Initial release September 16, 2010 | Operating system | |
Developer(s) gSoft Technology Solutions Stable release 0.1.2 / October 20, 2010 | ||
Monica is a virtual assistant application by gSoft Technology Solutions. The “lite” version was released for the iPhone and iPod Touch on September 16, 2010 worldwide. The full version is released on Sep 2011.
Contents
Monica is primarily focused on utilizing TTS and speech recognition technologies developed by Loquendo in order to carry out a number of tasks or follow certain commands for the user, including reading email and news articles aloud, answering questions, making phone calls, among others. Additionally, Monica makes use of various web search engines and GPS in order to carry out many of its tasks, but also to deliver targeted voice ads with vAds. Monica was built with a loose focus on artificial intelligence and with an artificial personality by use of “emotional states” and voice emoticons.
Features
Most commands within the application can be initiated verbally. The app focuses on speaking and listening and can be used fully without having to touch the device, according to CEO Andre Hawit. A female artificial voice is used to communicate all content and information verbally.
Lite Version
A number of “skills” are available on Monica Lite, and are structured in a way familiar to iPhone users, utilizing different icons on a home page for all functions.
Users of the application are able to listen to and edit their email from multiple email accounts on the “E-mail” skill.
Users are able to listen to current news articles from numerous news feeds including The New York Times, CNN, BBC, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Al Jazeera, and several others, including the ability of the user to add new feeds within the “Articles” skill.
Horoscopes and Google Docs are can also be listened to, each its own skill.
Users can connect to their Facebook and listen to certain aspects of the site and share news articles or horoscopes within the application through the “Facebook” skill.
Users can ask general knowledge questions and Monica uses various web search engines to answer if possible.
Full Version
The full version is released on Saturday Sep- 24- 2011.
All features of the lite version is included with enhancements where needed.
Additional features in the full version include: Jokes, Bible and Quran (English translation) verses, and Box.net accessibility.
Also, the personality is slightly different. Monica talks less between functions, and speech recognition ability of the user is increased for higher functionality and a more vocal experience between the user and the application.
Recognition
Entrepreneur Magazine awarded Monica as App of the Month for January 2011.
An article from PRWeb.com claims that the “iPhone Application Delivers Best-in-Class Voice Recognition, Artificial Intelligence and Enhanced Mobile Experience."
On March 2, 2011, abettervritual.com called Monica the App of the Year in an article.