Tech Table Tuesday, November 12, 2013
November 12, 2013
Justin: Welcome to MPA’s Tech Table. I’m Justin.
Diana: And I’m Diana.
Justin: And we’re your hosts. We’ll be serving up a heaping spoonful of all things tech.
Diana: We promise it’ll be easy to digest.
Justin: It’s Tuesday!
Diana: Yeah, it is.
Justin: You know, Tuesday is always Restart Day. We always talk about that, and boy, I need it. I might need a “slap me around day,” yeah.
Diana: Oh, my. Well, I’ll let the wind do that for you outside.
Justin: But it is, it’s Tuesday Restart Day, which today we’re going to talk about iPhone tricks.
Diana: Oh yeah, sure.
Justin: You know, your iPhone can do a lot of amazing things.
Diana: Everyone has an iPhone, right?
Justin: That’s right. I just got my gold one. Very excited about that, and I started talking to Siri right away because I hadn’t even had the 5.
Diana: I haven’t had good luck with Siri.
Justin: Siri and I, we get along great.
Diana: She and I need to restart our relationship, I think.
Justin: Now, if you don’t know what Siri is, Siri is, literally, it sounds like a person that you can ask a question to. Do voice commands, basically, and Siri will find things for you.
Diana: Answer questions.
Justin: And answer questions. A lot of times she finds things online and gives you a set of, this is what I found online, but she’ll also give you directions, tell you how far you are from something. But there are some interesting things that Siri will do as well. What are they, Diana? What do you got?
Diana: Well, this is really cool. Nathan gave me this tip. Nathan’s one of our techs at MPA, and he said you should try asking Wolfram what flights are overhead. So, you tell Siri to ask Wolfram what flights are overhead, and I’m like, what?
Justin: Exactly. What’s Wolfram, number one?
Diana: What’s Wolfram, number one?
Justin: Yeah, so I guess, when you do this, Siri will actually tell you what commercial airline flights are above you at that very moment, which is really cool.
Diana: Wow. But so, Wolfram, what is that?
Justin: I don’t know, what is it?
Diana: Well, I had to look it up, exactly.
Justin: Did you ask Siri?
Diana: I did not. Nice Google search. Wolfram Alpha introduces a fundamentally new way to get knowledge and answers, I took this right from their website, not by searching the Web but by doing dynamic computations based on a vast collection of built in data, algorithms, and methods. Yeah, they’re smart people.
Justin: Apparently so.
Diana: So, Siri will ask Wolfram for that information.
Justin: Right, so Wolfram’s smarter than Siri.
Diana: I think so.
Justin: So, that’s like the second level you have to go to. When Siri doesn’t quite know, Siri’s going to ask Wolfram.
Diana: You know, you see a plane overhead, you want to know what it is, if it’s a bird, a plane, or Superman. It’s probably a plane and ask Siri what it is.
Justin: I wonder what happens if you ask Siri, is Superman overhead?
Diana: We should do that next time.
Justin: I don’t know, and you also can change Siri to a male voice, which, do you know the name of the male voice?
Diana: I can’t remember. Edward or something?
Justin: I can’t remember either.
Diana: It’s more normal than Siri.
Justin: Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t like it. I like talking to Siri. I’m down with it.
Diana: Okay. So, we can also do things, updating Twitter and Facebook, using Siri. You send a text message with the word “Start” to the number 40404, and then when you get a response, you add it to your contacts. Then, for Facebook, you send the text message “Hello” to the number 32665, and then you can use Siri to update your Twitter and Facebook statuses.
Justin: Right, so you just tell Siri what you want to put on. Interesting.
Diana: Exactly.
Justin: Interesting. That’s exciting. Now, there’s another thing. Does Siri seem slow or sluggish? Then simply tell her to restart. That’s about as easy as that, and that will not reboot the phone but just the Siri app. Siri is an app.
Diana: Right.
Justin: So, yeah, interesting little tricks there for iPhone that you might want to try out. So, until next time.
Diana: Take care.
Justin: Tech Table is brought to you by MPA of Bloomfield, Iowa, and God’s Country Radio. You can visit us online at AskMPA.com.
Diana: If you have questions or comments, please send them to questions@askmpa.com. That’s questions@askmpa.com.
Justin: And thanks for listening.
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