SAN FRANCISCO – Google has reportedly yanked an app masquerading as Siri, Apple’s voice command personal assistant software, from the Android marketplace.

The move comes amid a deluge of Siri wannabes that have invaded the Android market since Apple introduced the iPhone 4S and its innovative features.
An app called Siri for Android, made by an outfit called Official Software, appeared in the Android market on Friday and was pulled from the bazaar by Google just hours after its arrival there, according to a report by The Next Web.
Also, all other apps by Official Software disappeared from the market, as it appears that Google has pulled the software maker’s account, which allows it to sell programs at the outlet.

The software company did a number of dubious things that appear to have prompted Google to act against the firm.

For example, it used Apple’s Siri icon for the Official Software Android app. The word “official” was used in a way to make the app look like it was a true clone of the Apple app. When the Siri icon was tapped, all Official Software’s app did was load Google’s own voice command software, Voice Actions.

This isn’t the first time something like this has happened.

A French developer has even found a way to tap into Apple’s servers to enable software running on other mobile phone platforms to duplicate Siri’s feats, although the legality of such a move would be doubtful.
A search for “Siri” on the Android Market by PCWorld revealed 131 hits, but less than a handful of the programs had more than 10,000 downloads. They were Vlingo Virtual Assistant (32,328 downloads), Iris (20,309), Skyvi (19,444) and Speaktoit Assistant (11,600).
While the Android world has been laboring hard to emulate Siri’s functionality since Apple pulled the wraps off it, it hasn’t quite made it there yet, according to PC World’s Ed Albro.
“I’ve concluded that you can find decent virtual help on an Android phone, but the assistants available likely won’t be as smooth and capable as Siri,” he wrote.

He described Siri as the classic executive secretary — “always well-dressed and possessed of an elephant’s memory and a dry wit.”

By Joseph Fieber
November 8, 2011

SAN FRANCISCO – Apple’s new voice input-based digital assistant, Siri for the iPhone 4S pits the iPhone against Android’s Voice Actions, a popular feature for Android phones running Android 2.2 (Froyo) or higher. Both Siri and Voice Actions promise to make your life easier by letting you speak–rather than type–your messages, web searches, notes, and navigation.

Toe-to-toe

There are a number of features in which Siri and Voice Actions can do the same thing–such as dictating text messages and emails, playing music, calling contacts from your address book, searching the web, and dictating notes. You can also open webpages using both services, though Siri first routes you through a web search and makes you select a result. Android can open a webpage directly using commands such as “Go to Wikipedia.”

Some of these voice command features, such as calling a contact or playing music, were also part of the iPhone’s previous voice control features. However, in my experience, the iPhone’s pre-Siri voice control wasn’t particularly reliable. My iPhone 3GS, for example, is obsessed with playing Radiohead, no matter what I ask it to play. Apple appears to have improved its voice command features with Siri, at least for iPhone 4S owners.

There is one obvious advantage that Voice Actions has over Siri and that’s turn-by-turn voice-guided navigation. Voice Actions is integrated with Android’s Google Maps app that includes free turn-by-turn directions (U.S. only). All you have to say is something like “Navigate to 501 Second Street in San Francisco,” and as long as your phone understands you, you’ll be on your way with Android’s voice-guided navigation.

Google’s Got The 411

Apple says Siri can draw local business information from sources such as Yelp, but Siri can’t call a business directly unless you have the number in your contacts database. Voice Actions, on the other hand, can go online for you, do a business search, extract the phone number, and automatically dial it for you.

Open Mic

Perhaps the most novel new voice-command feature in Ice Cream Sandwich is the “open microphone experience,” which lets you activate voice input just by talking to your phone–instead of pushing a button. Siri lacks this feature, which is also present in other voice-input services such as Sensory’s Trulyhandsfree technology. ICS also has a new voice input engine that Google says will let users employ a more natural language approach to voice commands. The new Android OS also has a spell checker that will gray out possible dictation errors as you speak so you can go back through your SMS, email or note and quickly correct any problems.
Languages

Apple is offering Siri in English, French, and German, and plans to add more languages in 2012 including Chinese, Italian, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish. Voice Actions for Android is available only in English at the moment, but Google is suggesting Ice Cream Sandwich’s new voice input engine will be able to accept almost any language. That’s a big claim, however, and it’s not clear just how many new languages ICS’ voice command features will be able to recognize.

