Siri is a UI game changer

[Janx]

Nah, the reason video calls haven't taken off is a little less complex than that; how often would you really feel comfortable making or receiving a call at home where the other person can see you in your underclothes

part of that is that FaceTime (or even Skype) rather leaves you with being stuck in front of the camera. You gotta hold it. You can wash dishes, walk the dog, fix your car while on the phone. Not so much with a video chat.

 

[Fast Learner]

You can also pay only minimal attention to certain voice calls when feasible -- e.g. someone droning on or your mom repeating the same story she's told you three times before -- but with video calls it's obvious if you're not paying attention.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

Yep.

Uhhwuwuzzat?

 

[Aeolius]

Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Yep. Uhhwuwuzzat?

I have seen my kids act in just that fashion, when presented with a rotary phone.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTc3PsW5ghQ&feature=relmfu]Sesame Street: Martians Telephone - YouTube[/ame]

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I love those guys- always have, always will!

 

[Felon]

I'm not sure why anyone would claim that Siri is not really a voice recognition app, or "more" than a voice recognition app. It is a voice recognition app, but one with a very broad suite of application, possibly broader than we're seeing anywhere else.

We're starting to see real progress in the area of vocal, facial, and motion recognition. Siri is one example, Microsoft's Kinect is another. We'll have all kind of gadgets to keep us amused and distracted while modern civilization collapses around us.

Re: AppleTV, don't think of it as something that fills a unique niche. It's one of many devices vying for the content-streaming role in our entertainment centers. True, a networked media-center PC can trump it, but Apple products tend to appeal to crowds that largely eschew PC's.

 

[Morrus]

I'm not sure why anyone would claim that Siri is not really a voice recognition app, or "more" than a voice recognition app. It is a voice recognition app, but one with a very broad suite of application, possibly broader than we're seeing anywhere else.

You're misunderstanding the claims made in this thread. Nobody has said that Siri is not voice recognition.

They have said that it is not the same as the existing voice commands functions on mobile phones prior to it, including the voice commands on older iPhones and on current Android phones. They are saying this in response to people who say "Pshaw! My phone has been able to do that for years!"

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

Nobody has said that Siri is not voice recognition.

I might say it is more. Nuance powers siri's voice recognition. What I'd say makes it more is a level of natural language recognition in context.

 

[Janx]

I might say it is more. Nuance powers siri's voice recognition. What I'd say makes it more is a level of natural language recognition in context.

Yeah, whats not obvious to the civillians is that software is built in layers.

Voice recognition parses audio into text. the text is then passed to an interpreter which acts on the commands.

verb-target command structures have been easy to do since the first text adventures.

natural language interpreting is a bit trickier.

Thats where Siri has potential. If it takes off in popularity, you're looking at the supplementary interface to using your PC, like the mouse was.

 

[falcarrion]

what I have been reading is that the hackers are well on there way to porting siri to iphone4, ipad, and itouch. Though not totally working yet there almost there. Imagine what could be done with these devices if you didn't have to jailbreak them.