Apple has snapped up Siri, which makes an "intelligent assistant" application for mobile devices. The startup company's software can perform all sorts of useful tasks based on simple voice or text commands. The iPhone version can, for example, be used to find upcoming local events, make reservations at a restaurant, or check the weather.

Now that Apple has acquired the company, it's unlikely that we'll see a version released for Android, or other phone platforms. But Norman Winarsky, who is on Siri's Board of Directors, says the research project that spawned Siri will soon be the foundation of another startup company.

Winarsky was involved with the technology behind Siri since before the company existed. He is the vice president of ventures, licensing, and strategic programs for the non-profit R&D institute SRI International, which is responsible for CALO—a hugely ambitious artificial-intelligence research effort. CALO is the source of Siri's core technology—specifically Siri's ability to understand, classify, and respond to user requests. Kittlaus helped to shape this technology into a product. Winarsky recruited Siri CEO Dag Kittlaus to be an entrepreneur-in-residence at SRI, when there was interest in finding ways to commercialize technology from SRI's CALO Project.

But sophisticated as Siri is, it only scratches the surface of the technology developed through CALO, Winarsky says. SRI starts two to three ventures a year (with technology selected from about 2000 research projects), and Winarsky says that another CALO-based startup should be spun out in about six months from now. Though he couldn't give details, Winarsky says, "It also comes out of this concept of the virtual personal approach to information. In this case, it won't be an assistant, it'll be a personalized service that uses CALO technology."

Winarsky also noted that more startups will come out of SRI in the "reasoning and dialogue space."

Siri is perhaps remarkable in that it works largely as advertised. The idea of a virtual personal assistant was made infamous by Apple's Knowledge Navigator concept video from the 1980s, which envisioned a level of intelligence that was ludicrously unattainable at the time (the personal assistant has always been about 10 years away, Winarsky jokes). When Siri was seeking venture funding, he says, the company was constantly asked to explain what had changed to make a personal assistant a real possibility. He says Siri is only possible thanks to a series of advancements: "A perfect storm of computational power, bandwidth, mobile communications, Web services, AI, and natural language," he says.

To him, Apple's acquisition of Siri is just another sign that the technology's time has finally arrived. He expects that similar technology will enter the health market, shopping, and in sales teams trying to access information from databases.

"You're going to see virtual personal assistants on all devices," Winarsky says. "SRI has no monopoly on this. And so, smart phones, PCs, servers, call centers that have intelligent assistants--you'll see it everywhere, in every medium and vehicle there is."

Reports are surfacing that Apple has acquired Siri, a sophisticated mobile personal assistant application built on artificial intelligence research done at SRI as part of the CALO project.

What's always impressed me about Siri is that in my own tests of the product, it's lived up to the hype. Siri's founders are serious technologists who've been careful to promise only what they can deliver, and the results show clearly in how slick and finished the app felt at launch.

In 2009, we named Siri to our list of 10 important emerging technologies of the year. The acquisition would suggest that the company's technology is going to get the resources and support it needs to spread widely.

It's a shame, however, to think that Siri for Android is now an unlikely prospect.

Last year, we selected the "intelligent software assistant" Siri as one of our top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2009.

Now, you can try the software out for yourself, as the app has be added to Apple's app store.

Siri, which the company's CEO Dag Kittlaus describes as "the mother of all mashups with a big brain in the front," tries to perform all sorts of useful tasks based on simple voice or text commands. The iPhone version can, for example, be used to find upcoming local events, make reservations at a restaurant, or check the weather. The voice technology is licensed from Nuance and Siri's core technology, which allows it to understand, classify, and respond to user requests, is licensed from the CALO project--a massive artificial-intelligence effort that has made major strides in machine learning in recent years.

Siri responds impressively to fairly vague requests. For example, I asked it, "Who's playing tonight at the Paradise?" (The Paradise Rock Club is a music venue located in downtown Boston, but I didn't give Siri that context). The software returned a list of music venues with the Paradise at the top, and, after a single click to confirm that this was correct, showed me who was on tonight. In contrast, entering that same vague question into a search engine yields completely nonsensical results.

I also had good results from questions such as, "Is it snowing now in Annapolis?" and "Where can I buy guitar strings?" I was particularly impressed with the latter, since Siri had to recognize that guitar strings are something I would buy at a store that sells musical instruments, and then identify likely locations from there. It offered me a list of stores within walking distance of my current location.

I did manage to trip the software up a bit a couple of times though. For example, I asked, "Where's the best place to get sushi in Allston?" and, as often happens with voice-recognition software, the app offered me Austin, TX, instead of Allston, MA. I was able to correct the city name easily, however, and Siri then offered me top-rated sushi restaurants, using ratings taken from Yelp. It was also pretty easy to request reservations at these restaurants using the app.

Another error occurred when I asked for "action movies at Boston Common," which was an admittedly casual way of referring to the AMC Loews Boston Common movie theater. Siri understood what I was asking for, but thought that "common" was the name of an actor I wanted to see. Again, it was fairly easy to correct the query and get the question answered.

These examples certainly show how Siri is "a great big mashup." After figuring out what I want, the software relies on integration with a variety of Web services, including Yelp, OpenTable, and airline websites.

The company plans to release versions for Blackberry and Android devices soon.