Siri (again): Will Remind, Will Remind, Will Remind Me

No, not the song by Royksopp.  Now that I've had a little more time to play with Siri, I may have stumbled upon one of its most useful additions to professional productivity: the ability to remind me to do things.  Let me elaborate.

iOS 5 has a built-in app called Reminders.  It isn't quite "Tasks", although when you open it up, you can swipe between Completed, Tasks, and Reminders.  I'm already using a different system for tasks, so the interesting part for me here is the Reminders part.  I had a little bit of trouble getting this to work the way I wanted, until I found some online sites that explained how to configure this. 

First, in the iOS 5 Settings, you need to turn on Location Services.  They have to be on for Reminders, too.  (I also have it on for Siri.)  Then, in the Mail/Contacts/Calendars setting, you go all the way to the very bottom and set Default List to Reminders (where it syncs with the iCloud).  If you leave it set to Tasks, it will sync with your work Exchange server, but that setting didn't handle Reminders the way I wanted.

If you've gotten past all of the techie stuff so far, I'll now explain how this is going to work in practice.  You can say to Siri "Remind me to call Barbara at 5pm", and Siri will dutifully repeat this back to you (to make sure it's right).  You confirm that it is, and Siri adds the reminder to your Reminders app list.  At 5pm, your iPhone 4S beeps to remind you to call Barbara. 

Now let's get fancier.  Siri can know where certain places are (such as your home and work).  You can say "Remind me when I leave work to stop by the dry cleaners."  No matter what time you leave work, you'll get beeped when you're geographically away from the location Siri knows as your work location.  You could also have a reminder such as "Remind me when I get to work to speak to Barbara about my orientation idea". 

Suddenly, you've got time-based reminders and location-based reminders.  Just when and where you need them.  How handy is that?

More Siri: Turning voice into status updates

I think it's safe to say that most librarians use at least one social networking service, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Google+.  But logging into those systems just to do a status update can be time consuming, especially if you're on the go and have only your phone with you and no convenient keyboard. 

But if you're an iPhone 4S user, you can use the built-in Siri personal assistant to update any of those social networks.  First, you go into each service and follow the directions to allow sending SMS message (texts) from your phone to the service.  Then, you go into your phone and update your contacts so that you have contacts named "Facebook" or "Twitter" or "LinkedIn" or "Google", with the phone number being whatever number is used by the social service for incoming text messages.

After that, all you need to do is tell Siri to "Text Facebook" (for example) following by your status update. 

Hmmm, I'm already getting some ideas on how to use this to promote library events as they are happening!

Siri: First impressions mean a lot

It's human nature to size up a new person in your life in the very first few minutes of meeting them for the first time.  Much the same can be said about software and online services.  But what happens when that software acts like a human being?  Let's just say that it had better deliver from the first few minutes, or you're probably not going to bother with it.  Fortunately, Siri doesn't disappoint.

If you haven't been keeping up with the latest Apple fanboy/fangirl news, then you might be excused for not yet hearing about Siri, the artificial intelligence that is part of the new iOS 5 but that so far works only on the new iPhone 4S.  I've only had my new phone since late Friday afternoon, so my experience in using Siri is somewhat limited.  But let me share a few highlights that might point toward Siri becoming a great new productivity tool.

Siri not only has the power of Nuance Communications for voice recognition (yes, the same wonderful people that have brought you Dragon Dictation software over the recent years), but also it can take apart the words you've just said and figure out what you probably meant.  If you want to read all of the funny questions that people have asked Siri (and the equally funny answers), there are plenty of other blogs out there where you can find those.  I'll focus on the slightly more serious side of Siri.  First, it definitely understands my voice, and that's with essentially no training.  I expect it will get even better with time.

Second, it has access to your location (well, if you allow it to), so it will understand what "here" means.  And that means that you can find the nearest this-or-that (restaurant, store, etc.) to where you are.  Obviously, you can also ask it for directions. 

Siri began by calling me "Andrew", but that is no surprise, since that's how I had "officially" listed myself when I bought the phone.  But I told Siri "call me Drew", and from that point forward, that's what Siri did.  (I resisted the urge to have Siri refer to me as "Lord and Master", as I aim for more subtle ways to boost my ego.)

I asked Siri to tell me what Barbara Lewis (my blog partner in crime here) had in the way of a mobile phone number, and Siri told me.  I then asked about Barbara's (no mention of "Lewis") work number, and Siri told me that, too, understanding by context which Barbara I meant.  And when I then asked for "her" email address, Siri continued to understand the context and correctly gave me that information, too.

I can use Siri to text messages for me, simply by voice (making it somewhat safer to text while driving), and to read aloud any text responses to me.  I've also set up Siri to use Twitter for me, using a little feature of Twitter where you can text Twitter and Twitter sends the text message out as a tweet. 

I'll keep you posted as to whether Siri can help my productivity by reading aloud my calendar, adding items to it, or doing similar things with my to-do list.  But if it can't do those things today, I know it's only a matter of time before it can.

Hmmm, I wonder if I can train Siri to write my blog postings for me?