Iris vs Vlingo vs Speaktoit

After Siri is out on iPhone, there is such a rush of people to capitalize on the Siri Effect and earn some quick money or popularity. It sounds and feels like the Gold Rush. Everyone, is making a Virtual Assistant Application. Out of all the Virtual Assistant crap that is coming to Market, three key players stand out - Iris, Vlingo and Speaktoit. I have used all the three and would like to give you an idea about how I felt using the three Applications.

Iris

Iris is a clever play on the word Siri. However, it is an Application made in a rush. The developer says it was hacked together in 8 hours. It is still in beta and it is too early to pass a judgement. For 8 hours of hack, it is a good product. Otherwise it is not that great. Use Iris a couple of times and you will go away feeling that your phone does not like you. Iris is actually trying to be funny. But it ends up being sarcastic. Not many people will like a sarcastic virtual assistant. The point is, this sarcasm or humour is to cover up the fact that Iris is incapable of doing certain tasks it is supposed to do. It can not send an SMS. It cannot update your status on social networks. It cannot set a reminder. All that it can do is to pull up answers to your questions from Wikipedia. Ya, Iris does that well. It pulls out answers and reads it for you better than any other App in the Market. So if you want to play Quiz with your Virtual Assistant, you can download Iris from here.

Vlingo

Vlingo is in the market for sometime now, much before Siri came along. It is a direct Application. No cleverness. No fun. You give a command and Vlingo does it. Vlingo is better at capturing your voice command and executing it. But it is boring. Because it does not have a conversation mode. It sounds like you are talking to a robot and you are a robot when dealing with Vlingo. Otherwise, Vlingo does many of the tasks in a breeze. It can even capture your vague mumbles and execute an action. It is integrated to the search button and you can make it your default action for long pressing the search button. It can send SMS. Search the Map. It can voice dial. It can search the web for you. It can do many tasks. No fun and all work. Vlingo gets confused if you ask her any crooked humane question. If you are someone who likes to get your work done straight away in few words, you can download Vlingo from here.

Speaktoit

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy - that is exactly what will happen to Vlingo. All fun and no work makes Jack a useless boy - that is exactly what will happen to Iris. Speaktoit is the only App that I have seen in the market so far, that is almost equal to Siri. It does all the work. And it knows to be funny. It knows to have a conversation with you. As I understand, it will take years for a Virtual Assistant to become a utility. Till then people are going to have fun with it. People are going to use it to just show off for a while and then are going to forget it. Speaktoit will be a good App to show off. It does all the work it needs to do or can do. And it lets you have some fun on the sidelines. I have written more about Speaktoit here. Speaktoit is the best Android Virtual Assistant you can download to show off to the Apple Fanboys who wag their Siri on your Face and smirk. If you are someone who likes to get the work done and at the same time have some fun, you can download Speaktoit from here.