Virtual Assistant

Back at 2004, I was a freshmen at School of Electrical Engineering and Informatics at Bandung Institute of Technology. At the time, there was a competition hold by the student association aiming at High School student, it called LED : Light of Electrical Dream. The competition is simple, you just have to dream, dream about an innovative electrical-electronic technology that will give huge impact on human life. It is a very successful event, and I feel bad that I have enrolled to college at the time, because I want to participate in it so badly. But still, me and my friend talk and toying around about what we would dream of if we can participate in the competition...

There are so many ideas. With no limitation of feasibility, it is great to dream about almost everything. One of my friend talk about biometric identification, where human being can digitally identified with their fingerprint that connected to integrated database of all of their information, from date of birth to bank account. She said, "we don't need any money, we don't need to registered for a passport, all we need is our thumb". Indeed, that is a very brave dream, right? Very Minority Report :)

And then my turn, and I simply think about automatic housing system. Where a house can be so smart that it can detect our mood for music, adjust the room temperature, manage the utilities and most of all can communicate and manage our need by simply directly asking us. Well, it sort of like Tony Stark's Jarvis. Oh hell, I really head over heel for Jarvis. I'm craving to have one :P

That was dream. But I remember about it again last Wednesday,  Apple announced their latest upgrade on the iPhone series, iPhone 4S, exactly one day before they lost they co-founder. Nothing so special about the device. It looks exactly like iPhone 4. They said it is faster in processing, and faster in browsing. They said the camera is better. But nothing really interesting in both, it just old song. What really caught my attention is Siri, a virtual voice-operated personal assistant. They said Siri is so smart, and she can tell you exactly what you want as far as you tell her clearly what you want. Wow... they make mini-Jarvis, the iPhone-sized-Jarvis, and really I'm craving for one.

People said Siri is the new innovation that finally will disrupt Google-search domination in the internet and mobile domain. I'm not really sure about that, but it really worth the attention. Well, we'll see, how far Siri will boost iPhone 4S sales, and how the market react to it. And one more thing, it really will be interesting to see how Google will response.