It’s hard to argue that there’s a better virtual assistant for the iPhone when you’ve got Siri, because Apple can create app that is completely integrated with iOS. That said, if you don’t have Siri there are plenty of great options that may even be better some day. Here’s a look at why Siri’s great but plenty of other excellent alternatives as well.

• Tell Siri what you want with voice commands, and it will respond to you with an answer or ask you for more information.
• Send text messages.
• Make calls.
• Look up information online.
• Ask Siri to make complex calculations with Wolfram Alpha.
• Get driving directions.
• Sent an alarm or reminder.
• Add an event to your calendar.
• Check the weather.
• Ask Siri for information about your contacts.
• Much more.

This is just a quick overview of Siri’s capabilities. For more information, visit Apple’s official page, read our Siri overview, and learn the various things you can say.

Siri primarily excels in two ways: it’s fully integrated with your iPhone so it can do almost anything and you don’t need to have the app open for its complete functionality. Both of these things are advantages that Apple has over the competition because it can integrate its apps much more closely with the operating system than any third party will ever be able to do. That said, Siri is also great because it can do more than most third-party apps can do anyway. It’s capable of looking up information, making complex calculations (via Wolfram Alpha), getting driving directions, making calls and texts, adding appointments to your calendar, and much more. It can even tell you a joke. Siri is so thorough that even if you combine every third party app listed in the competition section below, they still wouldn’t have all the functionality Siri can provide. That said, Siri isn’t perfect and some of the other apps definitely have their advantages. It pretty much comes down to this: If you have Siri, it’s most likely your best choice in virtual assistants. If you don’t, there are some really great alternatives.

Siri has several downsides. First, it only (currently) works on an iPhone 4S (although there’s a complicated workaround for jailbroken devices). Second, it doesn’t work hands-free (although there’s a jailbreak workaround for that, plus a non-jailbreak trick you can use to avoid pushing the home button). Perhaps most importantly, Siri sometimes has some issues with accuracy. This should be expected with any voice recognition software, but it seems to misunderstand certain words more so than some of the competition listed below. That said, Siri’s level of accuracy is still very good, but if you’re having trouble getting it to understand you then you might want to see how another app fares. Finally, although Siri is incredibly well-integrated into iOS, there is still more it could do—and jailbreak hacks make these things possible. For example,launching apps, changing settings, and other custom commands aren’t available by default, but you can definitely add them if you’re jailbroken.

 

Vokul ($3) is a virtual assistant geared more towards using your phone safely while you drive. While it’s great for that, there’s no reason you can’t use it as an assistant in other situations as well. It can send email, texts, make calls, and play your music. What it can’t do, at the moment, is get you driving directions or search the web for information. That said, it has, by far, the most accurate voice recognition of any app I’ve tested so far. Read more about Vokul here.

Evi ($1) fills in the functionality that Vokul doesn’t have. While it can’t (yet) send emails or texts or do much in the way of controlling your phone, it can look up just about any information you need online—and you can use your voice or search manually. For example, if you wanted to know what time it is in Beijing or when Thanksgiving is in 2016, Evi can find out for you. You can ask it just about anything. If it can’t find the answer, it’ll try to provide you with relevant information. For example, it wasn’t sure if it was a leap year this year so it pointed me to the leap year page on Wikipedia.

Vlingo (Free), in theory, is a perfect option. It can get directions, send emails, compose text messages, update Facebook and Twitter, search the web, and make phone calls—all using the power of your voice. In my tests, however, it had a very hard time finding accurate results. This hasn’t been the case with other apps, so I have to assume the voice recognition just isn’t as good. That said, Vlingo is free and a lot of people use it, so there’s certainly no harm in trying to see if it works well for you. If it does, it’s pretty much the best deal on virtual assistants you’ll find in the iTunes App Store.

Voice Actions ($5) is an app you should probably avoid. Not only is it more expensive than your other options, but it seems to get confused by most commands. It’s supposed to be capable of finding all sorts of information, setting alarms, voice dialing contants, and much more, but even when it understood the names I gave it—both simple and complex—it wasn’t sure what to do with them. I’d say “call Whitson Gordon” and it would get the name right, but search for it rather than recognize I wanted to make a phone call. While Voice Actions can supposedly do quite a bit, I couldn’t get it to do all that much. Your mileage may vary, but considering it’s the most expensive option you’ve got it’s hard to recommend giving it a try when you’ve got a free app that does the same stuff and two cheaper paid apps that work very well.

Hope you and your families are enjoying the wonderful holiday season! 2011 has been a great year and we thank you all for your support! Just a quick note to let everyone know that Vlingo has added support for the HTC Rezound from Verizon Wireless.

Click here to download Vlingo’s Virtual Assistant!

Hope you enjoy!

First of all, we would like to thank all of you – our long time customers – for the support you have shown us over the years. From our first product launch all the way to the recent Mashable Award, you have stood by us and passionately spread the word about Vlingo’s products. We’re eternally grateful and we plan to continue to earn your loyalty. We say it quite often, and we mean it every time, but we really could not have gotten here without you.

Thank you.

We’re incredibly excited about what Vlingo and Nuance will be able to do as a combined force. Both companies share a vision for how voice can transform the way we interact with our phones, tvs, cars, and just about any other connected device. Going forward we will be far better suited to serve you, our customers, by working together with Nuance to continue making industry leading products.

