By Sharad Harjai:
Apple introduced a new application with iPhone 4s launch called ‘Siri’. An application, as we all know, listens to you and responds, accordingly. As expected, Siri got the hype like any other Apple product.The same feature was available in many other phones for long but never got much attention. The world seemed to have only one topic to talk on since the launch of Siri. Even after almost 2 months of iPhone 4s, search results for #Siri on twitter will get you many funny tweets. New blog posts/umpteen tweets or Facebook statuses about some new reply that Siri gave to a stupid question of his master was like a routine. It is useful of course, sometimes, but not to the extent that Apple expected it to be. It turned out more like a common subject of humor for everyone.
Even all these reactions doesn’t seem to change anything. An Apple developer confirmed in a news that Apple won’t roll off Siri in next iPhone release. Amazon bought a Charlotte, N.C. based voice recognition startup ‘Yap’. You might expect something from Amazon soon to compete Siri. The competition of tablets may get give birth to some amazing applications from Amazon for their tablet, Kindle Fire, which they launched at half the price of iPad recently. Barns, and Noble also released new product, Nook Tablet recently. They haven’t shown any signs of getting into voice recognition business but it might get necessary for them if this new feature catches fire.
In other news, Ford Fiesta will have a voice recognition system too. They released new version of the car in India last month. A test drive review and video says that the voice button is attached to the steering wheel and is very easily approachable. One press and your car starts taking voice commands. You say, temperature and 23 degree, it will take care of it. You can connect it to your phone using blue-tooth and can make calls using voice recognition feature only. The software definitely needs some improvements, but it will definitely has a great future.
These small developments make my mind imagine a world where we will be able to access everything by just giving some voice commands. You speak and your food is delivered at your home. No hassles of swiping your card. You speak and your music system plays the song you want. No matter where it has to go to search (YouTube, Grooveshark or spotify). Might even buy your music online from iTunes. Just say it. You speak and a machine does the surgery with all the precision you want. This is just the start and the list of possible implementations has no end. What interesting concepts you can think of implementing voice recognition technology?
One day, Nike may say: Just Say It 🙂