CHAPTER 8
Newton Services
8-26 Intelligent Assistant
Figure 8-24 The Assistant’s Please picker lists known actions and recent phrases
The built-in tasks that the Assistant lists in the Please picker include calling,
faxing, finding, mailing, printing, remembering To Do items, scheduling
meetings, and getting time information from the Time Zones application.
If your application registers additional actions with the Assistant, they
automatically appear in the Please picker. Note that the top portion of this
picker displays only one word for each action. If the Assistant knows
synonyms for an action, they do not appear in the top portion of the Please
picker. For example, the word “call” appears but the synonyms “ring” and
“phone” do not. Recently used synonyms may appear in the bottom half of
the picker, however.
If a user writes a verb the Assistant doesn’t know, it may be able to deduce a
likely action from other words. For example, if a user writes the phrase
“buzz 555-1234” the Assistant does not match the word “buzz” to an action,
but it can identify “555-1234” as having the format of a telephone number.
Based on that information, the Assistant deduces the user wants to call, fax,
or find the phone number, and it lists only those actions in the Please picker.
A
ctions that
a
pplications have
r
egistered with
t
he Assistant
P
hrases the
A
ssistant has
t
ried to interpret
r
ecently