
Audrey – A smart personal assistant app that helps you to get things done - davidyapdy
https://getaudrey.com
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gtt
On a slightly related note, I, personally, noticed that I don't want to get
things done. Most of the things, at least. After working GTD style I feel
happier and more productive, but usually not closer to my goals. I found, that
failing do to most of the things is bearable, as long as I'm keep doing things
that matter.

I'm still using GTD stuff, but just to "better forget", to unload working
memory.

~~~
cel1ne
> _I don 't want to get things done_

Exactly. This is a really, really difficult and essential observation to make.
Humans are built to procrastinate because it conserves energy.

Do an experiment: Sit down and start doing what you are supposed to do. If
you're not able to work or start, don't find excuses. Don't go looking for
physical reasons like "Hungry", "Cold", "Tired". Don't procrastinate. Don't
walk around. Don't work around the issue. Don't change the project. Those are
all excuses. Just accept that you are not able to start and keep sitting there
until you start.

When you stop finding excuses or looking elsewhere, you will realise the
immense stress that's building up inside you. That is the mountain you have to
scale to stop procrastinating. A kind of stress that's not always there,
luckily, but it's definitely built into humans.

~~~
EGreg
I find that the problem is often the context switching.

To get things done, I often have to take a step back and make a list of things
that need to get done. This is the top-down brainstorming, that gets me more
in the mood. I can do this when I'm not working, to get me thinking about the
problem.

Then when the time comes for working, you choose the easiest or shortest task
and start on it. The "McDonalds theory" as stated on phpjs is that you can do
a shitty job on your first iteration as long as you get it done. When you did
it, or usually even as you are working, you have the urge to improve it. And
that's where the excitement and emotional investment comes.

Russians have an expression for this: _Appetite comes when you start eating._

~~~
cel1ne
Yes, I do that as well. Start somewhere and work yourself into the mood. I
keep the larger issue in mind though, to not spend too much time on improving
"alibi"-subprojects.

Regarding the "McDonalds theory": I call that "Don't mix production and
criticism of your work." Either produce something or improve on you've already
done. Otherwise these two modes of operation interfere with each other.

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portmanteaufu
I hope this is helpful feedback:

* There are several small typos on the page ("How does it works?") that distract from its content.

* The testimonials strike me as all having the same writer's voice.

* What appears to set "Audrey" aside from, say, Alexa is the promise that you can take a moment to train the AI when it misunderstands you. That's a great feature; I can tell Alexa that she was wrong (via the app), but that's tedious and may take months to see my feedback enacted. Immediately linking what I said to the desired outcome for future use would be ideal. I'd like to see an example of what that looks like for this app, even if it's just a mock-up.

~~~
bshimmin
_The testimonials strike me as all having the same writer 's voice._

Someone needs to come up with a service that generates authentic-sounding
testimonials, complete with convincing headshots.

~~~
plttn
At the very least, one of them is obviously a headshot found from somewhere
else. In general for a new service, I'd rather see no testimonials than
testimonials of questionable authenticity.

~~~
cicero19
Agree. They should have known their technical audience would pick up on this.

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jonheller
Nothing against this application personally, but I still do not understand the
appeal of "personal assistants." If I want the weather, I click my weather app
icon and see it instantly. If I want an Uber, I click Uber and request one
instantly.

I don't see the benefit of adding another layer between me and my desired
action. This is especially the case when the smart personal assistant doesn't
understand my request, in which case I'll usually just abandon the whole
thing. Only took a few times trying to get Siri to do something and I haven't
used it for anything besides timers in years.

~~~
michaelmior
For simple tasks like that, maybe I would agree. But as tasks get increasingly
more complex, they take longer to do manually and the assistant ends up
significantly reducing the work to do the action.

For example, "play Skrillex on Spotify" Manually I would have to find Spotify,
go to the search, type in Skrillex, etc.

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tabeth
I love the design for this. Excellent!

As a side note, I'm curious to how/why you named it Audrey. I think it's very
interesting that these 'personal assistants' have traditionally feminine
names.

P.S. At the bottom, "Here's are some" is not grammatically correct.

~~~
pbiggar
I've heard more than a few women complain that all the bots in the "service"
area tend to get female names.

~~~
HolyHaddock
At least one blogger preferred Googles assistant because she was ordering
around an impersonal un-gendered corporation rather than what felt like an
individual.

That said, this does seem like a great opportunity for Ask to bring Jeeves
back.

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ben174
> How Does It Works?

For a natural language processor, they sure could benefit from better
proofreading.

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radiorental
For a moment I thought the original Audrey assistant was reborn:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3Com_Audrey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3Com_Audrey)

~~~
davidyapdy
We had been told that a several time and we immediately check if we infringed
anything. Turns out, we are clear :) Good ol times.

~~~
radiorental
I was at 3Com at that time. Awesome product, bad timing.

Good luck with yours!

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sly010
I don't typically use assistants and voice based interfaces beyond "Alexa,
what's the weather" which is arguably not that impressive.

However... I welcome 3rd party, independent applications of this type, because
I find it dull that all the existing solutions from big companies are just
trying to upsell their own services by forcing you to have an account with
them, listen to their music or shop from their shop... Some independent
thinking is due in this space.

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the_duke
Mhm.

So yet another Siri.

Apparently "Vernax" is behind it:
[https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/vernax#/entity](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/vernax#/entity)

Website is down: [http://www.vernax.com/](http://www.vernax.com/)

They really need a native English speaker to clean up the text on the homepage
though. Lot's of sub-optimal phrasing.

