After the release of Apple's Siri at the end of 2011, there are actually some other voice-based personal assistant features appear for other platforms. These include the Iris for Android-based smartphone, Say It for the BlackBerry handset (Vietnamese developer) and also the Ask Ziggy for Windows Phone 7-powered devices. By releasing this feature, the Microsoft Company indicates the participation in competition of smartphone's technology and innovation.
The developer of Ask Ziggy, Averotek, stated that this is actually the personal assistant application which is inspired by the functionality of the Siri. By utilizing this feature, user can make a phone call, send a text, send e-mail to any of your contacts, update Windows Live, access and update your status and tweet on Facebook and Twitter, ask for weather forecast, ask for stock values, look for the flight status, or even ask Ziggy for doing a math calculation by simply speaking to the smartphone. Moreover, this is a free application and also ads-free that you can download from the Windows Phone Marketplace.
Originally, this application runs using the voice recognition technology from Nuance Communications Company. The company is well-known for the technology and development of speech and imaging applications. The application is basically providing the answer or information based on webpage’s reference from the internet instead of giving the direct reply. Once the query is asked by users, a combination of web scraping is applied to search for the relevant information from the web. This app will collect and summarize the direct answer from the webpages by utilizing the pattern matching method. In order to get a brief answer, some passes will be needed.
When you have installed the Ask Ziggy app on your phone, you will see that it has the microphone icon which is very similar to Siri and when you open this application you will see the blue screen interface. To start asking question, press the microphone icon at the below and then speak your query. Unlike the Siri or Iris, user must press the Stop key right after saying or asking for something. Then, as usual you will see the texts of your question appear on the screen. Below the answer section, there will be the answer or information which usually consists of more than one sentence. Whenever you click the question section in the above, you will be directed to the web in case you need to see for more information.
Taken as whole, the Ask Ziggy has the capacity to compete with other personal assistant application which has been already available in the market. There will be a number of benefits by using this application namely the user-friendly interface and also the quite fast and accurate respond. There are several considerations that this application could be more impressive if it’s developed under the Microsoft Company itself. But this software is still worth to obtain for those who own Windows Phone 7 device as it comes as a free application and it is equipped with the rather equivalent capability of both Siri and Iris. [IS]
