Remember The Milk can sync with your iPhone calendar

http://blog.rememberthemilk.com/2011/10/we-taught-siri-to-add-tasks-to-remember-the-milk/

by hopeless • 15 years ago

150 56 15 years ago

blog.rememberthemilk.com

hopeless2• 15 years ago

A similar approach (setting up your own CalDav server) might work for lots of other todo/reminder sites. Furthermore, I wonder if there are any other types of services which could be integrated with Siri in this manner

robmcm• 15 years ago

Such as being able to tweet by sending an SMS to twitter.

LiveTheDream• 15 years ago

This would work (twitter via SMS) just by adding the twitter shortcode to your contacts. I was surprised that Siri doesn't support twitter natively.

bbhacker2• 15 years ago

If I understand correctly, the have taught Siri nothing. What you see is task list synchronization between the iPhone and RTM.

You talk to Siri -> Siri creates a task -> Task is synced to RTM

wccrawford2• 15 years ago

Actually, Siri is creating a calendar event, and syncing that to RTM.

They aren't claiming to have taught Siri to add events... They're claiming to have integrated with RTM.

I suspect there might be an issue with having a calendar AND a task list both, though... Like, you can't.

btn• 15 years ago

They aren't claiming to have taught Siri to add events

From the article: "we had to teach Siri to add tasks to Remember The Milk [...] and we're super excited to announce that we've done just that!"

hopeless2• 15 years ago

It could still be useful for other developers to realise that CalDav might be a good integration point with Siri

mikeash4• 15 years ago

Before: Siri doesn't send tasks to RTM.

After: Siri sends tasks to RTM.

Seems pretty reasonable to me. Is your quibble with the word "taught"? That seems pretty minor.

z92• 15 years ago

Why it didn't send task to RTM before is something that needs investigation. Probably a task <-> RTM synchronization failure.

cschep• 15 years ago

Siri isn't sending anything to anyone. I think that's his point. Siri added a task to a calendar, just like she has always "known" how to do.

kamechan• 15 years ago

in my opinion, "taught" seems to imply that siri can actively learn. though siri is an intelligent agent which does speech recognition (firmly planting it in the world of AI), i am under the impression that siri does not actively learn and so saying "taught" in the context of speaking about an AI could be construed as misleading. i could be mistaken about whether siri can do "learning" or not, as i'm not intimately familiar with the tech.

jjcm2• 15 years ago

My quibble isnt with the word "taught", but rather with the overall wording conveyed in the title. As it is now, it seems to suggest that they've uncovered a hidden API where you can add custom grammars to Siri. A more accurate title would be, "RTM can sync with your iphone calendar". It really has little to do with Siri itself. Any calendar task will be synced, not just ones created by Siri.

whyleym• 15 years ago

My word - taught or not taught it's a nice piece of function - I do wish that people wouldn't nitpick so much

danilocampos2• 15 years ago

This comment demonstrates everything that has come to exhaust me about Hacker News.

There are myriad things to praise about this community, to be certain, but the only place with a bigger stick up its collective ass is Wikipedia.

albemuth• 15 years ago

I don't think this applies for this comment, I mean, the title suggests teaching something to an AI, which in the case of Siri would open a lot of very interesting options, I'm sure I'm not the only one who expected something along those lines and was disappointed. "RTM Siri setup instructions" is a less attractive title though.

oakgrove• 15 years ago

"but the only place with a bigger stick up its collective ass is Wikipedia."

Slashdot

achompas• 15 years ago

I agree with you about a lot of things, but this isn't one of them.

That title implies a number of things. Personally, I read it and thought "RTM managed to jailbreak Siri and teach it how to interact with a third-party API!!"

That was a very disappointing click-through because that's one misleading title, dude.

smallegan• 15 years ago

I think the problem is sometimes people try to find a way to comment. Generally unless someone is outright wrong or lying I tend to just not upvote something that wasn't very interesting. Starting an argument in a comment thread can be a great place for Karmawhores to get some action.

krobertson• 15 years ago

Do you also have a problem with marketing that says "we're revolutionizing the XYZ industry" by arguing over the use of the word "revolutionizing"?

