Ask Ziggy Gives Siri a Run for Its Money
Microsoft Windows Phone 7 users in search of personal assistance needn't look any further than their own phone, thanks to the introduction of a new app, Ask Ziggy.
The free application, created by Shai Leib, uses Nuance's voice-recognition software, enabling users to search for news, weather, translations, reviews, movies, Wikipedia entries, and social media sites.
"Ask Ziggy uses speech recognition to translate human speech into transcribed text, which is displayed in a speech bubble," Leib told WPCentral.com. "The transcribed text is analyzed for patterns to detect commands or general queries. Commands are interpreted and routed to routine phone tasks such as emailing, texting, calling, social network updates, and getting directions."
Leib told the Web site that when a general question is asked, a mixture of mashup technologies and Web scraping is employed to search the Internet for relevant responses.
"Pattern matching is used to summarize a direct answer from a Web page," Leib added. "Several passes may be required to find a concise answer. A direct answer is then spoken out loud, and displayed in a speech bubble. When a direct answer cannot be summarized, the user is prompted by speech to click on the search bubble to see Web search results based on their spoken query."
The app performs search queries against several Web application programming interfaces (APIs), such as Yahoo YQL and Google API. It also features a default language for most services and includes recallable histories. Its services are sortable and can be deactivated. Previews are available for search results, and URLs can be opened with Google Mobilizer, according to developer site Maemo.org.