The OS X 10.9 version of Siri should be much like the version that you’ve already seen on your iOS devices, letting you do the voice assistant thing to search for stuff on the web or add events to your calendar. Remember that Mountain Lion already has Dictation, which is using the same kind of hardware resources and infrastructure as Siri already. It wouldn’t take much to take that leap.

As far as Apple Maps go, they’re also reportedly getting integrated in OS X 10.9, allowing developers to embed a map into the apps they list through the Mac App Store. They’ll use the same MapKit framework as developing for iOS, but it’s also possible that a full-blown Maps app could make its way to Mac OS X too.

If we assume that Apple will follow a similar release schedule as it did with OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, then early previews should appear in February with the formal launch coming around July.

[Source]

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The Voice Actions in Android currently do more than just do searches on Google. It can be used to make phone calls and such, but Google wants to beef it up to do even more, challenging Siri for the throne of most useful voice assistant. The service that previously went by the codename “Majel” will have three main goals, all of which are designed to “go beyond Siri’s functionality.”

First, they want Assistant “to put the world’s knowledge into a format a computer can understand, to create a personalization layer and to build a mobile, voice-controlled “do engine” that will help users accomplishing real-life goals.” It’s like taking IBM’s Watson, making him cater to the individual user, and getting him to understand what we’re saying, acting on those instructions to really achieve something.

Chalk this up to rumor for now, but it looks like Google Assistant could be ready for deployment by the end of this year. Better still, Google will likely have an API that will open up the service to developers. Who knows what cool functions this could yield?

[ source]

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It looks like Siri now has a sister. A sister that is smarter, faster, and more resourceful. A sister that is more social too, playing friendly with both Android and iOS people. The sister’s name is Evi and this cross-platform voice assistant looks to be a serious challenger to Siri.

To be fair, there are other voice-based search assistants out there, but Evi by True Knowledge looks like it holds some seriously powerful potential. They say that the Evi app has “almost a billion facts,” as well as the ability to “infer trillions” from that. Evi also looks all around the web for you, gathering information from Google, GPS, Yelp, Wolfram Alpha, and more. There’s also the voting up and down of answers to help improve Evi’s effectiveness. Not surprisingly, Nuance is the tech behind the voice recognition.

Evi appears to have stronger logic and language reasoning too.

“If you ask “Who was President when Queen Elizabeth II was born?” Evi determines who Queen Elizabeth II is, when she was born and then compares this against which U.S. presidents were in office over that time, delivering the results of both serving U.S. presidents during those years. Siri cannot do this.”

And Evi can provide localized information for UK users, something that Siri still cannot do. That’s the good news. The bad news is that it looks like the True Knowledge servers have been overloaded by the flood of new users, so it doesn’t seem to be working. In any case, the iPhone version is available in the App Store for 99 cents, whereas the Android version is a free download.

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