- timers

- reminders

- calendar events

- calling people

Can't wait for the map integration to get to the UK, then I'll be able to use it for finding my way too...

For anyone else who hadn't heard the Star Wars vs Star Trek comparison, here's the top relevant Google result:

http://androidcommunity.com/google-executive-siri-is-star-wa...

"Well, we don’t like to set ourselves in a head-to-head kind of way, you know, Apple makes terrific products, I think Siri is great; I think it’s really hard in the long run to follow strategy of making kind of an artificial personality. You know, it can be really funny at first, but that uncanny value of just, uh, having a personality that you start to interact with, um, as you would a person, with all the contextual ambiguity you would with a real person – that’s a really challenging approach, and they’re going for it, that’s great. Our approach is different. The metaphor I like to take is – if it’s Star Wars, you have these robot personalities like C-3PO who runs around and he tries to do stuff for you, messes up and makes jokes, he’s kind of a comic relief guy. Our approach is more like Star Trek, right, starship Enterprise; every piece of computing surface, everything is voice-aware. It’s not that there’s a personality, it doesn’t have a name, it’s just “Computer.”" - Matias Duarte

I've got an Android, but my fiancée has the 4S. She's a very normal user and this is her first smartphone.

Siri was fun for us at first and I was impressed with what it could do. But at this point my fiancée doesn't use it at all.

I disagree with others in that you DO have to learn how to speak to Siri for it to work, not the other way around. Yes, it's intelligent, but you have to bend your words a bit so that it will understand you. I can't think of a specific example right now, but I did see it happen to her a lot. And once it happens a few times you tend to give up on it.

In reality Siri accomplishes only simple things that can be done manually with a few touches. "What's the weather going to be?" Might as well just use the Weather app. "What's my schedule like today?" Just pull up your calendar and it's all there. I don't want to wait for the phone to talk to the Apple server to say "not bad. Only two meetings today." And by the way, who is Siri to say what is "not bad" or not?

And forget about using it in public. Overall I see it as the public's fascination with technology for the sake of it, not because it makes our lives better or more productive. Which is certainly Apple's wheelhouse.

I use it almost daily to set any reminders/alarms etc. Also to play music. (eg: "Play songs by <artist>")

Yeah, at the end of the day, when it's, say, Tuesday 4:00 AM and your eyes start to close harder then you can hold them, you are still looking at some shitty and not interesting at all comments on HN, you are almost asleep. You feel it.

Now your eyes are closed, you think you will asleep right now. You are closing your laptop. You are ready to asleep. And then (!) you start remembering that you need to set an alarm! You go through pain of your eyes trying to set the alarm, but the light of your phone it too bright, and eyes don't want to open already.. argh!

I would like to have Siri for this purpose, since this particular situation happens to me just too often.

Interestingly, I use siri only once a day too and it's to tell it: wake me up at xx in the morning, just before falling asleep.

Looks like others are doing the same.

I use it several times a day too. Uses cases where it's superior to hunting and pecking is...

Grabbing temperature information before stepping outside, Setting an alarm, Asking Siri to text X friend when driving, Ask Siri for my bank balance while driving to a store & Ask Siri to play iTunes music while driving.

Other uses though not everyday but two or more times a week are..

Ask her for directions when driving or when Im a passenger, Ask her to search the web for X topic & Talking to her while driving for fun to chase time away.

To me this is trans-formative tech and it needs to be built into our cars.

I have 4s and I turned it off maybe a week after I got the phone, I like the phone itself btw. It just makes too many mistakes and cant understand pronunciation of the last names of half the people on my contact list. Reminder and calendar are the only features that it worked ok for me.

But for calendar I usually want to see my calendar before making appointment so the only case where I was using it time to time was when cooking something and needing a timer, but then I realized I have a $5 timer in the kitchen that works better and faster to set.

Do you know that you can add Phonetic first and last names to your contacts? I had the same problem in the beginning, but slowly I started adding phonetic names to my most often used contacts and now it works great.

Siri is invaluable while driving. And I say that as a Canadian who doesn't have map integration with Siri yet.

Is it that Siri is invaluable, or that basic voice controls are invaluable? I use my Android and its unlauded, no-big-hype voice controls to-

-navigate -map -send messages -set alarms -search

It has a very finite understanding, but it accomplishes literally everything I've ever needed to speak to my device (anything more complex would be inefficient to speak to it).

My original question should be reworded to question whether people are using the specific purported advantages of Siri. Most replies seen in here are bog standard basic voice functionality having nothing to do with the advanced natural language understanding of Siri.

Well when driving I ask or tell Siri ... text X friend, then she asks me what would you like to say to X, i then compose a message where she then repeats it thru my stereo (have iphone plugged into car stereo) and asks me if i want to send the message she transcribed for me, cancel it or compose again?

Does the built in Android app have a conversation with you like that to ensure the message is composed properly? I'm thinking this is where Siri differs from the built in Android voice tech.

This back and forth between me and Siri allows me to drive safely (keep eye on the road) while getting work done.

This is identical to how the voice functionality works on my GS II.

-> "text blah blah" -< "Send text message to {blah blah}. Speak your message." -> "Content of message" -< "Message "contents of message". Say send or cancel".

And so on. No hoopla or extravagance, it simply works. Perfectly.

"anything more complex would be inefficient to speak to it"

Really? I find Siri to be better at far more complex tasks than simple ones. IE, saying "Schedule dinner with Karen at 7 PM on Friday" is a lot more efficient than unlocking the phone, launching the calendar app, navigating to friday, and typing in "Dinner with Karen" at the 7 PM slot.

I use it everyday when I'm riding my bike: 'Play song x', 'call mom'..

This, of course, is the main benefit of an non-restrictive development environment.

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