[lifeisstillgood]

I am slowly becoming convinced that the next killer app is the personal assistant app. My life is sharded between contact books and voip apps and IM and email that hardly if ever talk to each other or make my life easier.

Its a huge market, but space for a lot of niches.

[Consultant32452]

You get a lot more integration than you probably think with Google Now. It reads my e-mail to keep track of my upcoming flights and packages being delivered. It checks out my calendar and will conveniently provide directions to events on my schedule. There's not a great level of integration for the google chat and voice features yet, but it's coming I'm sure.

[gradys]

But notice that that's only integration between Google services. A 3rd-party API is a whole different game.

[Consultant32452]

Yeah, I guess if you want 3rd party integration via an API you're probably looking for Apple's Passbook. It'll be interesting to see what MSFT does here and how long it'll take for all three to merge into a similar set of features.

[afhsfsfdsss88]

How cool would a partially-intelligent virtual secretary be?

We could all focus more on the work and let VS handle the scheduling and minutiae according to our priorities.

[amaks]

Google Now is already doing some of those, and keeps expanding. It's also available on iOS.

[acron0]

You need to watch 'Her', the Spike Jonze film ;)

[sytelus]

What we need is to simplify our lives, not to make so complicated to the extent that we feel lost without personal assistant on our wrists, pockets and in front of our eyes. This whole trend is in reverse direction. We are slapping more complexity on top of more complexity. This is only going to make people's live more complex, requiring even more smarter personal assistants. It's a vicious cycle.

[lifeisstillgood]

Let me compare how simple my life is compared to the life of my ancestors:

I have a toothache - I simply go to the dentist.

I need food - I simply go to a shop

I need water - i simply turn on a tap.

The "complexity" of my modern, urban life is the cost of having my life already very very simple.

Yes the noise of my daily life feels more complex, but there is a great deal of signal if I chose my perspective correctly.

[sliverstorm]

requiring even more smarter personal assistants. It's a vicious cycle.

As a member of the computing industry, you should be happy about this :)