Siri co-founder and CTO Tom Gruber on turning your iPhone into a personal concierge We’re a long way from Ask Jeeves, the butler assistant that helped you search and find stuff on the Web. Siri, which recently came out of stealth mode, is a virtual assitant on the iPhone. Sure, it's not super sophisticated to be able to organize your child's birthday party. But it's the closest thing to a real assistant that you can talk to that I've ever seen.The free iPhone app, which applies speech-to-text and text-to-intent technology to Web services, such as Yelp, OpenTable,  ticket reservation systems, Google Maps, etc., helps consumers get tasks done. It will be available in private beta to a select few (tens of thousands) in August. If you don't have an iPhone, don't worry. Siri will ...   [ Read more ]