11/16/98 ASSISTANTS FOR THE DIGITAL LIFESTYLE

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ASSISTANTS FOR THE DIGITAL LIFESTYLE
They provide unified messaging--with or without attitude
I have spent the past several weeks interviewing a series of assistants. You know, someone to take on menial but important jobs: placing calls for me or screening them, knowing my schedule and finding me in a pinch, fetching my E-mail from my various accounts, and faxing important messages to my home or hotel. Some of the candidates even volunteered to read messages to me on my commute to work, or when I'm driving between appointments. That's no small time-saver when you live in Los Angeles.
But these aren't the ordinary temps sent over by an agency. These are ''virtual personal assistants''--computers programmed to recognize and respond to your voice and those of your contacts. Think of them as unified messaging services for the very mobile--professionals who need their messages consolidated in a single place but who can't safely punch in touch-tone prompts on a wireless phone while driving, much less open up a laptop computer. At $150 to $250 a month--more if you're a sales executive who spends two to three hours on phone calls without a break--they're not cheap. But they still stand up well when compared with the salary and benefits tab of a full-time human assistant.
I loved them all. I auditioned Portico, the brand-new assistant from General Magic Inc. (GMGC); Webley, the oh-so-proper British butler from Webley Systems; and Wildfire, the grandmother of personal assistants from Wildfire Communications Inc., who has been on the job since 1994.
All of these services depend wholly on speech recognition to respond to your requests. For the most part, they get it right the first time. If not, they take full responsibility for the misunderstanding. There's no more of the ''please speak more clearly'' of past speech-recognition systems. Instead, Portico will say something like, ''I'm sorry. Let's make sure I've got this right.'' Wildfire once asked me whether I thought the problem was a bad connection and early on told me that she found me easier to understand if I spoke in a natural voice.
The idea, for all these services, resembles conventional unified messaging. You hand out a single toll-free phone number to all your contacts. Then you tell your assistant where to forward your calls. The assistant, however humanlike, is nothing but smart software running on a computer server that you access via telephone. General Magic and Webley Systems manage their own computers; Wildfire leases its software to wireless telephone companies.
BLAST OFF. They can all deal with complicated instructions. For instance, you can say that you'll be at your mobile number for the next hour, then unavailable for two hours at a client meeting, and after that you can be reached at your hotel. Webley has a feature--''call blast''--where he'll call you at four different phone numbers simultaneously and hang up the others when you answer one of them. In all cases, your assistant will ask who's calling and call you to ask whether you want to take a call or have it take a message. If you're using the service to place a call at the time, they'll quietly interrupt you and whisper the name of the new caller in your ear.
It's easy to log on to the services and run through your daily routine. When you're listening to voice mail, you just say ''give them a call'' and they'll retrieve the number from Caller I.D. or your address book to return the call. They all allow you to create an address book so that you can call anyone you want just by saying the name. Wildfire lets you do this on the fly, by telling her to add a contact she has already identified through Caller I.D.
Portico and Webley have Web pages with a window where you can type in your address book--a good project for your human assistant. Portico claims that it can import your current contact list from a number of popular PIMs (personal information managers), but when I downloaded the software, I discovered that it only works with Rex, a credit-card-size device that holds contact lists and calendar information. Even though the services match your voice to a typed--not spoken--rendition of your contacts' names, I had no problem asking them to call people with Hispanic or Japanese names.
In the middle of these trials, I made a five-day trip to Chicago and left my address book at home. The hotel switchboard didn't recognize the new 877 toll-free area code that Portico assigned me--but otherwise everything went fine. I had wanted to leave my laptop, too, since in theory, both Webley and Portico (but not Wildfire) can pick up E-mail and read it over the phone.
But it's a good thing I brought my laptop. E-mail retrieval on these services is somewhat overbilled, as it is with most unified message services. Assistants can't break through corporate firewalls, where I get the most urgent E-mails. Also, the synthesized text-to-speech voice that reads fax headers and E-mail messages to you in the car is hard to understand, compared with the assistants' normal voices, which are recorded by real-live actors. And right now, only Portico can retrieve E-mail from America Online Inc. (AOL).
DOUBLE DUTY. Both Webley and Portico were very reliable when it came to my EarthLink account (ELNK), my other Internet service provider. Portico picked up messages every couple of hours and stored them; Webley went online only when he heard me say ''check my E-mail.'' If Portico had already retrieved it, Webley found nothing there--but that wouldn't have been a problem if I'd only had one ISP.
Despite the grating synthesized voices on the E-mail readers, these assistants make it easy to weed through messages and delete the spam. Or you can order the systems to ''send a reply.'' They will record your response and send it as a voice attachment to the outgoing E-mail. My friends loved this aspect, responding with notes saying ''way cool'' and ''ain't technology wonderful.'' And while we're on cool features, Webley can create a conference call when he hears ''add a caller.'' Portico, meanwhile, gives you the ability to call up stock quotes and news on companies, though ''Circuit City'' resulted in a quote for ''Circus Circus.'' (It worked the second time.)
Someday, personal assistants will simply be a feature in your car. Today's cars already boast dozens of microchips under the hood. But soon your car's dashboard may sport a PC that can tap into a broad range of information services delivering directions, traffic reports, and E-mail messages. Most will rely on voice recognition for hands-off commands. Even backseat passengers will be able to play games or surf the Net on screens such as those found in airplanes.
The first step in this direction is an ambitious effort by Microsoft (MSFT), called the Auto PC, which brings a whole new meaning to the ad slogan ''Where do you want to go today?'' Initially, Auto PC will be an onboard computer that holds the driver's address book and permits voice-activated calling over a cell phone. Eventually, the system will let drivers retrieve voice mail, E-mail and numeric pages, subscribe to services that will send news and traffic alerts, and surf the Web by voice.
The first version of Auto PC will be available by the end of the year as part of a $1,299 car stereo cassette player from Clarion Co. (CLR), a leading auto-components maker. Other companies, including Ford Motor Co.'s (F) Visteon unit, another components maker, plan to introduce Auto PC products next year. Clarion will be selling its system at electronics retailers. Visteon's system will be available through Ford dealers.
Compared with Auto PC, however, personal assistant services have one big advantage: They do not require any fancy hardware, other than a telephone.
If you decide to hire a virtual assistant, pay close attention, as with a human one, to experience and personality. For me, Wildfire was the easiest to deal with. While the other services pUt a human on the phone to train you, you deal with Wildfire alone from day one. She does the tutorial, and as you get comfortable with her, offers an occasional ''friendly word of advice,'' as she puts it, to help you streamline your session. And what a comedian. Tell her you're depressed, and she has a repertoire of cheeky retorts. One of them: ''Great. Now I'm a therapist.''
DRAWBACKS. Unlike Portico and Webley, you can't interrupt Wildfire while she is talking. But her voice prompts are supposed to gradually fade away as you get familiar with the service. On the other hand, Wildfire's inaBility to handle E-mail and fax messages is a real drawback. If you want those functions--and they are nice to have--I'd go with Portico.
Like everything else in the world of computing, you may save quite a bit of money if you wait. I tested a beta versionof Myosphere, a system designed by Motorola Inc. (MOT) as an add-on for wireless carriers, which will be much cheaper than today's stand-alone systems. Bell Mobility just started offering Wildfire for $13 to $20 (U.S.) a month in certain parts of Canada. And later this year, my own Pacific Bell Mobile Services will roll out Wildfire in Southern California for $15 a month on top of its calling plans. Guess who's getting the job from me?
By Larry Armstrong in Los Angeles

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