Siri - page 30

Microsoft didn’t just announced a new CEO today. They also announced that they were buying a $15 million stake in popular mobile check-in app Foursquare. But to what end?

Every single day, iPhone and iPad owners ask Siri millions of questions. Each and every one of those questions must be analyzed by Apple using computer-intensive natural language processing, translating it into a form that a computer can understand.

That takes a lot of computer horsepower. But how much?

I’ve grown up with this last name, so I’m fairly used to people butchering it. I’m surprised at the amazing number of pronunciations given to my last name over the past several decades, with people adding all sorts of weird consonants that just aren’t there.

Siri isn’t much different, though she does manage to say my name phonetically, but my family doesn’t say “Luh-Feb- Vree.” We say, “Luh-Fay” with an accent on the second syllable.

Turns out, it’s easier than you’d think to teach Siri how to say names correctly.

While all attention is currently being placed on the new fourth iOS 7.1 beta, a feature that seems to have skipped most people’s attention is that beta version 3 includes a female counterpart to the British male variant of Siri, which users can choose between.

Steven Sande and Erica Sadun have been working on the third-edition of the book Talking To Siri (Amazon), and posted this great example of Siri’s tongue-in-cheek sense of humor over on TUAW. Siri might not tell you one, but she’s certainly good at dissecting a lightbulb joke.

Source: TUAW

Ylvis’s song “The Fox (What Does the Fox Say?)” quickly became one of the most popular internet memes of 2013 thanks to its crazy weird but uncontrollably catchy video.

Just how popular has the meme become? So damn popular that Apple decided to add it as a Siri easter egg.

You can now cackle “What does the fox say?” to Siri and she will answer back with one of four secret sounds of the fox hiding somewhere deep in the woods – ‘Wa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pow!’ or “Fraka-kaka-kaka-kaka-kow!” or “Chacha-chacha-chacha-chow!” or “Ring-ding-ding-dingeringeding.”

Via: BI

In Spike Jonze’s latest film, Her, Joaquin Phoenix plays a man who falls in love with a Siri-like “digital assistant,” the titular Her, played by Scarlett Johansson.

But there’s no love lost between the two. If you ask Siri about ‘Her’, she’ll claim that Johansson’s “portrayal of an intelligent agent is beyond artificial” and “gives artificial intelligence a bad name.”

Looks like Scarlett Johansson caught wind, and now, her feelings are hurt by Siri’s harsh words.

Siri has a dark side. Try to send a text in a movie theater, and you might feel the life-destroying wrath of Apple’s perky AI helper.

That’s the message delivered in a new PSA-style video that’s the Alamo Drafthouse‘s latest salvo in the war on rude moviegoers. The creative clip, which will be shown ahead of screenings of Spike Jonze’s Her at the indie tastemaker’s theaters, uses the voice of Siri to send an anti-texting message.

In Spike Jonze’s latest film, Her, a mustachioed Joaquin Phoenix plays a man who falls in love with a Siri-like “digital assistant,” Her, played by Scarlett Johansson.

You’d think Siri would appreciate having a movie made about her, but instead, kitty’s got claws when it comes to her filmic counterpart: thanks to Apple’s cheeky and surprisingly timely programmers, if you ask Siri “Are you her?” she will respond: “No. Her portrayal of an intelligent agent is beyond artificial”, “No. You know that it’s just a movie, right?” and “No. In my opinion, she gives artifical intelligence a bad name.”

Here’s a reason to download Apple’s 12 Days of Gifts app if you haven’t already: the latest gift — freely downloadable using the app — is Martin Scorsese’s critically-acclaimed 2011 film Hugo.

The movie, based on Brian Selznick’s New York Times best-seller, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, tells the story of a 12-year-old boy living in the walls of a Parisian train station, who meets a down-on-his-luck toymaker, who turns out to be silent movie special effects maestro Georges Méliès (the guy that famously made this iconic short, entitled A Trip to the Moon).

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Apple’s personal virtual assistant Siri is a smart cookie, but she’s veered towards the apocalyptic and apocryphal this morning, predicting the opening of the gates of hell on July 27th.

It might still be a tiny player in the smartphone market, but Microsoft is keen to build on recent successes by releasing a next-gen mobile OS, featuring a Siri-like voice assistant feature.

Windows Phone 8.1 will reportedly launch next April at the company’s Build conference — according to “sources familar with Microsoft’s plans”.

Apple has filed a patent for a “smart dock” which greatly extends the range and capabilities of Siri to give it a far bigger role in your home life.

