Tech Table Tuesday, November 12, 2013
November 12, 2013
Justin: Welcome to MPA’s TechTable. 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: Tuesday is always restart day. We always talk about that. Boy, I need it. I might need a slap-me-around day.
Diana: Oh my. I’ll let the winds do that for you outside.
Justin: It’s Tuesday restart day which today we’re going to talk about iPhone tricks. 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 didn’t even have 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.
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 talk to Siri and Siri will find things for you.
Diana: Answer questions.
Justin: Answer questions. But a lot of times she finds things online and gives you a set of, ‰Û÷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 have?
Diana: 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. You tell Siri to ask Wolfram what flights are overhead. I’m like, ‰Û÷What?’
Justin: Right. Exactly. What’s Wolfram, number one?
Diana: What’s Wolfram, number one?
Justin: 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: 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. I Google searched. 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: Siri will ask Wolfram for that information.
Justin: So Wolfram’s smarter than Siri.
Diana: I think so.
Justin: That’s like the second level you have to go to. When Siri doesn’t quite know Siri’s going to ask Wolfram.
Diana: Yeah, if you see a plane overhead and 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, ‰Û÷Is Superman overhead?’
Diana: We should do that next time.
Justin: I don’t know. And also with the new iPhone you can change Siri to a male voice. Do you know the name of the male voice?
Diana: I can’t remember.
Justin: I can’t remember either.
Diana: Edward or something. More normal than ‰Û÷Siri’.
Justin: I like talking to Siri. I’m down with it.
Diana: We can also do things, updating Twitter and Facebook using Siri. You send a text message with the word “start” to the number 40404. When you get a response you add it to your contacts. Then for Facebook you send a text message “hello” to the number, 32665 and then you can use Siri to update your Facebook and Twitter status.
Justin: Great. So you just tell Siri what you want to put on it. Interesting. 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. That will not reboot the phone but just the Siri app because Siri is an app. So kind of interesting little tricks there for iPhone that you might want to try out. So till next time…
Diana: Take care.
Justin: TechTable 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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