"Call Mom."

Seems like a simple thing to remember, but with 50 niggling little distractions running through my head including the sultry Australian voice of Yvonne Strahovski telling me, "Go get the Collectors," I tend to forget the simple things. Without recording them somewhere before my digital schizophrenia sets in, my mom doesn't get called and people are sad.

Siri, the virtual personal assistant, helps make moms everywhere less sad. Well, that and a few other things.

Here's one example how I've been using it over the past four days...

While eating a delicious a chicken fried steak I thought, "You know what would be great for desert? Beef jerky!". I grabbed my iPhone and told Siri, "Find beef jerky near here." A few seconds later it pulled up a Yelp listing for the Beef Jerky Emporium a few blocks away.

MMMMM meat-tastic!...

Later, taking my girlfriend out, I said "Make a reservation for sushi near my house", Siri asked me for a time, then using Open Table, it pulled up a local sushi place and asked if I wanted to book a reservation. Seeing that the Open Table listed price was $30, to rich for my blood, I ask Siri to find the closest Long John Silvers instead and give me directions. This caused a very odd scowl to cross my girlfriends face, weird.


With a belly full of greasy crusted batter I figured it was the perfect time for some rock and roll. Asking my trusty assistant to find a rock concert, it came back with a few local listings, "Oh look babe!", I said, "John Mayer's in town!" This seemed to brighten her mood, but strangely her shoulders quickly slumped again after I quipped, "That guy slurs every word why do the ladies like him so much? Let's go watch a movie instead." Must have been the shrimp she ate.


Oddly enough after Siri found the local movie listings and I excitedly clicked on Legion, my girlfriend grabbed the phone and asked it to book her a cab home.

Good thing I got an email reminder to call my mom the next day so I could ask for advice on women.

So that's Siri, a great iPhone app combining a variety useful location based services in one slick interface, still doesn't help me with the ladies.