Siri, I Think I Love You!

Now that I have my new iPhone 4s, I have acquired my own personal assistant.  Yes, the new iPhone comes with Siri.  I can't give you all the technical mumbo-jumbo as to what Siri is but I CAN tell you in layman's terms that she (and I use the humanizing pronoun deliberately) is an artificial intelligence-type of  program built into the new iPhone.  You speak to her just like you would to a normal person and she answers you.

For example, to get the screen above, I pushed my home button and said, "Siri!"

She replied, "Yes, Dee?"

I said, "Do you think it is going to snow this week?"

You can see her answer on my phone's screen.  Siri will do things like read incoming texts to you, write a text and send it for you, call people for you, set up reminders for you, pop up a map to show you how to get to a place you ask directions to, and even make recommendations for things like a good Indian restaurant.

That's only the tip of the iceberg.  There's more she'll do.  You can read all about Siri on Apple's website here.  What I particularly like is that there was no tedious learning curve to use Siri.  She was quite agreeable right from the start.  I can remember the old PDA days when you had to "train" your device to recognize your voice and then train it to recognize your handwriting.  Boy, have we come a long way, Baby!

Apple says that Siri will be able to do more and more amazing things as the months go by and more people use it.  Now if this was a sci-fi movie, you might be getting a little twinge of foreshadowing right about now.  Could Siri one day become too smart for her own good.....or for OUR own good?  Ah, who knows?  In the meantime, I'm going to enjoy having someone (or something) at my beck and call who does what I want when I want them to do it.  Besides, I'm notoriously bad at typing on these little phone keyboards and it's incredibly nice to be able to just say a message and have it show up in email or text format.

Siri is also funny.  I asked her if the iPhone was the best smartphone.  Her response?

"You're kidding, right?"

The Facetime Horror Show

My new iPhone 4s arrived Monday and I've been having fun setting it up, getting things transferred over from my old iPhone 3 and trying out the new features.  Let me just say right now that I LOVE Siri.  FINALLY I have somebody I can boss around who actually will listen to me, even if she IS an artifical intelligence "person."

After I finished my phone activation, I decided to take my iPhone out for a "test run", so to speak.  I called my brother.

"Hey, John,  I'm calling you from my new iPhone," I gloated.

"Cool," he replied.  "Hey, doesn't it have Facetime?  We could try using that."

"OK, hang on, " I said, as I searched the call screen for the icon, "Let me switch over to it."

Sure enough, up popped my face in a little window and the phone indicated that it was trying to connect to my brother but no picture was coming up.  We fiddled around with our phones, talking all the while on them, trying to figure out what we were doing wrong.

"Hey, remember that YouTube video I sent you of that old couple trying to figure out how to use their computer's webcam?" I asked him.  He laughed.  "I sure hope these phones aren't recording us."

"Oh, maybe I have to click on the 'Accept' button," he said.  Up popped his face.

"Jeez," I said.  "Where ARE you?"

"I'm in my computer room but it's pretty dark in here," he answered.

"I'll say," I laughed.  "All I can see is a floating head.  You look like that host of the old Saturday afternoon horror show we used to watch on TV when we were kids."

"Maybe this will help," he said, as he reached up to turn on a light he had hooked to his computer monitor.

"Aargh, turn it off," I chuckled.  His receding hairline made the glare on his forehead blinding.

"Sheesh, I can see you but I can barely see me on this phone.  I'm in this little box up in the corner, " I said, as I  took off my glasses and leaned closer to get a better look.  "Holy s___! Is that what I look like?  Look at the bags under those eyes!  I could fit a whole sale at Macy's in those."

We spent the next 5 minutes amusing ourselves making faces at each other via Facetime.  Ain't technology grand?

"Hey, what's this little camera icon down here in the corner?  Maybe I can take a picture of you on the screen like I can when I'm Skyping," I mused aloud.  I pressed the icon.  Suddenly I was looking at my tablecloth.

"Whoops, that must activate the camera on the back of the phone," I told John.

"Hey, neat," he said.  "Do you still have snow there?  You could show me."

We spent the next 5 minutes aiming our phones at different views in our houses.

Our fun was interrupted when he had to cut the conversation short to leave for an appointment.  Gee, and we were having so much fun.  Just think of all the great moments of sister-brother bonding we've been missing without Facetime.  Until next time......

Can You Hear Me Now?

I was sitting in the recliner yesterday knitting away when my iPhone started playing "Gasoline and Matches" and my brother's picture popped up on the screen.  I always get a laugh when I hear that song because my brother and I are SUCH opposites in many ways and we do mix about as well as gasoline and matches sometimes.  Yet in many ways we are quite similar.  We are both very compulsive people.  We suspect that we are the only ones who have the correct answer on a lot of things.  We can even be pretty obsessive, too.  When we get together, we're loud, we tease, we laugh, and we don't hesitate to disagree.   Bottom line - we're siblings who love each other, quirks and all.

So the phone rang and I answered it with a "What's up?"

"Well, I got an iPhone," replied my brother.

"That's great," I answered.  "You're going to love it."

"I don't know," he said.  "I can't see the screen."

"What do you mean, you can't see the screen," I quizzed.  "You mean you can't read the icons?"

"No, I can't read the posts on Facebook, " he replied.  "I could read the screen on my Blackberry but I can't see this screen without putting my reading glasses on."

I asked him if he had tried expanding areas of the screen with his fingers or if he'd turned the phone on its side and yes, he'd tried all of that but just couldn't seem to get used to it and apparently didn't want to have to admit that his eyes were needing reading glasses now.

"Hey, John,' I teased.  "Looks like you're just getting old.  Your eyes aren't what they used to be.  Better get those reading glasses out."

Just then the phone went dead.  I tried to call him back several times but couldn't connect with him.  Then I noticed that I had a message in my voicemail.  I checked it out and heard this message:

"Um, Dee...this is embarrassing but I heard you call back and I can't figure out how to answer the phone."

When we finally reconnected on the phone, I gave him a good ribbing about being such an old fogey that he couldn't even figure out how to answer a cell phone.  Actually, I could sympathize with him.  Some years ago, the Commander and I had been in a mall on Black Friday with new cell phones and my sister-in-law had called me and neither one of us could figure out how to answer my phone.  We actually went into a store and asked a clerk if they could figure it out.

I told my brother that I'd email him with a list of the iPhone apps that I had on my phone and ones that were highly recommended in different magazines that I subscribe to.  I'm always researching new apps for my phone and being the researcher that I am, this is an assignment right up my alley.

In fact, I just downloaded a new iPhone app called "autoringtone" that supposedly has lots of different voices and effects that you can program to say whatever you type in and then you can assign these customized sayings to different contacts for their ringtones.  Oh, boy....this could be fun.  I plan to spend some time this afternoon playing with this new app and then I'll come up with a new ringtone for that brother of mine.  Hmmm,wouldn't it be fun if I could remotely program HIS iPhone to play one of my customized ringtones when I call?  Heh, heh, heh!