~~~
chadlavi
They're from Toronto! That makes it even weirder that they have some pretty
rough ESL issues.

~~~
davidyapdy
We're non native speaker. We didn't update our Crunchbase for a long long time
and now we are in Japan now. Sorry.

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parroquiano
This looks interesting, but I really need to see their Privacy Policy first.

~~~
davidyapdy
Hi, we're sorry about it. We will update the site as soon as possible with the
privacy policy. Thank you for your patient.

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mandeepj
I wonder how it is different from Magic

[https://getmagic.com/](https://getmagic.com/)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9087819](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9087819)

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FanaHOVA
Design looks like Instagram Stories at the top + IFTTT for the cards. Could be
interesting but definitely not sharing it to go up the list or whatever, I
always felt like that approach was no good for products nobody has ever tried.

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gridit
> It reinvents how people interact with artificial intelligence by allowing
> you to teach it instead of guessing what it'll understand.

Putting out an app like this seems like a great idea, if only to have a
platform to start collecting and cleaning data (for your MTurkers, relatives,
and bored employees). Speaking of which the privacy policy link goes
nowhere...

On a related note, does anyone have details on the penalties for not having a
privacy policy on a Google Play app? They seem to be a little more insistent
on having one than Apple.

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moreorless
Their privacy policy is concerning.

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uladzislau
"Request accesss". How do I know you're just not running some sort of
marketing study/proof of demand?

~~~
davidyapdy
We don't play a fool.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDlAqhulJmw&t=1s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDlAqhulJmw&t=1s)

~~~
anonymous344
Thank you for the video!

My 5 cents: Please make the small x (close button) to something else, like
swipe to up to close the dialog. Small x is not good gui for mobile phone
apps.

~~~
davidyapdy
Thank you for the feedback. We'll definitely surprise you!

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ravishah
"Whenever Audrey do not understand the request, you are able to train it
directly in just a few taps."-typo

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RoutinePlayer
Although I welcome them, the problem with all these AI products is the there's
little promise of zero-knowledge (or whatever you wanna call it)
privacy/security. Until then, I don't see myself feeding a company my
information, at least not for free.

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Gys
> Small Talk > Whenever you want to burn some time, you can have a simple
> conversation with Audrey.

What is wrong with talking to real people ? It is a sad world where this is
perceived as a beneficial feature.

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davidyapdy
I noticed that we made a mistake not having it proofread. We're dragging
someone here to proofread and make those correction. But in the same time, I'm
thankful that the community here is correcting it! It's Audrey in real life!

~~~
Raphael
"every day" is 2 words in your case.

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d--b
Someone should tell them that using actual names for a digital assistant is a
terrible idea. At least they should use a name that's not so common. And
easier to pronounce!

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obilgic
I like the approach where you see all the connections app has, it gives you a
context about what can be done with it. You don't feel lost like most virtual
personal assistants.

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michaelmior
I'm not sure if this was intentional, but the name Eliza in the demo text
reminded me of the hours I spent playing with the ELIZA bot as a kid.

~~~
davidyapdy
It is ;)

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iampims
Why does every assistant has to have a woman's name?

Is it really that hard to come up with a name?

~~~
berberous
Bixby, Siri, Cortana and "OK Google" are women's names? The only one with a
woman's name that I can think of is Alexa. Granted they all have a woman's
voice, but doesnt seem like that was your point.

~~~
dagw
Siri is absolutely a fairly common Nordic woman's name, I know several people
with that name.

~~~
aninhumer
And Cortana was named after a female video game character.

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flukus
Is this another cloud based assistant or one I can install and run locally?

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ilovefood
My girlfriend won't appreciate another invisible girl I talk to at home.

~~~
throwanem
HN has never really struck me as a great place to solicit relationship advice.
Not really the focus of the community.

~~~
ilovefood
I am profoundly saddened to hear you don't get jokes. Funny guy.

~~~
throwanem
Oh, I get it. I just don't want it. Because it's not funny. That's why I made
fun of it. If you'd made a good joke, I'd be laughing with you. But you made a
bad one, so I'm laughing at you. I didn't put a lot of effort into doing it,
though. Next time I'll do more to make it clear.