Personalization

Where Apple starts to really pull away from Voice Actions is with Siri’s personalization features. For example, Siri is able to process a lot of natural language requests to give you the information you need. You can ask Siri if you will need an umbrella on Monday and it will understand that you are looking for weather information. Android’s Voice Actions currently requires direct commands such as “navigate to…” or “note to self,” and it’s not clear if Voice Actions will be able to process such natural language commands in Android 4.0.

There are many other personalized features in Siri, including the ability to set reminders based on your location. You can ask Siri to remind you to pick up milk once you leave work, or to buy donuts for the office as you’re leaving home. Location-based reminder functionality can also be used in non-Siri devices running iOS 5 through the Reminders app.
Siri can also process and store your personal relationships. You can tell Siri who your mother is, who your siblings are and so on. And, as long as those people are in your address book, Siri will call them upon request. So you can say, for example, “Call Mom” instead of “Call Joan Smith” (or whatever you mother’s name happens to be).

Siri also offers a number of extras that Voice Actions currently doesn’t have, such as the ability to schedule calendar events, get stock info, retrieve basic facts and figures from Wolfram Alpha, and set alarms and timers.

To overcome these deficiencies, Android users can augment Voice Actions with a number of third-party apps such as Vlingo (free), Speaktoit Assistant (free) and Voice Actions Plus ($2.99) by Pannous. These apps claim to add more Siri-like functionality including the aforementioned alarm settings, adding calendar events, and asking for basic facts and figures. Vlingo even lets you open other apps on your phone with your voice, update your Twitter and Facebook statuses or check-in on Foursquare (a version of Vlingo is also available in the iPhone App Store). Speaktoit Assistant claims it can process natural language similar to Siri.

By Jared Newman
October 10, 2011
SAN FRANCISCO – When Apple launches iOS 5 next week, iPhone and iPad users will get a bunch of features that Android users already enjoy, including notifications, wireless syncing, and PC-free operation.

The individual features that Apple is adding to iOS 5 aren’t as important as the big picture: Apple is creating services for its users. With iOS 5, an iPhone can remind you to pick up the milk as you drive near the grocery store. It can deliver newspapers and magazines automatically via the Newstand app. It can send quick iMessages to other iOS users. It can render Web pages in an easy-to-read format with no clutter.

In other words, Apple handles things so you don’t have to worry about them. Siri, the virtual assistant built into the iPhone 4S, is an extension of this idea, allowing users to literally tell the phone what to do and get feedback from a computerized female voice. iCloud, meanwhile, is the glue holding all these services together. It remembers what you’ve done on one device, so that other Apple devices and PCs can make that data available. Even as Apple adds new features, it’s removing friction.

The Android Approach: Practicality, Utility

Google’s vision for Android isn’t as cohesive. The OS is a smattering of features and concepts that, to the average user, might seem daunting. But users who take advantage of Android’s best features will find it useful in ways that iOS is not.

I’ve talked about many of these standout Android features before: turn-by-turn directions, widgets, extensive voice commands, no-size-fits-all hardware. But where Android also excels is in the little things. You can attach files to an e-mail–shocking, I know. You can create shortcuts to contacts, navigation instructions and bookmarks on the homescreen.

Apple’s iOS is a tightly woven bundle of services, intended to make life easier. Android is everything but the kitchen sink. This difference in approach is the first thing any consumer should consider before committing to either platform.

By John P. Mello Jr.
September 27, 2011

SAN FRANCISCO – Android smartphone users can take some commonsense precautions to protect their personal data from being stolen — important advice considering an app developer purports to know how to take the information in under 60 seconds.

Loredana Botezatu of BitDefender, a cybersecurity software maker, recommends:

– Never lose sight of your smartphone in public.

– Keep a close eye on what a person is doing with your phone if you lend it to someone.

– Install mobile anti-malware software on your phone.

– Don’t store job-related information on your phone unless it’s encrypted.

The advice comes as a gray hat app developer has released into the wild five tools purportedly for “study purposes” that can clean out all the data on an Android smartphone in less than a minute.

Based on information from virus researchers at BitDefender, here’s how the tools work.

When any of the apps is loaded on a victim’s phone, they can be activated remotely by a cyber thief. Once activated, it sends a five digit pass code to the phone’s intruder and secretly uploads the device’s contacts, messages, recent calls and browser history into the developer’s space in the Android Cloud. After copying the data from the phone, the apps uninstall themselves so a target won’t know they were even on their mobile.

