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Siri has a few useful shortcuts. "Remind me tomorrow at 11am to go to the dentist". The reminders app is kind of a piece of shit interface wise. So Siri works

Siri has a few useful shortcuts. "Remind me tomorrow at 11am to go to the dentist". The reminders app is kind of a piece of shit interface wise. So Siri works really well. I also like "directions to home". I wish I could say "Share my location with Mom for 1 hour" but I can't and that's stupid. My biggest Siri complaint is it's one and done. You can't modify commands and have to start over. Which is super frustrating if it gets a text almost entirely correctly but misses one word. Any other useful shortcuts people like?

k-mcgrady 11y ago
'Set a timer for x minutes'. I use that all the time. I also used to ask it for sports scores and schedules a lot: 'When is the next Packers game?'.
jacquesm 11y ago
I don't have an agenda, I remember all my appointments (well, all but one, last year I actually forgot one, I'm still really sorry about that but it's the first time this happened in 3 decades so not a bad score). Before I used a cell phone I knew all the phone numbers of all my associates by heart. Now I only remember my own phone number and the one of my old bookkeeper because his never changed and we worked together for 2 decades. All these 'assistants' that we use, they relieve us from having to remember these things ourselves. But does it actually relieve us or does it in fact cause us to lose a useful skill?
- Diederich 11y ago
  Even in my younger decades, I was unable to have the kind of recall that you talk about here. I'm no dullard, and I've been doing well as a technical person since the beginning. Many of my friends used to remember numbers and such random data quite well. There are different kinds of brains. Some of us are fundamentally no good at remembering 'random' data. Your fundamental point, though, is well taken, though it might be an inevitable byproduct of...progress?
- mbrock 11y ago
  Obligatory reference to Plato's Phaedrus. > Socrates: At the Egyptian city of Naucratis, there was a famous old god, whose name was Theuth; the bird which is called the Ibis is sacred to him, and he was the inventor of many arts, such as arithmetic and calculation and geometry and astronomy and draughts and dice, but his great discovery was the use of letters. Now in those days the god Thamus was the king of the whole country of Egypt; and he dwelt in that great city of Upper Egypt which the Hellenes call Egyptian Thebes, and the god himself is called by them Ammon. To him came Theuth and showed his inventions, desiring that the other Egyptians might be allowed to have the benefit of them; he enumerated them, and Thamus enquired about their several uses, and praised some of them and censured others, as he approved or disapproved of them. It would take a long time to repeat all that Thamus said to Theuth in praise or blame of the various arts. But when they came to letters, This, said Theuth, will make the Egyptians wiser and give them better memories; it is a specific both for the memory and for the wit. Thamus replied: O most ingenious Theuth, the parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of the utility or inutility of his own inventions to the users of them. And in this instance, you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which they cannot have; for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.
  - gkya 11y ago
    From my reading list about Naucratis (haven't read it yet): http://qz.com/582073/now-underwater-this-ancient-egyptian-trading-city-was-once-the-hong-kong-of-its-era/ http://qz.com/582073/now-underwater-this-ancient-egyptian-tr... Would you mind telling the passage number?
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    It's not obligatory, and it is a nice way to sidestep looking at the question I asked. Sure there are advantages, and I'm fully aware of those. I am just wondering if there is a dis-advantage that may be less visible. I'm not versed in this matter so my question put in simpler terms is one of attempting to see the flip side of the coin. That books and 'letters' have a downside is reasonably well documented, cultures that do not rely on writing for passing their information down from generation to generation are richly populated with people that perform feats of memory casually that astound those that rely on the written word. That the advantage lies with the 'books' faction seems to be a foregone conclusion (this is usually the case when you compare a human that is augmented with some tool against one that is not so that's a bit of an open door to kick in) but it is always important that almost everything comes with some kind of price tag and if you can't see the price tag you might make the wrong decision in some of these cases. Just like calculators cause us to become (much) worse in mental arithmetic (but we can do much more complex math in a short time even without the required skills).
- bcassedy 11y ago
  Anecdata: People that rely on GPS navigation all the time seem to have trouble remembering how to get places they've been dozens of times.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Well, it depends. You can't really separate humans from the tools they use, they are extensions of our cognitive capabilities. If I outsource some of my old mental tasks to my phone it may mean that I'm losing something as a naked person, but I'm also gaining a lot as a system of person+phone. It is a tradeoff, but it is a pretty good one if you can reasonably expect your tool (or a class of tools) to be always available when needed. Our tools are our exocortex. Also, the same questions you asked can be used as an argument against books. Or writing, as the parallel comment quoting Plato shows.
