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Google Now vs. Siri vs. Cortana – The Great Knowledge Box Showdown

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Re: Google Now vs. Siri vs. Cortana – The Great Knowledge Box Showdown

#141

Post by com2kid »

wjoe wrote: post #109
at-fates-hands wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed on Cortana. There are some things I feel Cortana does that Siri and Google Now does. Every morning Cortana gives me the weather, appointments on my calendar, news stories and how long my commute will take given the current traffic conditions. It also learns when I normally leave for work, so about 10 minutes before I usually leave, I get an update on how long it will take to get home given the current conditio…

Google Now does the same with commute times, and seems to automatically work out where you live and work. Same with appointment reminders, assuming you added a specific location to your calendar event - it's a bit hit and miss for me whether these reminders actually come up, but sometimes it tells me "Leave now to get to this appointment on time". Things like these are a much more useful part of it than voice detecti…

> Google Now does the same with commute times

Eh, it also does it at really inappropriate times.

About 30 minutes after I get into the office it starts telling me how long it'd take me to get home, and that card stays up in Google Now until I actually do go home!

Re: Google Now vs. Siri vs. Cortana – The Great Knowledge Box Showdown

#142

Post by escapologybb »

toxican wrote: post #136
escapologybb wrote: post #94

Having used both of them, I really couldn't live without Siri to be honest. I'm quadriplegic, and whilst obviously I wouldn't die without Siri my life is immeasurably better with her. Some of the killer features of Siri for me are being able to to write emails, send messages and get quick answers to general questions throughout the day. She is much better at the first two than she is at the last one though, but even…

I really like the "Hey Siri!" feature, although why it's only usable while the phone is charging is beyond me. I thought maybe battery concerns since it has to be constantly listening, but I wouldn't think it would be that taxing on the battery. How do you handle typos in iOS as a quadriplegic? They're a pain in the ass to fix by hand and I didn't even know you could do it by voice.

I couldn't agree with this more. You're absolutely correct that battery performance is the reason they don't switch it on by default. However, I really wish they would give me the option whether it's turned on by default or not. M I would gladly take the battery hit to use this feature Apple!

I also use the Apple Switch Control[0] feature which enables me to navigate text and correct typos, this is done through a series of sequential button presses which enables me to use menus to access all of the features of the phone. I use Switch Control in conjunction with the Tecla Shield[1] which uses Bluetooth to connect up a button by my cheek and the iPhone.

So yes, fixing typos when you're quadriplegic takes a little while but compared to the alternative it's awesome!

[0]:http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5886 [1]:http://gettecla.com/pages/tecla

Edit: Stupid voice dictation mistake!

Re: Google Now vs. Siri vs. Cortana – The Great Knowledge Box Showdown

#143

Post by angersock »

escapologybb wrote: post #122
angersock wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean this in a very honest way: How are you posting here? Dictation software or something similar?

Then that deserves an honest answer! I'm using a device called a TrackerPro[0] which tracks a small reflective dot on my glasses, this translates my head movements into cursor movements. To initiate a left mouse click I use a [buddy button[1] under my right index finger, this means that using just my head and right index finger I can control the mouse just like anybody else. To input any kind of text into the compute…

Very cool!

Re: Google Now vs. Siri vs. Cortana – The Great Knowledge Box Showdown

#144

Post by pkrs »

apendleton wrote: post #127
sytelus wrote: post #33

There were not random queries. In fact, they were picked because we felt they were likely to trigger a knowledge panel. For a good believable test your sampling methodology is very important. In fact, you want to have a random sample that is free of biases instead of somebody cherry picking queries. Perhaps you may do random weighted sample of queries with weights = frequency which represents usage pattern more close…

Out of curiosity, how would you propose taking a random sample of all possible questions?

I don't think it's possible, people on different platforms issue different queries partially due to marketing and insiticts on what works and what doesn't.

Also commands that already sort of work lead to more queries issues lead to better quality.

Re: Google Now vs. Siri vs. Cortana – The Great Knowledge Box Showdown

#145

Post by wycats »

rayiner wrote: post #112
wutbrodo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't used Siri in ages; what kind of context does it keep? I know that Google Voice Search will do coreference across consecutive queries (i.e. resolving "it" and "him" accurately).