While technically they haven't "taught" anything, I think you're also blowing it out of proportion.

Its a creative hack, clean to setup, and useful for their users.

robjohnson• 15 years ago

I can see many developers moving towards this idea of integrating Siri APIs into their apps.

jasonlotito• 15 years ago

Could you set up an email for your app, and allow messages to be sent to your app from siri? Instead of posting to twitter directly, you send something via Siri to your contact, Twitter, which is an email that will post to twitter?

Basically, makes email act as the API.

Edit: Just realized twitter supports SMS (for a long time, didn't support Canada, at least, from what I remember).

marknutter• 15 years ago

Does anyone know exactly what API's there are for accessing Siri, or is it pretty locked down at this point?

rjvir• 15 years ago

They aren't accessing any API's - Siri is still pretty locked down at this point, and will be for a while. All this does is sync your Calender with Remember the Milk, which never actually interacts with Siri.

seanMeverett• 15 years ago

Love this hack, it's the reason I joined HN, to learn about things exactly like this. My question is, when Apple opens the API, are we going to see Siri games?

wofser• 15 years ago

What would be really cool is to make reminders that reminds you when you are in a special area.

For example:

When I am close to a special shop it reminds me to get that special battery that only them have.

When I get home it reminds me to do something in my home, take out the trash for example.

When I visit a friend I get a reminder about something I should inform him of.

Location-based notifiers instead of time-based (or a combination so it would not remind me to go to the store nearby in the middle of the night and its closed).

raimondious• 15 years ago

Location-based reminders are already implemented!

sharkman• 15 years ago

it's in iPhone 4S, but it drains your battery like crazy

jaxn• 15 years ago

Why do you say it drains your battery like crazy? I am not saying it doesn't, but I haven't noticed it.

Doesn't iOS now have a location service that will update apps of your location without running the app constantly in the background?

ja2ke• 15 years ago

Location based reminders are a feature in iOS 5 across all phones. My vanilla 4 can do it, so presumably my old (and iOS 5 supported) 3GS can too.

Siri itself is the only (big?) iOS 5 feature that is hardware locked to the 4S.

paul92902• 15 years ago

Maybe they could have used the SMS hack to interface with Siri too?

As of now via Siri I can update Twitter and Facebook by telling Siri, "Text Facebook," or "Text Twitter." In my contacts i created a Facebook contact with my carrier's FB short code, as well created a Twitter contact with it's short code.

This same hack possibly could be applied to Evernote, ping.fm, a wake up call service (random example) & other services that have a SMS component?

joelhaasnoot3• 15 years ago

Sounds like an expensive plan for your users. Then again, if you've got an iPhone 4s you probably have the cash I guess.

sharken• 15 years ago

It is not unusual to have free SMS with your mobile phone subscription.

paul92902• 15 years ago

Expensive....possibly depending where you live?

Most people in the US have unlimited text plans. Either they are built into their monthly bill (Sprint unlimited everything $80 a month) or subscribers pay an additional fee on top their voice/data bill for unlimited SMS.

davidedicillo2• 15 years ago

It would be great to have open access to iMessage, that would probably be cheaper for Apple than release a 3rd party API for Siri.

ajpatel• 15 years ago

Isn't the problem with their hack though that it can only work for ONE calendar? Whichever one you set as the default is going to be the one service that Siri can interact with.

So if RTM is set as your default calendar, then all your Siri reminders go into your RTM calendar, which may not be your actual calendar of course.

And getting other services to use this same hack will result in users having to choose one service they prioritize over all others because you can only have one calendar.

Of course I am an Android guy and don't really know how Siri and all this is working - I'm just guessing based on the instructions provided at RTM's site on how to get this to work...

hartror2• 15 years ago

Awesome! I was just getting annoyed about this yesterday and wishing there was a solution.

Remember The Milk can sync with your iPhone calendar

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