Siri's Android & Windows Phone 7 alternatives…

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Remember when Siri was a big deal? Siri got a big ad campaign, but I haven’t met too many people who actively use it. It has been promised in the iOS6 iPad (3rd gen) update, but I’m not looking forward to it any more than the addition of any other feature. But if you’re the kind of person who was jealous of the iPhone owners with Siri, then I encourage you to check out these applications for your handheld of choice:

Windows Phone 7: Check out Ask Ziggy on the Windows Phone Marketplace.

Android: Enjoy iris. on the Android.

In both cases, the applications pull from various sources on the internet to find the answers to questions you’re asking. I have found both of them to have excellent speech recognition engines, and be very fast. I have to give bonus points to iris. for having partnerships in place that allow them to pull data from services like ChaCha and Wolfram|Alpha. But Ask Ziggy is no slouch – it includes great in-line graphical forecasts when asking for the weather, and easy to read and time-stamped information when providing stock quotes.

Although neither integrates as flawlessly into the OS as Siri (and how could they?), and you may not be able to check your calendar on the fly, these are still two excellent apps that provide users of other platforms excellent alternatives to living a life without a voice activated digital assistant (boy we’ve come a long way from the PalmOne m505.