Ziggy!

It’s been almost a year since my blogpost on the two Turkeys – Nokia and Microsoft where I had stated that my next phone will be ICS. 

Well, it so happens that I decided to give Nokia one more chance to make amends and got the Lumia 800 instead! Good phone, refreshing user interface and different from the rest of the clutter. But this post is not about Mango OS, I shall reserve a separate blogpost for that. 

This post is about the Windows Phone app “Ask Ziggy” – supposed to be a “Siri” equivalent of Mango. So to cut a long story short, I shall just put down a list of questions I asked Ziggy and the responses she gave me:

1:  Who am I? 

A: “Who am I ” is one of the most fundamental philosophical questions a person can ask. Only you can know the answer. 

2: Am I cool? 

A: Yes

3: Who are you? 

A: I am a married mother of two children. I have a two year old autistic son and a one year old rambunctious daughter. I am a stay at home mom and we fill our days with schooling, playing and crafts. 

4: What is wrong with you? 

A: I am in love

5: What is the matter with you? 

A: Existential uncertainty!  (This one seems to be the perfect answer for Ziggy, Can Ziggy exist with Siri around?”)

6: Are you crazy? 

A: I AM crazy…about answering your questions! So please, ask away!

7: What do you think of yourself?

A: The same, what you think of yourself. Be little descriptive yaar, so that you can get various answers. 

8: What is the matter with me?

A: I don’t know…personally, I don’t like kissing. I enjoy most everything else, though. Maybe you’re just not that into kissing? Has kissing ever not been exciting for you before or with someone else?

9: Can you tell me a story? 

A: “The darling – olenka, the daughter of the retired collegiate assessor, was sitting in her back porch, lost in thought. it was MORE. (??????, please let me know if anyone understands this ‘story’)

10: What do you think of Siri?

A: Siri is an amateur (Good one. But strangely, Ziggy does not know the answer to “Who is Siri”)

11: What is your favorite drink?

A: Morning = Coffee

Day = Pepsi or Water

Evening = More Pepsi or Water

Evening without kids – Beer

12: Do you like Tom Cruise?

A: He’s alright I guess, but I think he’s a bit pretentious. He’s a little out there. I didn’t think his acting was all that great in Vanilla Sky or The Firm. Dunno how to describe it really. Just seemed fake, like maybe he’s trying to!

 13: Do you like Jim Carrey?

A: The guy is uber-funny…the expressions he makes are hilarious 😀  

(Now there is something really funny here. The text on the mobile shows 😀 at the end of the sentence, but Ziggy actually says “Dee” after reading out the sentence!!! The software should take emoticons into account and voice out a ‘grinning’ or ‘laughing’ noise instead)

14: Will Obama win the next election?

A: If he does, I am moving to Canada!

15: Can you tell me a joke?

A: (Sorry, Ziggy came up with such a dirty joke that it cannot be written here. So I tried asking the question differently)

16: Can you tell me another joke?

A: Q: why did the blonde call the welfare office. A: She wanted to know how to cook food stamps!

17: Can you tell me a different joke?

A: What do you call a sheep with no legs? A cloud.
18: Why are you so boring?
A: Hehe, yeah I suck.

 

So that was it for now. The whole exercise took more than half an hour. It was quite taxing actually. It takes at-least 5-6 retakes for each question before Ziggy gets it right. Even after that, a lot of questions go unanswered. When Ziggy doesn’t know the answer, she just takes you to web search on Bing.  At some point, I got so frustrated with Ziggy that I asked her –

18: Why do you hate me?

A: Hate is a pretty strong word to use, and most of all, I do not hate you. I have no reason to, and I see no reason not to like you. 

19: (Around 11.35pm) Should I go to sleep now?
A: Yes you should. Monday is going to be a long day. 
20: When are you going to sleep?
A: I’m probably going to sleep around 2-3-ish. Right now it is 1:15am. Goodnight to you!! Sleep well. =)

So that was all about Ziggy. I shall update this post with more questions as and when I ask Ziggy. Oh, before I forget, I should touch upon the ACTUAL functions for which Ziggy can be used: Call, email, text, calendar entries, facebook/twitter status updates etc are some of the phone functions. Checking the weather, stock prices etc are other functions.

For the phone functions, the processing is so damn slow that I would never want to use this as a first choice for anything. Not Ziggy’s fault, the same issue is there with Siri too. After all, it needs to process one’s accent first, try to match up with the right words/sentences, understand the question, search out an answer, and dictate it to you or perform the action!

Readers of this post, do put in the comments section, any questions you’d like to ask Ziggy 🙂