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    I never made the 'leap' to the smart phone. I have a couple of them for testing and development purposes and I have carried them with me for some time to try them out but the disadvantages outweighed the advantages for me. I'm easily distracted and to have a computer in my pocket would cause me to 'zone out' in situations where I'm hard pressed to pay attention to the people around me. It seems I'm not alone in this, a scene on a terrace in some town I visited was a family of four having dinner together. Only they weren't really together, each of them was absorbed in their own little private conversation with their phone and not a word was said. This isn't all that rare but on that particular occasion I happened to become acutely aware of how we are now more interconnected to those at a distance than to those right in front of us. The sure knowledge that I'd be just like that is the biggest item on the list of things that stops me from carrying a smart phone with me at all times (that, battery life, durability, and my roughly equal dislike of both Apple and Google).
- brazzledazzle 11y ago
  At what point are you preserving a skill for points rather than for usefulness? You're totally set if some kind of electro-magnetic event destroys all technology and remembering appointments becomes a relevant skill in the ensuing chaos. Joking aside–it's important to remember that some people have really complex lives. Two full time jobs with a couple of kids and you're potentially juggling a lot. That's four different schedules, three you have to be keenly aware of and the fourth you need to keep in mind for certain events or exceptions. Those kids are probably part of a sports program and at least one other extra-curricular activity. Then there's the PTA and various other school activities and events. There's also people that simply don't have the mental ability to remember things like appointments because they have disorders that prevent them from doing so. Add that family complexity to someone's plate with a disorder and you're looking at a level of chaos you've probably never experienced in your entire life.
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    > You're totally set if some kind of electro-magnetic event destroys all technology and remembering appointments becomes a relevant skill in the ensuing chaos. I always make that joke about the Mennonites, if an EMP hits someone will have to go there on foot or bicycle to tell them about it and they will wonder what the fuss is all about. > Joking aside–it's important to remember that some people have really complex lives. That's a point well made, thank you for that. You are dead on, my life is 'simple' and I very much intend to keep it that way. I'd recognize the need for a personal assistant as a sure indicator that I'm on the wrong track, removing stress from my life is a very important thing to me. > There's also people that simply don't have the mental ability to remember things like appointments because they have disorders that prevent them from doing so. > Add that family complexity to someone's plate with a disorder and you're looking at a level of chaos you've probably never experienced in your entire life. Another point well made, thank you again.
    - brazzledazzle 11y ago
      >That's a point well made, thank you for that. You are dead on, my life is 'simple' and I very much intend to keep it that way. I've been thinking lately that simplifying my life is something I need to take on as an overarching philosophy. How much stress I'm under often feels correlated to the amount of complexity I'm dealing with. Thank you for reminding about it and affirming it.
lotu 11y ago
The other useful short cuts include "call mom". Siri will ask who your mom is and if you want her to remember that in the future. Also read my "text messages", or "text my sister ..." These are great on a winters day when I want to walk but don't want to take off my gloves, or when I'm biking and don't want to take out my phone.
- forrestthewoods 11y ago
  "Text <person> I'm on my way home" while driving is useful. Also when I want to share my location so I don't have to answer when or how much longer should I get snarled in traffic. Alas.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    > so I don't have to answer when or how much longer should I get snarled in traffic. Alas. Makes me think of an idea: an x.ai for getting rid of people bugging you in inconvenient moments. You tell it, "Amy, please make X leave me alone" and it tries to parse your conversation, automatically providing things like expected arrival time, traffic conditions and attempting to deflect questions. Every now and then I wish I had such a tool.
Spooky23 11y ago
"Show me pictures from April 12, 2009" My wife discovered this recently, it's really an amazing way to explore your photos.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Holy hell, that's pretty much straight from Star Trek! Sadly, Google Now doesn't seem to support it yet :(.
8ig8 11y ago
"In 30 minutes, remind me to take the beer out of the freezer."
tedmiston 11y ago
> You can't modify commands and have to start over. Which is super frustrating if it gets a text almost entirely correctly but misses one word. You can click on the text to open Messages and edit manually before sending. (Admittedly it's not well documented.)

