Paul Miller - The Cloud of Data » Siri http://cloudofdata.com Linked Data, Cloud Computing, Semantic Web, SaaS, PaaS, more Fri, 10 Feb 2012 10:46:51 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, version 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ paul.miller@cloudofdata.com (Paul Miller) paul.miller@cloudofdata.com (Paul Miller) 1440 http://cloudofdata.com/logo144x144.jpg Paul Miller - The Cloud of Data http://cloudofdata.com 144 144 conversations with the executives shaping Cloud Computing and the Semantic Web. Linked Data, Cloud Computing, Semantic Web, SaaS, PaaS, more Cloud Computing, Semantic Web, Linked Data, Open Data, SaaS, PaaS Paul Miller Paul Miller paul.miller@cloudofdata.com no no Siri brings their Virtual Personal Assistant’s smarts to the iPhone http://cloudofdata.com/2010/02/siri-brings-their-virtual-personal-assistants-smarts-to-the-iphone/ http://cloudofdata.com/2010/02/siri-brings-their-virtual-personal-assistants-smarts-to-the-iphone/#comments Fri, 05 Feb 2010 06:32:01 +0000 Paul Miller http://cloudofdata.com/?p=920 Siri provoked a flurry of interest last summer, and presumably not just because CTO Tom Gruber took part in one of my podcasts. With their genesis inside a big DARPA-funded Artificial Intelligence project, their talk of emergent Virtual Personal Assistants and their slick iPhone-powered demonstrations, the company ticked more than enough of the right boxes to get the semantic technology community positively drooling for more.

And then things went quiet.

Fast forward to 2010, and Siri is back. The back-end technology is faster, more robust, and fuelled by loads more data. Robert Scoble has been amongst those dropping not-so-subtle hints on Twitter for days, and other big names in and around the Valley have also been targeted in a carefully orchestrated programme of pre-briefings and beta invites. That all ends today, as the iPhone app is now out of beta and available this morning from Apple‘s App Store. Versions for Android devices and the Blackberry are coming along close behind, and the company has big plans for building upon what they already have.

I got my hands on the app earlier this month, and put it through as many of its paces as I could from 3,000 miles outside the US market for which the current app and data are optimised.

I’ve written up the results of my play (and my conversation with Siri’s other two co-founders) for ZDNet, and look forward to trying it for real on my next trip to the States.

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]]> http://cloudofdata.com/2010/02/siri-brings-their-virtual-personal-assistants-smarts-to-the-iphone/feed/ 0 Tom Gruber talks about Siri, the Virtual Personal Assistant http://cloudofdata.com/2009/06/tom-gruber-talks-about-siri-the-virtual-personal-assistant/ http://cloudofdata.com/2009/06/tom-gruber-talks-about-siri-the-virtual-personal-assistant/#comments Thu, 11 Jun 2009 20:22:33 +0000 Paul Miller http://cloudofdata.com/?p=677
Image representing Siri as depicted in CrunchBase
Image via CrunchBase

Tom Gruber will be one of the keynotes at the Semantic Technology Conference in San Jose next week, and there’s a lot of interest in what he’s likely to show. I spoke to Tom yesterday to learn more, and the result has just been released as a podcast.

Well known in the Artificial Intelligence research community, and perhaps better known to the Web world as Founder of RealTravel, Tom is now CTO and co-Founder of Siri.

Siri itself came to notice back in October, when a company previously going by the name Stealth Company announced itself to the world. The intervening months have seen the team hard at work to deliver on their vision, prior to once again coming to wider attention in the past week or two with appearances at All Things Digital and (next week) the Semantic Technology Conference. Interest in the tech media has clearly been piqued, with several posts on TechCrunch, and write-ups in BusinessWeek and the New York Times.

Production of this podcast was supported by Talis, and show notes will appear on their Nodalities blog shortly.

As Tom’s abstract for next week notes,

“We are beginning to see a new interaction paradigm for the web: the Virtual Personal Assistant (VPA). A VPA is task focused: it helps you get things done. You interact with it in natural language, in a conversation. It gets to know you, acts on your behalf, and gets better with time. The VPA paradigm builds on the information and services of the web, with new technical challenges of semantic intent understanding, context awareness, service delegation, and mass personalization.

Siri is a virtual personal assistant for the mobile Internet. Although just in its infancy, Siri can help with some common tasks that human assistants do, such as booking a restaurant, getting tickets to a show, and inviting a friend.”

Siri’s first incarnation will be in the form of an iPhone app, which Tom describes in the podcast.

Have a listen, and see whether you think a VPA will become an essential part of your mobile life anytime soon…

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]]> http://cloudofdata.com/2009/06/tom-gruber-talks-about-siri-the-virtual-personal-assistant/feed/ 5 0:51:16 Image via CrunchBase Tom Gruber will be one of the keynotes at the Semantic Technology Conference in San Jose next week, and there’s a lot of interest in what he’s likely to show. I spoke to Tom yesterday to learn more, and the re[...] Image via CrunchBase Tom Gruber will be one of the keynotes at the Semantic Technology Conference in San Jose next week, and there’s a lot of interest in what he’s likely to show. I spoke to Tom yesterday to learn more, and the result has just been released as a podcast. Well known in the Artificial Intelligence research community, and perhaps better known to the Web world as Founder of RealTravel, Tom is now CTO and co-Founder of Siri. Siri itself came to notice back in October, when a company previously going by the name Stealth Company announced itself to the world. The intervening months have seen the team hard at work to deliver on their vision, prior to once again coming to wider attention in the past week or two with appearances at All Things Digital and (next week) the Semantic Technology Conference. Interest in the tech media has clearly been piqued, with several posts on TechCrunch, and write-ups in BusinessWeek and the New York Times. Production of this podcast was supported by Talis, and show notes will appear on their Nodalities blog shortly. As Tom’s abstract for next week notes, “We are beginning to see a new interaction paradigm for the web: the Virtual Personal Assistant (VPA). A VPA is task focused: it helps you get things done. You interact with it in natural language, in a conversation. It gets to know you, acts on your behalf, and gets better with time. The VPA paradigm builds on the information and services of the web, with new technical challenges of semantic intent understanding, context awareness, service delegation, and mass personalization. Siri is a virtual personal assistant for the mobile Internet. Although just in its infancy, Siri can help with some common tasks that human assistants do, such as booking a restaurant, getting tickets to a show, and inviting a friend.” Siri’s first incarnation will be in the form of an iPhone app, which Tom describes in the podcast. Have a listen, and see whether you think a VPA will become an essential part of your mobile life anytime soon… Related articles by Zemanta Siri: A Powerful Virtual Assistant For The iPhone (techcrunch.com) The Semantic Web Gang – LIVE in San Jose (cloudofdata.com) Podcast Paul Miller no no