A new voice assistant app has emerged in the Windows Marketplace which offers users the ability to send out Facebook update, Tweet on Twitter, do calculations and is capable of answering your questions through speech.
Ask Ziggy has managed to ignite a huge buzz among Windows Phone users. Receiving tremendous response and downloads in the Windows Marketplace, Ziggy app has been given a rating of 4 stars out of 5 while earning plenty of love and support from the WP7 community.
So what’s so special about Ask Ziggy?
Ask Ziggy is a voice recognition app. You talk, Ziggy responds, in text and in speech form. Ziggy can make calls for you, send text messages, update your social networking status, get stock value, and can do trivial other things.
In short, Ziggy answers your questions and does stuffs — stuffs you would normally do it yourself. The app uses Nuance’s voice recognition engine to give answers back at you. When there’s no answer for your question, the app then recommends you to search the web.
Ask Ziggy Versus Siri
What Siri if for iPhone, Ziggy is for WP7. How true is that?
Well, for now, Ask Ziggy is not a Siri-killer, not yet. And, in all honesty, Ask Ziggy is not entirely polished.
This speech-driven app is no match to Siri. Sometimes it doesn’t recognize your voice, let alone answering the questions you have asked. Requesting for weather yields no results. Also, there is no dedicated button to activate Ziggy — every time you need an answer, you have to launch the app.
However, there’s one feature exclusive to Ziggy: You can activate male or female voice.
Given the app was created, tested, and pushed to the Windows Marketplace by its sole developer, Ziggy is still in its early stage. The developer is working on releasing an improved version that does more than what it does currently, and freezes less frequently.
And for those who are wondering about the cost of Ask Ziggy, well, it is free. Plus, there are no irrelevant, obstructive ads goggling at you. If you have a Windows Phone 7, then go ahead and download this app right away — type in Ask Zippy in the search field of your Windows Marketplace.