k-mcgrady 11y ago

'Set a timer for x minutes'. I use that all the time. I also used to ask it for sports scores and schedules a lot: 'When is the next Packers game?'.

jacquesm 11y ago

I don't have an agenda, I remember all my appointments (well, all but one, last year I actually forgot one, I'm still really sorry about that but it's the first time this happened in 3 decades so not a bad score). Before I used a cell phone I knew all the phone numbers of all my associates by heart. Now I only remember my own phone number and the one of my old bookkeeper because his never changed and we worked together for 2 decades. All these 'assistants' that we use, they relieve us from having to remember these things ourselves. But does it actually relieve us or does it in fact cause us to lose a useful skill?

Diederich 11y ago
Even in my younger decades, I was unable to have the kind of recall that you talk about here. I'm no dullard, and I've been doing well as a technical person since the beginning. Many of my friends used to remember numbers and such random data quite well. There are different kinds of brains. Some of us are fundamentally no good at remembering 'random' data. Your fundamental point, though, is well taken, though it might be an inevitable byproduct of...progress?
mbrock 11y ago
Obligatory reference to Plato's Phaedrus. > Socrates: At the Egyptian city of Naucratis, there was a famous old god, whose name was Theuth; the bird which is called the Ibis is sacred to him, and he was the inventor of many arts, such as arithmetic and calculation and geometry and astronomy and draughts and dice, but his great discovery was the use of letters. Now in those days the god Thamus was the king of the whole country of Egypt; and he dwelt in that great city of Upper Egypt which the Hellenes call Egyptian Thebes, and the god himself is called by them Ammon. To him came Theuth and showed his inventions, desiring that the other Egyptians might be allowed to have the benefit of them; he enumerated them, and Thamus enquired about their several uses, and praised some of them and censured others, as he approved or disapproved of them. It would take a long time to repeat all that Thamus said to Theuth in praise or blame of the various arts. But when they came to letters, This, said Theuth, will make the Egyptians wiser and give them better memories; it is a specific both for the memory and for the wit. Thamus replied: O most ingenious Theuth, the parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of the utility or inutility of his own inventions to the users of them. And in this instance, you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which they cannot have; for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.
- gkya 11y ago
  From my reading list about Naucratis (haven't read it yet): http://qz.com/582073/now-underwater-this-ancient-egyptian-trading-city-was-once-the-hong-kong-of-its-era/ http://qz.com/582073/now-underwater-this-ancient-egyptian-tr... Would you mind telling the passage number?
- jacquesm 11y ago
  It's not obligatory, and it is a nice way to sidestep looking at the question I asked. Sure there are advantages, and I'm fully aware of those. I am just wondering if there is a dis-advantage that may be less visible. I'm not versed in this matter so my question put in simpler terms is one of attempting to see the flip side of the coin. That books and 'letters' have a downside is reasonably well documented, cultures that do not rely on writing for passing their information down from generation to generation are richly populated with people that perform feats of memory casually that astound those that rely on the written word. That the advantage lies with the 'books' faction seems to be a foregone conclusion (this is usually the case when you compare a human that is augmented with some tool against one that is not so that's a bit of an open door to kick in) but it is always important that almost everything comes with some kind of price tag and if you can't see the price tag you might make the wrong decision in some of these cases. Just like calculators cause us to become (much) worse in mental arithmetic (but we can do much more complex math in a short time even without the required skills).
bcassedy 11y ago
Anecdata: People that rely on GPS navigation all the time seem to have trouble remembering how to get places they've been dozens of times.
TeMPOraL 11y ago
Well, it depends. You can't really separate humans from the tools they use, they are extensions of our cognitive capabilities. If I outsource some of my old mental tasks to my phone it may mean that I'm losing something as a naked person, but I'm also gaining a lot as a system of person+phone. It is a tradeoff, but it is a pretty good one if you can reasonably expect your tool (or a class of tools) to be always available when needed. Our tools are our exocortex. Also, the same questions you asked can be used as an argument against books. Or writing, as the parallel comment quoting Plato shows.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  I never made the 'leap' to the smart phone. I have a couple of them for testing and development purposes and I have carried them with me for some time to try them out but the disadvantages outweighed the advantages for me. I'm easily distracted and to have a computer in my pocket would cause me to 'zone out' in situations where I'm hard pressed to pay attention to the people around me. It seems I'm not alone in this, a scene on a terrace in some town I visited was a family of four having dinner together. Only they weren't really together, each of them was absorbed in their own little private conversation with their phone and not a word was said. This isn't all that rare but on that particular occasion I happened to become acutely aware of how we are now more interconnected to those at a distance than to those right in front of us. The sure knowledge that I'd be just like that is the biggest item on the list of things that stops me from carrying a smart phone with me at all times (that, battery life, durability, and my roughly equal dislike of both Apple and Google).
brazzledazzle 11y ago
At what point are you preserving a skill for points rather than for usefulness? You're totally set if some kind of electro-magnetic event destroys all technology and remembering appointments becomes a relevant skill in the ensuing chaos. Joking aside–it's important to remember that some people have really complex lives. Two full time jobs with a couple of kids and you're potentially juggling a lot. That's four different schedules, three you have to be keenly aware of and the fourth you need to keep in mind for certain events or exceptions. Those kids are probably part of a sports program and at least one other extra-curricular activity. Then there's the PTA and various other school activities and events. There's also people that simply don't have the mental ability to remember things like appointments because they have disorders that prevent them from doing so. Add that family complexity to someone's plate with a disorder and you're looking at a level of chaos you've probably never experienced in your entire life.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  > You're totally set if some kind of electro-magnetic event destroys all technology and remembering appointments becomes a relevant skill in the ensuing chaos. I always make that joke about the Mennonites, if an EMP hits someone will have to go there on foot or bicycle to tell them about it and they will wonder what the fuss is all about. > Joking aside–it's important to remember that some people have really complex lives. That's a point well made, thank you for that. You are dead on, my life is 'simple' and I very much intend to keep it that way. I'd recognize the need for a personal assistant as a sure indicator that I'm on the wrong track, removing stress from my life is a very important thing to me. > There's also people that simply don't have the mental ability to remember things like appointments because they have disorders that prevent them from doing so. > Add that family complexity to someone's plate with a disorder and you're looking at a level of chaos you've probably never experienced in your entire life. Another point well made, thank you again.
  - brazzledazzle 11y ago
    >That's a point well made, thank you for that. You are dead on, my life is 'simple' and I very much intend to keep it that way. I've been thinking lately that simplifying my life is something I need to take on as an overarching philosophy. How much stress I'm under often feels correlated to the amount of complexity I'm dealing with. Thank you for reminding about it and affirming it.

