Siri is an iOS application, which acts as a software assistant and knowledge navigator that fetches information regarding the things mentioned in voice commands, given by the user. It uses a natural language user interface to answer questions, provide recommendations, and perform actions by delegating user requests to a set of web services. Siri has been designed to adapt to the user preferences over the passage of time, in order to provide personalized results, as well as to accomplish tasks such as finding recommendations and directions for places in the vicinity, e.g. a restaurant. Unfortunately, there is no such application for Windows users to help them acquire information regarding items, using their voice instructions. Mitini is a Siri like free software for Windows that uses Microsoft’s speech engine to recognize your voice and to reply to your queries.
The current version of Mitini seems to provide a mixed result. During testing I was able to get correct answers for some queries, whereas, the application seemed as redundant as the actual Siri application at other instances. While the iOS Siri has been criticized for not being accurate many a times, Mitini seems to be suffering from the same issues for now. having said that, it is likely that this application might grow to become more accurate in the near future, as the current release seems to be one of the early releases of Mitini. the below screenshot demonstrates how a query in Mitini provides a response.
While Mitini is currently not as powerful as Siri or the voice assistant application available on Android or Windows Phone, it is certainly fun to use and works reasonably well for certain queries. For a more accurate result I would suggest you to avoid making voice queries with a lot of background noise, as the best results are fetched when Mitini can understand your voice, without detecting background clutter (noise). For more information, check out the below video, which demonstrates the usage of this application. To perform a voice query, click the “M” icon and speak in the microphone. Mitini will search and fetch information about your query.
Let’s hope that Mitini grows into a more robust Windows application, with upcoming versions and provides many options that are available in the mobile apps of it’s kind, such as scheduling of meetings, launching other applications and sending a message to someone (after a voice command). Mitini is a portable application and does not require any installation. It works on
- Windows XP
- Windows Vista
- Windows 7
- Windows 8 (possibly, not tested)
