Shelly Palmer Radio Report – March 29, 2012

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The Wall Street Journal and Parks Associates did a survey of Apple iPhone 4S users to see how much they liked using Siri, Apple’s personal digital assistant.  Not surprisingly, usage is limited and it’s pretty easy to understand why.  Let’s try Siri, schedule a call for me and John Doe tomorrow at 4pm.  After about 10 seconds Siri says, “I don’t see John Doe in your contacts perhaps you meant one of these 22.”  This is a pretty typical response, and, as you can hear, it is not very useful.  How about traffic conditions, what’s the traffic like. “Getting your current location, here’s the traffic.”  One for two isn’t bad, but this still feels more like a parlor trick than a paradigm shift.  Are there alternatives to Siri?  My favorite can be found on the Google Mobile app.  Just touch the microphone and tell Google what you’re looking for, the results are almost instant.