That would have been a pretty cryptic post title a few years ago. Anyway, while it’s not exactly the same, there are som apps.
[Update a while later]
10 thoughts on “Siri For Android”
Comments are closed.
That would have been a pretty cryptic post title a few years ago. Anyway, while it’s not exactly the same, there are som apps.
[Update a while later]
Comments are closed.
Speaking of cryptic, Rand, that adjective applies to a lot of stuff I see in your Twitter Feed. Why are people discussing Natalie Wood, for example, and how doe that relate to anything on your blog? Or random comments about people meeting at Starbucks. Is there any way you can put Twitter on a diet?
Do you not know how Twitter works?
Nope. Not a clue.
Well, briefly, it’s a conversation, with a large number of people. Many topics will come up. It really has little to do with my blog, other than that I show the feed here, and my blog posts get posted to my Twitter account automatically.
Understood, but it sure would be nice if you could figure out some way to filter it for relevance.
Relevance to what? What is my blog relevant to? It’s about what I want to talk about. So is my Twitter account.
Relevant to your readers. You don’t usually post blog entries unless you believe the audience is interested in the subject or, failing that, explain why we should be interested.
With the Twitter feed, there’s no context. When I see a twitter from someone I don’t know saying he’s going to Starbucks or that his favorite color’s violet, it seems like random noise.
I think your only option is to not read it. It’s a Twitter feed, not a blog entry.
Speaking of interface evolution, the thing I miss most on my Android phone is… a pointer. When I’m browsing the web on my PC, for example, I can figure out where someone’s link is trying to take me by hovering my pointer over the link text. The URL appears next to my status bar and I can decide whether I want to go or not. I can’t find any way to duplicate this on a smart phone. The other thing one uses pointers for, of course, is tool-tips. It’s was a maddening trend 20 years ago when people started to get cute with replacing text with icons… now we’re past the point of insanity. Not only is there no way to tell what a given icon is supposed to do until you click it, but the icons themselves are smaller and more cryptic.
Oh, and speaking of annoyances, Rand, your blog comment typing box is now down to absurd dimensions. 3 lines of about 40 characters? Reminds me of a satire I read in Byte about 20 years ago, forecasting the future of Microsoft Word. Byte was making fun of the then-new toolbars in the latest version of Word, and extrapolating to the day when the amount of screen space available for the user to type was reduced to a single line. Byte called it “the typewriter metaphor”. And hey, we’re there. I have a giant 1680×1050 screen and the active space is about 3/4″x3.5″. I know it’s not all your fault, but if I can’t complain to you, who else can I harass?
Speaking of Siri, earlier this year the Gingerbread update to Android broke the voice recognition on my HTC Evo 4G. This was extremely annoying, as I tend to use the voice recognition to text while I’m… ahem… in the car. But I’m happy to report that the latest upgrade fixed the problem and works better than ever. It’s still uneven, though. For some reason it aces times and numbers. I can say “I’ll be home at six forty five” and it almost always gets that correct and even writes “6:45”. But if I say, “Sorry but the traffic is really heavy” it can come out mangled. Still, I’m old enough that I’m impressed it works at all.