Just tried this: Me: "Siri, find me a target." Me: "Directions." Siri: "Which target?" Me: "Third one." Also: Me: "Siri, find me restaurants." Me: "Review for Blue Duck Tavern" Me: "Other restaurants" Me: "Reservation for Founding Farmers." Google Now will do some coreferences, but Siri is almost modal. You can talk to it like an assistant instead of trying to formulate everything as a search query. I had a Nexus 5 a…

Just tried this on my Moto X:

Me: "Find me a target"

Me: "Directions"

Me: "first one"

Re: Google Now vs. Siri vs. Cortana – The Great Knowledge Box Showdown

#146

Post by Nicholas_C »

escapologybb wrote: post #122
angersock wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean this in a very honest way: How are you posting here? Dictation software or something similar?

Then that deserves an honest answer! I'm using a device called a TrackerPro[0] which tracks a small reflective dot on my glasses, this translates my head movements into cursor movements. To initiate a left mouse click I use a [buddy button[1] under my right index finger, this means that using just my head and right index finger I can control the mouse just like anybody else. To input any kind of text into the compute…

Very neat. Just out of curiosity, how long did it take you to write the above comment?

Re: Google Now vs. Siri vs. Cortana – The Great Knowledge Box Showdown

#147

Post by eddieroger »

escapologybb wrote: post #110
jonknee wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I never considered using Siri this way In what way? The OP seems to use it in the most basic way possible--dictation and simple searches.

> In what way? The OP seems to use it in the most basic way possible--dictation and simple searches. I wouldn't want to put words into his mouth, but I would suggest he meant using Siri as a disability aid. Might be wrong though! :-)

More or less. I meant Siri as the primary/sole way of interacting with the iPhone.

Re: Google Now vs. Siri vs. Cortana – The Great Knowledge Box Showdown

#148

Post by jonknee »

Xurinos wrote: post #111
jonknee wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I never considered using Siri this way In what way? The OP seems to use it in the most basic way possible--dictation and simple searches.

I can't speak for the other two systems compared, but to be clear, OP's examples involve more than "dictation and simple searches"; Siri also controls the device. Without entering the text messaging or email apps, one can tell the virtual secretary to read and write messages and emails. Assuming Siri understands your voice well enough. Fun specific example at the lock screen after holding down the iPhone's button for…

Sending email and text messages have been part of Siri since it was bundled with iOS...

Re: Google Now vs. Siri vs. Cortana – The Great Knowledge Box Showdown

#149

Post by lepht »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #35
masterjack wrote: post #10

Oh awesome, let's see... how many atoms are there in the universe? "The number of atoms in the entire observable universe is estimated to be within the range of 1078 to 1082." Thank you Google! http://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+atoms+are+in+the+uni... ]

Siri gets this right: http://i.imgur.com/ueKduWW.jpg It's also worth noting that Siri gives more verbose answers in "Hey Siri" mode, presumably because it assumes you're not looking at the screen.

Are you referring to the effect of the 'Voice Feedback' always/handsfree setting? I believe you can get the "more verbose" mode by just setting it to 'always' http://drop.petec.io/151n0

Re: Google Now vs. Siri vs. Cortana – The Great Knowledge Box Showdown

#150

Post by IshKebab »

melling wrote: post #47
syllogism wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually I think most of the work has been done in academia --- certainly that's where the recent deep learning stuff has come from. So, I don't think the important stuff is patented. (In general it's very hard to lock down ML improvements under patent. Once we can do it one way, and understand a little bit about what's working, we can usually replicate that performance with another technique.) The big problem for op…

First, these are two different problems to solve. Voice recognition and deep learning are different fields. Is training really the issue for voice recognition? It has been a problem that has almost been solved for over a decade. Last year I saw this impressive use of Dragon Naturally Speaking for the PC, running in a VM on a Mac, that pretty much worked to code by voice. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SkdfdXWYaI Th…

I've tried to use sphinx, but the problem was lack of training data (you have to supply it yourself pretty much!). It did have some data that was supposed to recognise numbers, but it didn't work (I mean, it ran, but the recognition was awful even when it only had to pick between 10 options).

Training is a huge issue for voice recognition. It's the only way Google and Apple have managed to take voice recognition from "works 80% of the time, but that is still bad enough to be totally usable" to "this actually works!". Maybe you don't remember how bad voice recognition was 10 years ago.

To give you an idea how important it is, on OSX you have the option to download data to improve offline voice recognition. It's something like 500 MB. And that's the result of the training.

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