lotu 11y ago

The other useful short cuts include "call mom". Siri will ask who your mom is and if you want her to remember that in the future. Also read my "text messages", or "text my sister ..." These are great on a winters day when I want to walk but don't want to take off my gloves, or when I'm biking and don't want to take out my phone.

forrestthewoods 11y ago
"Text <person> I'm on my way home" while driving is useful. Also when I want to share my location so I don't have to answer when or how much longer should I get snarled in traffic. Alas.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  > so I don't have to answer when or how much longer should I get snarled in traffic. Alas. Makes me think of an idea: an x.ai for getting rid of people bugging you in inconvenient moments. You tell it, "Amy, please make X leave me alone" and it tries to parse your conversation, automatically providing things like expected arrival time, traffic conditions and attempting to deflect questions. Every now and then I wish I had such a tool.

Spooky23 11y ago

"Show me pictures from April 12, 2009" My wife discovered this recently, it's really an amazing way to explore your photos.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
Holy hell, that's pretty much straight from Star Trek! Sadly, Google Now doesn't seem to support it yet :(.

8ig8 11y ago

"In 30 minutes, remind me to take the beer out of the freezer."

tedmiston 11y ago

> You can't modify commands and have to start over. Which is super frustrating if it gets a text almost entirely correctly but misses one word. You can click on the text to open Messages and edit manually before sending. (Admittedly it's not well documented.)