What is Siri?
Siri is Apple’s new voice search assistant that is included with the new IPhone 4s. One of the only advantages to having the Android was being able to do voice commands, but now this feature is available on the IPhone. All you do is press a button, voice a command, and the phone does the rest for you. If you have a question, you can ask your phone and it will speak the answer to you. If you need to send a text message you can simply voice whom you would like to send the message too, what you would like the message to say, and then your phone will do the rest for you.

There were a few key reasons why customers would turn to the Android as opposed to the iPhone.

1.Google Voice Actions

2. GPS Navigation

3. Google Voice

4. 4G Speed.

The IPhone does not include all of these features; it still remains a 3g phone and is yet to add turn-by-turn gps. However the new Siri voice commands puts up a fight for why you should get this new phone.

Google Voice vs. Siri

Google Voice actions allows for the creation of text messages and emails, get navigation directions, call a contact, view a map of a particular area, write a note, play music, and perform a web search. You can also search for and call a business in one step and it can be used to open a web page. However with Google Voice, you have to know the exact command to ask.

With Siri you don’t have to memorize a set of commands, you can use natural language. Siri can understand questions even when they are asked in a variety of ways. This speech engine can work with conversational language, so it is as if you are speaking with an actual person.

Siri and Artificial Intelligence

Siri uses high-level artificial intelligence, which allows it to offer more value in a natural way so that it is extremely user friendly. It can schedule a new event for you, first checking your calendar to make sure that there are no conflicting events, and then creating your appointment. You can tell Siri when to wake you up in the morning, you can ask the local time in a given location, you can set task reminders, or simply say remind me to wash the dishes in 10 minutes. Pretty neat technology! I know those in the office love using it so far. What is your opinion of Siri?

Here’s a great IMI client success story as we move past hump day and head into the weekend.  Audioo, a new voicemail sharing platform that launched at TechCrunch Disrupt last month, has come right out the gate with an extremely successful social media campaign. It’s a great story about how being controversial and polarizing will gain you attention.  In short, Audioo is a site that let’s users publicly post their funny and entertaining voicemail messages – think of Audioo as “Text From Last Night for Voicemail”.  Here’s a little example of one of their hilarious uploads from a drunk girlfriend in area code 818:

By choosing something that’s traditionally private (voicemail) and making it public, Audioo has gained many critics who are completely frightened by the idea of personal messages being outed on the internet. At the same time, they’ve been able to gain a lot of new users and traffic from social media exhibitionists (those who like to share content) who are not afraid to publish their entertaining content. On the other side of the fence, social media voyeurs (those who like to consume shared content) are flocking to the site as a new entertainment destination.  It seems that by taking the stance that privacy is not important anymore, Audioo has been able to attract the attention it needed to come out of the gate and attract voicemail uploaders and addicts – exactly the types of users that they need to turn the site into a viral entertainment success.

The site’s been covered on a few notable blogs in the tech community, including TechCrunch and Gizmodo (of Apple iPhone 4 leak fame).  The company’s founder will be a guest on the popular web TV series This Week in Social Media with Sean Percival today at 11am PST. Tune in by following the link below to hear more about the Audioo’s history and future plans. Here’s the full video –>

Audioo (which is owned and operated by royalty free music and sound effects distributor AudioMicro) is an interesting phenomena in that Audioo’s popularity is coming to light smack in the middle of all the Facebook privacy issues.  This leads us to wonder, is privacy dead?   Is anything we record electronically (email, text messages, voicemail, etc.) really private anymore?  Let’s take that one step further…wasn’t it the Tiger Woods voicemail that actually broke the story on his infidelity?  If it can happy to Tiger, is it really that surprising that voicemails you leave on other people’s phones could be publicly shared?  Please let us know your opinions in the comment.