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Siri Competitor Evi Arrives, But Already Overloaded

Posted by timothy on from the but-how-much-does-evi-resemble-microsoft-bob? dept.

mikejuk writes "Evi, a new rival to Siri, Apple's voice-driven personal assistant, has made its debut on both the iPhone and Android. And people are so keen to that Evi's servers are overloaded — so be prepared for a wait for answers." The app costs 99 cents for iOS users, but it's free on Android.

5 of 233 comments (clear)

  1. Old news by SoonerSkeene · · Score: 5, Informative

    Not only has this been out for approaching a week, but it's also far from a competitor. It uses the standard voice services to transcribe what you say, then 'helpfully' google it for you or open a webpage. It most certainly can't do what Siri does, even when it is (rarely) working. You can ask Siri where to get a sandwich. Asking Evi just results in the homepage for UrbanSpoon.com launching. Not even a search for what you want. When's that Majel thing coming?

    1. Re:Old news by narcc · · Score: 5, Informative

      I want to be able to add something to my calendar, or ask where the closet X is.

      What's so strange is that the things people bring up when they talk about Siri are the same things that other apps have been able to do for ages.

      When Siri came out, there was a user here bragging that he could tell Siri that he was "hungry for Mexican food" and it would bring up a list of Mexican restaurants in his area. Well, I press the convenience key on my Blackberry and, surprise surprise, saying "I'm hungry for Mexican food" was all it took for Vlingo to pull up a list of Mexican restaraunts near me (grabbing my current location with the GPS) complete with a button to call them and a button to get directions.

      I'm still not sure what Siri does that's particularly special, though I do hear a lot about the things that Siri won't do that other similar apps can do.

      --
      Required reading for internet skeptics
  2. Re:SpeakToIt Assistant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Yes, scary, but isn't that expected? Isn't one of the features of Siri calling and texting people for you?

  3. Re:SpeakToIt Assistant by jamesh · · Score: 5, Informative

    DIRECTLY CALL PHONE NUMBERS

    1. Purchase pay-to-call and pay-to-sms services
    2. Stand on street corner with megaphone yelling out instructions for phones to dial and message my numbers
    3. Profit!

    In fact you could just buy ads during popular TV shows that clearly speak the same instructions...

  4. Re:Not a real competitor to Siri by Frangible · · Score: 4, Informative

    ... and by "minor app developer" you mean a Stanford Research Institute spinoff, where it was created from over 10 years of AI research by DARPA on the CALO/PAL projects, which were in fact the largest AI projects in history?

    You might remember DARPA from some of their other projects. Like ARPANET amongst others.

    If you expect to equal 10 years of DARPA AI research and development in a 3-week coding project, well good luck with that.