Siri | Kapiti SeniorNet

By Dianne Cooper (Tutor)
If you use an iPad3, iPad mini, iPhone 4S or iPod Touch 5G, or any of their successors, you have Siri on board. Siri is a voice assistant feature. Apple Support/About Siri, will provide you with pages about what Siri can be used for, and how to do it. Here’s a brief review of one user’s experience…

Siri allows you to use your voice to command the device, rather than your fingers. Supposedly, Siri understands natural speech. S/he needed some familiarization with my Kiwi accent. I did this by dictating an email (which I never sent), correcting the text manually when s/he got it wrong. Over and over. If you want punctuation in your text, you have to say the word. eg comma. I find the more I use Siri, the fewer mistakes s/he makes.

The main way to access Siri is to simply press and hold the Home button. You’ll hear a couple of quick beeps, and see “What can I help you with?”. If you don’t say anything, you will be presented with a rolling screen of examples of things Siri can do for you. Continue reading →

Can we really put up with chatting to our phones? Imagine walking along in town or on the beach and there you are talking to your phone, and no you haven’t gone barmy, although others may think so.

Image by COG LOG LAB. via Flickr

But the new iPhone from Apple, the much hyped 4S now has the conversation built in. You can ask it questions on just about everything and in most cases get the right answer. It will also type your messages for you and send them and keep you up to date with much.

You may think it is a good thing we haven’t got it available here just yet, but that is just a matter of time, so get ready for listening not just to the caller at the other end but to your phone chatting as well. With all that going on maybe you’ll no longer talk in your sleep!

OK, have a look at this wonder, click here and go to full screen [click on that square icon at the right hand foot of the video frame].

You may decide you want one too.