Entitled “Smart Dock for Activating a Voice Recognition Mode of a Portable Electronic Device” the patent was filed in May last year, but only published now.

Nuance Communications — best known as the software makers of Siri — saw a slump in profits below its forecast 2014 projections, thanks to a shift to a subscription-based business model.

The move, which brings in less money upfront and instead is spread over a longer period, ensures more predictable recurring revenue — but also means a short-term hit in profit margins.

Siri continues to become more integrated into the operating system with iOS 7. We’ve already shown you how you can navigate to any of the specific settings screens on your iOS device using the clever digital assistant.

Let’s it one step further, though, and get Siri to actually DO some of the controlling of our oft-toggled settings, instead of just taking us to the specific page. Sure, you can also do this with the new iOS Control Center, but if you can’t touch your iPhone, Siri can cover it for you.

He may feel more than comfortable publishing an open letter to Tim Cook calling for Apple to engage in an immediate $150 billion buyback of shares, but (vocal) activist investor Carl Icahn has said that he would never push Apple to buy Nuance Communications Inc., maker of the software that runs the Siri feature on Apple’s iPhones.

“Siri, what are your political views?” You’d think that Siri would answer that question with a clever quip about how she doesn’t take sides, but no, she has an answer. And it’s not what you would think.

For some odd reason, asking Siri her political views will take you to Ron Paul’s Wikipedia page every time.

What do you think of Siri? Laughable gimmick, or revolutionary interface of the future? Your answer to that question may well determine how excited you get about this: the engineer who oversaw Siri is now at Samsung, building their own Internet of Things API.

One of the things I’ve always wanted to do in my car (as I drive to and fro taking my kids to and from school, music lessons, and soccer practice) is to read my emails and text messages. But taking your eyes off the road is bad, mmmkay?

You can always turn on VoiceOver before you get in the car to read your screen to you, but it involves a whole lot of tapping and different gestures, so it’s kind of impractical to use on a non-regular basis.

Luckily, in iOS 7, you can now get Siri to read your email and your iMessages to you with a simple spoken command.

The creators of The Simpsons love poking light-hearted fun at Apple and its devices, so when Siri made another guest appearance alongside our favorite animated family this weekend, she was never going to be on her best form. But that’s okay, because as you’ll see in the clip below, it makes for an hilarious joke.

Halloween is coming soon, which means you need a costume to show off how incredibly awesome you are. Maybe you’re still undecided and need a little bit of inspiration. When it comes to Apple-themed costumes there are a lot of great ideas out there and you don’t have to spend a lot of money to make them.

We’ve rounded up some of the best Apple Halloween costumes from the past few years to help you decide what you should be. Check them out:

Ok, I’ll admit it; I occasionally use Siri in the car. It’s not a perfectly hands-free system, but it is great to be able to send a quick text to let someone know I’m running late without touching the phone too much.

The other day, though, I was sitting in the car at my son’s school, waiting for the final bell to go in and get him from class. I had my iPhone set up in the car, and was sending a text to a friend. I realized that somehow, in the transition to iOS 7, I no longer had access to the Emoji keyboard.

As the iPhone was propped in it’s in-car holder (a Breffo spiderpodium), I just activated Siri, out of habit.

Thanks to the popularity of Apple’s iOS devices and the Cupertino company’s knack for product marketing, you don’t have to be a regular Siri user to recognize her voice. Two years ago today, she made her debut alongside the iPhone 4s, and she’s been our virtual personal assistant ever since.

But who is the real Siri? Who provided that voice that we’ve all become so familiar with?

Her name is Susan Bennett, and she’s been a voice actress since she was young. She recorded the Siri voices back in 2005 — six years before Apple unveiled the feature — but she had no idea they would ever end up in the iPhone.

Apple has bought a personal assistant iPhone app called Cue for between $40 and $60 million, according to a report from TechCrunch. Originally called Greplin in the App Store, Cue specialized in using data from multiple social networks and users accounts to create a daily agenda. Cue recently pulled its app saying “the Cue service is no longer available.”

Cue was doing Google Now-like contextual notifications before Now and Siri were introduced. The purchase of Cue probably has something to do with enhancing the contextual awareness of the iOS calendar and Siri itself.

iOS 7 comes with a brand new set of Siri voices. Here in the US, there’s an updated female voice, as well as a new male voice included in the latest and greatest mobile operating system.

Did you know, though, that Siri is proud of her new voice? Well, just let him know that you like her new vocal apparatus, and you’ll see a few fun new easter eggs as answers.