To obtain data sucked from a phone, a Net crook need only travel to the developer’s cloud location, enter the five-digit code generated by their copy of the app and for $5 they can download all the data nicked by the sinister software.

In an ironic twist, the developer has posted a notice at their site informing users of the apps that if they don’t pay for the data they’ve stolen within 24 hours of the theft, all the information will be erased from the site “out of respect and for security reasons.” “[N]eedless to say…this statement is by no means to be trusted,” Botezatu cautioned.

This latest attack on Android phones is just one of many this year. In fact, the phones are seen as a ripe target for mobile miscreants. According to a report released by a cybersecurity software maker in August, attacks on Android by malware writers jumped 76 percent over the previous three months, making it the most assaulted mobile operating system on the planet.

Some of that malware has been devilishly clever. For example, a bad app called Soundminer listens to conversations on an Android phone and is able to recognize when a credit card is spoken. After identifying such a number, it snips it from the conversation it has been recording and sends it to a Web baddie.

While cyber sorties like these may give some smartphone buyers pause before picking up an Android mobile, some commentators believe the benefits of an open system like Android outweigh those of systems with less openness and less vulnerability to attack. “Threats are everywhere,” JR Raphael wrote in PC World. “The answer isn’t locking down the world; it’s taking basic precautions.”

“With freedom of choice comes a small level of responsibility — and whether we’re talking about the Web or talking about our smartphones, the tradeoff is almost always worth it in the end,” he added.

By Jeff Caruso
September 16, 2011
FRAMINGHAM – Google’s Android platform in a short time has become a force to be reckoned with in the smartphone world, and its success raises all sorts of questions for IT professionals.

Just a few years ago, Android didn’t exist; in the second quarter of this year, nearly 52 million Android-based phones shipped, representing 48% of the entire smartphone market, according to research firm Canalys.

The pace of Android’s growth has been so amazing that it has even been suggested that Microsoft is making more from licensing deals with Android phone makers than from its own Windows Phone.

IT folks will need to deal with this phenomenon at some level, whether they actually support Android-based devices for employees or simply try to integrate their business IT with the prevalent smartphones.

Whether you are an IT pro who has to integrate these mobile devices into your business network or you just want to know how to better use your Android, Network World has put together a guide that can help you become an Instant Expert.

In this new PDF for Insiders, we have collected the best expert advice from Network World and CIO.com for using Android devices in a business context — including securing those devices and getting the most out of them. It is full of tips for turning Android into a business phone, protecting the devices, making your battery last longer, using the Android Market and ultimately becoming a power user.

FRAMINGHAM – Whether you just upgraded your Android smartphone to another device, your organization is finally replacing that old Android with something newer and shinier or you’ve decided to trade devices with a friend, it’s a very smart idea to wipe any and all sensitive information from your smartphone before passing it off, not just to ensure that your personal data remains private, but to also make sure your device runs like new for its next owner.

The following four steps will guide you through the Android device-wipe process, and show you how to restore your Android to its factory settings.

But before the wipe, you should backup any personal data you wish to move over to your new device or your information will be lost. To back up your personal data to your PC, mount the device as a USB drive and save all data to a folder on your computer’s hard drive. You can also backup your personal information and application data on Google’s servers–more details on online backup below.

(Note: The process described below relates specifically to Android v2.3 [Gingerbread] handhelds, but the steps for erasing all data from any Android device are similar regardless of your software version. You should also backup any personal data you wish to move over to your new device, before wiping it, or your information will be lost. To back up your personal data to your PC, mount the device as a USB drive and save all data to a folder on your computer’s hard drive. You can also backup your application data online using Google’s servers.)

1) To initiate the Android device wipe process, first tap your Android Menu key to bring up a number of on-screen options.

2) Next, choose the Settings option within the on-screen menu, and on the following screen scroll down to and tap Privacy.

3) Within the Privacy Settings menu, tap the Factory Data Reset option, and on the following screen choose whether you want to wipe all data on your device, all data on your external microSD memory card or both, by filling in the appropriate check boxes. Then confirm the action by tapping Reset Phone.

4) You’ll be prompted one more time to confirm your Android device wipe on the Factory Data Reset screen, and if you’re sure you’re ready to erase your device, tap the Erase Everything button to complete the process.

(Note: The Android erase cycle may take 10 minutes or more to finish, depending on how much data is stored on your device and/or memory card.)