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"Conversational?" Conversational like the automaton I get when I phone my bank? It looks to me that the system is a canned response / limited expected response

by buff-a 15y ago

"Conversational?" Conversational like the automaton I get when I phone my bank? It looks to me that the system is a canned response / limited expected response / state machine that every motherfucker on earth can do. If you want to do marketing bullshit, HN is probably not the best place to do it. We're actually surprised that people are picking up that we're optimized for texting while driving You are? You are surprised that people are picking up on your core selling point? Why? Did you not feed this to them? We're actually surprised that people are picking up that we're optimized for texting while driving and that Siri is a personal assistant Oh, I see. "Gosh, we're surprised that <some really obvious thing> while <some other thing that we wish to be perceived as true but isnt>". It would be great for you if the press would frame the discussion as "sonalight is for texting while driving while siri is a personal assistant", because it then sounds like siri doesn't totally wipe the floor with you when it comes to texting while driving. If only saying such tripe online would make it true - but maybe HN isn't the place to try it.

elisee 15y ago
Come on, this is HN indeed, can't you assume a little good faith? They're here answering questions, trying to learn from potential customers. Have you launched a product? It's easy to call it "marketing bullshit" and move on with your day. Those people have spent time and energy designing their app, and they didn't post an ad, someone (maybe them, who cares?) posted a link on a blog about their product. Just ignore it if you don't care for it.
- buff-a 15y ago
  If he'd come on here and talked about their marketing strategy, such as how they are having to deal with a vastly superior product but which fortunately their customers don't have access to, then I'd be all over it, and HN would be a great place to discuss it. But to come here and actually attempt such transparent bullshit gets such transparent bullshit pointed out.
sskates 15y ago
Didn't mean to use marketing-speak. When I said conversational, I meant that our app talks to the user, waits for a reply from the user, then does that cycle again, like Siri does. There are a lot of other ways to do voice interaction, like voice actions does (you press a button and then talk and then something pops up) or Vlingo (where the interaction is mostly hands free, but sometimes requires you to press a button). I'm also serious that we thought that people wouldn't understand the differences between us and Siri. I'm not talking about people commenting on HN, I'm talking about someone who casually hears about our app as a "voice app" from a friend, or who glances at the headline on TechCrunch. The differences are in the details of the execution, and they can be subtle, especially if you haven't gotten a chance to use both apps and do a comparison on how they perform at texting-while-driving.

by buff-a 15y ago

elisee 15y ago

Come on, this is HN indeed, can't you assume a little good faith? They're here answering questions, trying to learn from potential customers. Have you launched a product? It's easy to call it "marketing bullshit" and move on with your day. Those people have spent time and energy designing their app, and they didn't post an ad, someone (maybe them, who cares?) posted a link on a blog about their product. Just ignore it if you don't care for it.

buff-a 15y ago
If he'd come on here and talked about their marketing strategy, such as how they are having to deal with a vastly superior product but which fortunately their customers don't have access to, then I'd be all over it, and HN would be a great place to discuss it. But to come here and actually attempt such transparent bullshit gets such transparent bullshit pointed out.

sskates 15y ago

Didn't mean to use marketing-speak. When I said conversational, I meant that our app talks to the user, waits for a reply from the user, then does that cycle again, like Siri does. There are a lot of other ways to do voice interaction, like voice actions does (you press a button and then talk and then something pops up) or Vlingo (where the interaction is mostly hands free, but sometimes requires you to press a button). I'm also serious that we thought that people wouldn't understand the differences between us and Siri. I'm not talking about people commenting on HN, I'm talking about someone who casually hears about our app as a "voice app" from a friend, or who glances at the headline on TechCrunch. The differences are in the details of the execution, and they can be subtle, especially if you haven't gotten a chance to use both apps and do a comparison on how they perform at texting-while-driving.