What Would You Do With A Siri-Like API?
Written by Lucy Black   
Tuesday, 20 November 2012

Maluuba, a startup that has developed a Siri-like app for Android, has released the first Alpha of its natural language API, called nAPI.

Maluuba's own app, also called Maluuba, launched in September and according Frederic Lardinois on TechCruch is:

"the closest thing I’ve seen to a viable Siri competitor on Android. In many ways".

Lardinois continues by explaining that Maluuba is actually more reminiscent of Siri before Apple bought it as it features a “do engine” that ties in with numerous third-party services. Maluuba, just like Siri, also allows you to set up meetings, alarms and location-based reminders and the app ties in tightly with your Google Calendar account, for example.

maluuba

Now Maluuba is opening up access to nAPI, its natural language API, inviting other developers to create apps with it:

Imagine you’re developing an app to find restaurants nearby. You have a standard UI using traditional buttons and windows but you’d like to make it easier for your users to get to the heart of your application. Using Maluuba’s nAPI you could allow your users to simply ask what they’re in the mood for. nAPI can take in their search queries and provide you with very deep semantic information. As an example, a user could say “Get me a table for 2 at an Italian restaurant in San Francisco” and nAPI will do the hard work of understanding and parsing out all of the relevant parts of their search. You’ll be provided with the intent “reserve table”, the number of people for the reservation as “2”, the type of restaurant as “Italian”, and the location as “San Francisco”.

This API supports 22 different feature domains (such as restaurants, entertainment, calendar, etc.) and around 50 different intents/actions and this video gives more ideas of what you might do with a natural language API in your own apps.

 

Although this is referred to as a "public release" you can't just download it but you can send an email to request access. It seems a fairly reasonable move on the part of Maluuba to approve its initial partners. But the more developers they can get working on the platform, the better for Maluuba’s API in the long-term.

napi

More Information

Maluuba

Maluuba developer site

Related Articles

Siri for iPhone 4S

What do you get when you add HAL to SIRI?

How Siri "Really" Works

Iris - Siri for Android proves Apple doesn't have an edge

Be Sirious - Who Uses Siri?

 

raspberry pi books

 

Comments




or email your comment to: comments@i-programmer.info

 

To be informed about new articles on I Programmer, install the I Programmer Toolbar, subscribe to the RSS feed, follow us on, Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or Linkedin,  or sign up for our weekly newsletter.

 

Banner


Explore SyncFusion's Blazor Playground
16/04/2024

Syncfusion has provided an in-browser environment where you can write, compile and run code that uses Blazor components and get it previewed live.



Insights From AI Index 2024 Report
17/04/2024

Published this week, the latest Stanford HAI AI Index report tracks worldwide trends in AI. A mix of its new research and findings from many other sources, it provides a wide ranging look at how  [ ... ]


More News

Last Updated ( Tuesday, 20 November 2012 )