How can Siri help you at work and home:
1. Launch an app. Perhaps one of
the most simple tasks Siri can
perform, and often one of the
most overlooked. Just think of
the number of times you've
gone through page after page
of app icons searching for the
right one when all you needed
to say was "Launch Facebook.
2. Find a place to eat and get a reservation. The best thing about Siri is that
when you ask it to "recommend a restaurant", it sorts them by their Yelprating.
This makes narrowing down your choice
quite easy. Better yet, if the restaurant
is on OpenTable, you'll see the option
to make a reservation, which means no
pesky wait before you eat. Siri can also
find "what movies are playing" and the
"closest gas station".
3. Reminder. I use Siri for setting reminders
more than anything. I've found it to be
great at keeping me more organized. It's
as simple as saying "Remind me to take
out the trash tomorrow at eight AM."
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4. Email. Siri can also pull up
recent email messages and send
email. You can tell her to "Send
Email to Dave about The Beatles
and say you've got to check
this band out." You can break
this into chunks by saying "Send
Email to Dave" and she'll ask for the
subject and body of the Email, but the
keywords "about" and "say" will let you
put everything in your original request.
5. Voice dictation. You can actually use
Siri's voice dictation just about anywhere
that you can type. The standard onscreen keyboard has a microphone button. Tap it and you can dictate rather than
type.
6. Facebook/Twitter status updates. Similar to sending a text message, Siri update
Facebook or Twitter. Just tell her to "Update Facebook I need new speakers can
anyone recommend some?" or "Tweet
these new Beats headphones are awesome". ✽
September 2014
INSIGHT