We have submitted the app 'Voice Ask' to the app store this week. It's a virtual assistant app, very much like Siri, but it works on all iOS devices with a mic. We have given 'Eve' a unique personality, and besides the app being very practical, you can have fun discussions with her about life, the universe and everything.. See a sneak preview at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHMAQ3FIU8U The app will be launched for the initial price of 99 cents as soon as it is approved. Let me know what you think! Martijn van der Spek Sparkling Apps
Only English for now.. We could probably do a language -> english -> language translation step, but I think the results would not be pretty!
Will it set a date in your calendar or set the alarm for the time you ask? I have seen several of these voice assistant type apps, yet none of them have have this. Very important, I believe, to make an app like this practical.
To bfready: At the moment it doesn't set alarms. But we'll enhance the functionality further if the concept proves popular enough. Apple limits the control of apps within apps though. The main purpose of the app is to understand spoken questions, and provide relevant answers in a clear voice. And do this on any device.
We expect it to be in the app store within a day or two. But the price may soon have to be raised to cover our data costs, so get it when it's there!
That is an amazing one, although the voice quality is not that great but over all its working well and is good enough, i mean from the general video that you shown, it seems good.
Peter, thanks. We hope to still get it into the app store before the 22nd, when Apple closes submitting of new apps for the duration of the holidays.
Voice Ask was launched today! It's available in the app store for $2.99. Get it at http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/voice-ask/id488689770?ls=1&mt=8 Let me know what you think, we will expand the functionality further, the coming weeks!
Note that we had to change the price to $2.99 to cover the costs of our data provider. We had a great launch, thank you for your support so far! Please mention any functionality you want us to add, and we'll put it on our list to take along.
I really like this app and gave it 5 stars. The intelligence is remarkable. I have. not tried Siri, but I can't imagine it do much more. My only requests, so far, are for the ability to delete old searches and to be able to earmark documents for later reading. Thanks a lot, Howard
First question I asked it.... "How many children does Michael Douglas have?" It correctly repeated my question as text....impressive It answered.... "so how many children do you want?".....ah. Maybe it's my Mancunian accent or it just fancies an argument, I'm not sure. I thought Siri was over hyped and it only cost me 1.99 to prove it, glad I didn't splash out on a 4s now I'll give it another go after a few glasses of Champers over Chtistmas Dinner, see if I can get some sense out of it. Regards, Jeff (really quite impressed actually). Edit, just threw it a topical one "how long to cook a turkey?" the answer...."More than 23 inches", damn. raw turkey again :-(
Howard, thanks a lot for the feedback, appreciate it. We will include a 'clear history' button in some form, in the upcoming release. Not sure how we can easily add a 'favorites' function, but we will consider it. Blairvoyach, you are right, the answers are more amusing than useful. But the thing is, Siri doesn't answer these questions either. It just comes with 'I don't know', and offers Google. We always come with some sort of answer, and there is always the google button. Perhaps we should be more clear, or present something like, 'I am not sure, but.. ', and then provide the 'entertaining' answer. The knowledge base itself is actually a lot stronger than that of Siri. You can ask Eve questions about small villages anywhere in the world, and it knows them. Or present details like the national anthem of any country, or about lesser known artists. Siri falls short there. However, Siri presents itself well, Eve still has rough edges that we aim to smoothen out the coming period. But Siri isn't nearly as perfect as the marketing leads us to believe either. We have received a lot of remarks that our voice recognition is actually better than Siri's, especially with foreign accents, and the option to write the question is always there, unlike with Siri. And of course, Voice Ask is available on any iTouch, iPad and older iPhone, so without that 4S you still get a voice assistant. Again, thanks for the feedback, it helps us to improve the product further in the upcoming period!
MacvanderspeK, Hope I didn't sound like I was complaining, I wasn't. I'm well aware of the limits of technology as regards AI. When I asked it how far away is the moon, it gave the distance and a whole lot of facts I wasn't expecting plus links to other resources so well done there. As you say, marketing has a lot to do with the public perception of Siri and several people I know are quite disillusioned with it, more the fact it was a major factor in their reason for upgrading to a 4s. I do hope you will find a way to integrate it more into the IOS core apps, it would be a must-buy. Wishing you all the best with this project, I was really annoyed when apple decided the G4 Iphone, and Ipod wouldn't get Siri and I'm glad I didn't buckle and buy a 4s. Regards, Jeff.
It's pretty good at recognizing my voice so far and it fetches answers for most of my questions. Vlingo couldn't get one sentence correct that I dictated. I would like to see it universal or at least with landscape mode so it looks and feels better suited on the iPad. For $2.99 its valuable for those of us who do not have a 4S.