So now the question that many of you have been asking – what does this mean for you? The short answer is absolutely nothing right now. We will continue to operate as an independent company as the acquisition goes through the standard approval processes. We will continue to push out updates to our current suite of products. After the transaction is completed, , as is the case with all mergers and acquisitions, Vlingo and Nuance will sit down together and evaluate the best way to synch the two product sets. We can’t tell you how that will shake out (because we don’t know), but we can tell you we will hold our customers interests and loyalty close to us when we go through that process.

We know that probably isn’t the level of detail some of you hoped for, but the reality is we just don’t have all of the answers yet. We will keep you up to date when key decisions are made, and we’ll do our best to answer questions you might have in the interim.

We certainly hope that you continue to use and enjoy our products. Everyone here at Vlingo looks forward to serving all of you for many, many years to come as a part of Nuance. Thanks again.

Best,
Team Vlingo

Now that we have been selected as a finalist we need your help one more time to get us over the hump.  The competition is stiff, and we really would appreciate (and need) your votes.

The Mashable Awards are some of the biggest in technology, and winners are announced at the annual Mash Bash during the Consumer Electronics Show in January. So if Vlingo has ever helped you out in a pinch, or made your life a little bit easier, please vote for us as the Most Innovative Mobile App.

How to Vote for Vlingo:

Visit this page http://mashable.com/follow/contests/mashable-awards-2011/

Select “Most Innovative Mobile App” from the first drop down

Select “Vlingo” from the second

That’s it!  Thank you very much.

We very seriously appreciate everyone coming out to help nominated us.  We’ll all celebrate together in January if we end up winning it all – that’s a promise.

Thanks in advance for the support.  In the meantime, we’ll keep working as fast as we can to make our Virtual Assistant even more helpful.

Thank You,

TJ

Here’s how it works. Nominations are accepted through Friday, November 18. Simply click the big blue button to above (you can’t miss it!) and you can automatically cast your vote for Vlingo! After November 18, the Mashable’s editors will select the top seven finalists to move on to the next & final round beginning on November 21. Help us become a finalist by casting your vote today!

We thank you in advance for your vote!

Vlingo enjoys a Siri boost: voice actions up 50 percent

Vlingo, a Boston area voice recognition start-up, isn’t sweating the introduction last week of Apple’s Siri  voice action and artificial intelligence system. In fact, the start-up saw its best week last week with five consecutive days of record usage: voice actions were up 50 percent daily over the previous high, the company told me.

Vlingo, which puts out a handful of voice recognition and virtual assistant apps for various phone platforms, is on a tear with 550 million voice actions in the third quarter of this year, up from 200 million in the fourth quarter of 2010. It also added 2.5 million users in the third quarter. The company has had more voice actions in 2011 than in the entire history of the company and the fourth quarter is shaping up to be another record breaker for Vlingo.

It’s a good sign for Vlingo and backs up CEO Dave Grannan’s initial hope that Siri would be a rising tide that lifts all voice technology boats. Of Vlingo’s 10 million users, 4 million are on the iOS platform. Vlingo’s latest boost may also be due to the company’s decision earlier this month to make its app completely free to help it compete with Siri. Said Grannan:

“The last 10 days have truly shown that the market has embraced the voice-powered Assistant.  Apple announcing that Siri would be the centerpiece of the new iPhone 4S has had nothing but a positive impact for Vlingo.  Vlingo saw its usage doubled following the announcement, and we have seen interest and activity at all-time highs in the week since. Clearly, Vlingo has been identified by customers and the media alike as a longtime leader in the market, and presently the best alternative for anyone without an iPhone 4S, including all Android and BlackBerry owners.”

Apple’s big extension into voice recognition should be a boost for Vlingo and Nuance as well as Google Voice Actions on Android and the speech recognition system built into Windows Phone 7.5. As I’ve written before, voice is increasingly a mobile technology and as most of the major smartphone platforms are now incorporating voice actions, it’s going tochange the expectations of users, who will increasingly look at interacting with their phones through voice. Take a look at this infographic charting Vlingo’s growth.

Click here to download Vlingo’s Virtual Assistant!

Hope you enjoy.

Feature phones and smartphones fill the pockets and purses of men & women everywhere looking to connect with friends, family members or co-workers while on the go.  Would you like an easy way to quickly make a phone call without having to filter through hundreds of names and numbers in your address book? How about a virtual personal assistant?

Using voice recognition to call your contacts has never been easier (or safer!) when using Vlingo’s Virtual Assistant. Whether you are using an Android, BlackBerry, iPhone or Nokia device you can simply say “Call mom”, call Tommy mobile” or “call pizza” to instantly place a call to anyone in your address book or Vlingo’s infinite cloud-based address book.

Take a minute to download Vlingo and have your virtual assistant start calling!

We’re looking for users to tell us…..

• why you use Vlingo’s texting functionality….is it because it is cool, hip, convenient, safe or fast?  All of the above?
• when you use Vlingo’s texting functionality….while driving, walking down the street, sitting on a lounge chair at the beach?
• who do you text using Vlingo’s texting functionality….friends, family, co-workers?
• how do you text using Vlingo’s texting functionality….with your Android, iPhone, BlackBerry or Nokia phone?  Do you use a headset?

Please share your story or perhaps even create a video telling us your Vlingo texting experience via email or post it on our Facebook page!  Your feedback is valuable to us as we continue to create products to enhance your experience!

**Note, we will select a few stories and videos submitted via email to share with our fans on Facebook and Twitter.