Siri iPhone App, Personal Assistant

Hello and welcome to yet another post on Accessories for iPhone.

Today we are going to do another review of an app which is fairly new, and one which we took great advantage of before Valentines Day weekend.  The app in question is called Siri, a personal assistant for the iPhone as they like to call it.

When we first read about Siri briefly from other forums, we thought it would be fairly similar to the Google App.  While being similar in that it has voice recognition, it goes one step beyond the Google App.  The voice recognition aspect of the app also happens to be the same one that is used in Dragon Dictation.

With Siri, when you first start it up, you are asked to fill in some information, such as your name, email, and phone number.  If you do not know why they are asking, you may forgo wanting to fill it out.  However, the reason behind asking you to fill it out is quite good, and really what makes Siri such a great application for the iPhone.

To give you a real world example of how Siri works, and how we used it ourselves, we would like you to imagine Valentines is coming up (which it already did), and you need to make a reservation to a restaurant.  You open up the Siri app, state the name of the restaurant and location (San Diego for us), and it will do a search for you.  Once it has found restaurant X, you state, “Reservation for two on Sunday February 14, at 6:00pm”.  Since you had previously entered your info before, you have no need to call the restaurant to give name, phone, or email.  They will be notified, and within moments, you will be notified via Siri (and email) of your confirmation.  However, this does not work for all the restaurants, and when it does not, it does suggest to you, “would you like to call said place?”.  You can check out their video below this text:

In addition to this great scenario we just explained, it also does show Yelp reviews of what other people have thought of the business you are interested in visiting.  All in all, we were very pleased with the App, and highly recommend it to anyone.

Until next time.

Accessories for iPhone

Knocking iPhone App review

Welcome to another day at Accessories for iPhone.

Thanks for tuning in again.  Today we wanted to review an amazing app that has been around since late 2009.  It is called Knocking.  It basically allows for Mobile to Mobile Live Sharing.  What this means is that for example if you are witness to an amazing event, or interesting event, and you want to share it with your friend(s), and/or family, you may do so live by simply “knocking” them and allow them to see Live what your iPhone’s camera is seeing.

We have tested this application both internally, and outside the office, and it has worked really well.  Sometimes there may be a slight lag, but that is usually fixed once flow has begun.  We had in fact one of our friends “knock” one of our iPhone while in Mexico.  We were able to see the sun, the sand, the pool, and the beautiful people bathing in the sun, while most of the country was freezing cold (yes even San Diego was cold at the time).

Knocking may also function as a video to iPhone conversation (one way though for now).  Basically, let’s say you are on the phone with Jim, and while on the phone you see something quite spectacular, and want to share that, without hanging up.  Well being on AT&T, and using iPhone’s Knocking App, you can do just that.  Simply press the Home button on your iPhone (after you put call on speaker mode), open up the Knocking App.  Knock your friend (all while talking on the phone), and voila!  You know have a phone call, while sharing video simultaneously.  You can even turn the video to show your face while talking!  Granted it is one way right now, but with time we believe there will be two way video sharing.  You may how it works in the official video from the Knocking Team below this text:

We would love to hear your stories.  Have you used Knocking?  How have you used it? Any cool and fun stories to share?  We would love to hear from you as always.

Cheers!

Accessories for iPhone