Did You Hear That?

"Can I walk to City Hall from here?"

"Do I need an umbrella in Vancouver this weekend?"

Seemingly enough, these are everyday questions one might ask another person, but with the recent introduction of Siri on Apple's new iPhone 4S, your mobile phone will be the one to answer.

Siri is voice-recognition technology taken to a whole new level. It's an intelligent personal software assistant capable of understanding natural language, as well as logic and reasoning.

As one could guess, Siri is impressive and in demand. Hackers are working to make Siri functional on older iPhones and all iPads. Amazon is reported to be feverishly developing a similar technology for its Kindle to compete.

Voice-recognition technology is not new, even on mobile phones, but gone are the days of being limited to simple voice dialling functions that required training it with your voice, and only accepting commands in standards phrases, such as "Call Scott Heist".

We went from talking with our mobile phones, to touching them, and now talking to them.

Apple is once again being a pioneer and continuing the intention of its brilliant but retired slogan, "Think different". So, what is your organization doing to approach what you do differently? It's no longer good enough to be the best, no matter how lovely Siri is.

Siri, did you hear that? Not to worry, press and hold the home button, Siri is listening. What are you going to say next?