

What I want Siri to be able to do for me - davidedicillo
http://www.tuaw.com/2011/10/16/ten-things-i-want-siri-to-be-able-to-do-for-me/

======
Palomides
this seems more like the one thing he wants Siri to have: an API for third-
parties to integrate into their apps.

~~~
ernestipark
Was thinking the same exact thing. I don't know how Siri's internals work, but
this could be tricky for Apple though. The accuracy of speech recognition can
decrease with a larger set of keywords Siri has to check against.

~~~
jws
An API for Siri makes me ponder the huge question: How will Apple assign
sentences and queries in, shall we call it "Siri Space" to individual
applications.

 _Siri – Check me in._

Does that go to Foursquare? American Airlines? The Ramada? Some Foursquare
knockoff?

I can image a few solutions:

• Use a prefix or delegation clause to carve out a a realm of authority, but
that is awkward. (the DNS works), but _Siri have foursquare…_ sounds like you
are talking to a finite state machine.

• Let developers say how confident they are that a sentence was for them based
on current conditions and the winner gets it, but then the lying cheats would
win.

• It could be thrown back in the user's face to disambiguate and then remember
for future occurrences and good luck if you change your mind about priority at
a later date.

• The invisible hand could be put to work and let developers rent concepts in
Siri Space. That would likely provide a hitherto unseen form of grief and
failure.

Remember it took a year to get native Apps after the iPhone came out. It will
take no less time for the Siri masters to work out how or if developers can be
mapped into Siri-space.

~~~
thomasjoulin
A simple solution could be :

\- Apple has a limited set of "actions" that third party app can "suscribe" to
("checkin", "reminder", ...), like there is a limited set of multitasking
capabilities

\- Limit the number of Application that "suscribe" to an action (i.e: only 4
apps can checkin, if another app wants to suscribe, display a warning to the
user so he disable other apps in settings, like for notifications)

\- Prompt the user the first time "Where would you like to checkin", and
remember the choice for future checkins. The user can also specify ("Check me
in" - "I will check you in using Foursquare at ..." - "Use Facebook Places")

~~~
bergie
That sounds a lot like the Intents system on Android (and the web version,
<http://webintents.org/>)

------
desaiguddu
What Siri can do, But she is not ..!!

1\. Voice Differentiation - Primarily this mean, Only I can open my Voice
mails by commanding to Siri. Siri will determine there is no one but his
master is commanding to open the Voice mails. We dreamt of an future where
password will be replaced by your voice and specific commands. Pitch
recognition will add lot many things, which Siri is not doing right now. This
can give an edge to remember securely sensitive information to Siri.

2\. Siri, please answer my Phone calls - as Siri is my personal assistant ,
She can take up the calls. On my behalf, and instead of the boring Voice mail
, Siri can provide some useful info to the caller, or I can tel l Siri to give
different messages to different group like Friends, Family and Office.

~~~
thomasjoulin
Number 2 would be awesome, and is what was "demoed" in the old Apple personal
assistant video. This could start as a simple answering machine (no
interaction with the caller) which would analyze the terms of the message,
like appointment cancellation which would be matched against event in the
calendar.

------
rmundo
The possiblities are endless. Two ideas off the top of my head that aren't
data search: 1. personal expense tracking: "just spent 30 dollars for gas". 2.
mileage tracking: odometer reads 26312 miles.

------
davidedicillo
A small trick to tweet with Siri (for the ones with unlimited text messages).
Create a contact that has 40404 as phone number and you can text to Twitter
your messages.

~~~
paul9290
You can also use this trick for Facebook. Text "fb"(without quotes) to 32665.
Then add contact 32665 naming it Facebook.

------
nilchameleons
Can Siri carry on a 'conversation' about one task? For instance, can she/it
find a place in Maps then understand a command like "get directions there" to
refer to said place? I don't have a 4S to test myself.

~~~
adriand
Annoyingly, Siri does not have maps support in Canada, so I can't test your
example, but the answer in general is 'yes'. If you say, "Set a reminder",
Siri will ask what you want it to be, and then will ask you what time it ought
to be at. If she mishears your time, you can say, "No, at 9:00 AM", and she'll
change the time.

It is impressive technology, but right now, my #1 thing I want Siri to do is
understand me all of the time. I find the speech recognition is not as good as
I had hoped, and I am frequently repeating myself and trying to enunciate
more.

~~~
incremental
Probably because the Canadian accent is not currently supported - US, UK,
Australia, if I remember correctly.

~~~
adriand
Except there is scarcely a difference between the accent of someone living in
Michigan or Ohio or New York and someone living in Ontario - the accents are
certainly much closer together than US vs. UK, for example. I just think the
speech recognition needs more work.

------
gsivil
Is there any chance that Siri will be in the next version of OS X?

~~~
technoslut
If I were a betting man I would say no. The primary reason would be Nuance.
Something like Siri could be viewed by Nuance as direct competition against
Dragon.

------
paul9290
I'm hoping for Spotify integration! I've never bought digital music before,
though now I am Spotify convert/subscriber. Unfortunately, Siri only
interfaces currently with iTunes.

------
yesbabyyes
I'm sure Apple will provide some kind of Siri API eventually, but in the
meantime I think something along the lines of Siri + email + ifttt could
become pretty cool.

