This article was published on August 15, 2013

Mobile personal assistant app Donna now has public transit advice, all-day events, and more


Mobile personal assistant app Donna now has public transit advice, all-day events, and more

Donna, a mobile personal assistant, released an update to its iOS app that now incorporates public transit options when determining the best time to leave for your meetings. In addition, the service now features weather and distances in the metric system and includes all-day appointments such as birthdays and anniversaries.

It’s been nearly two months since Donna publicly launched and now it’s making its first enhancement. The brainchild of Incredible Labs, run by Kevin Cheng, Scott San Fillippo, Arshad Tayyeb, and Spence Murray, Donna functions as a virtual personal assistant. It’s different from the likes of Sunrise, Tempo, EasilyDo, in that it will tell you where you need to be and how to best get there.

It’s the “get there” part that’s being improved today. Previously, you selected your destination and told Donna whether you’d be going by car or walking. However, in big cities like San Francisco, some people prefer to commute by public transit so it would be great to have Donna easily tell us how to get from point A to point B using the bus or subway system.

donna

Other updates include the option to display weather and distances in the metric system. This makes sense because if Donna is helping those outside of the US, then the information she provides needs to be relevant to them — the service can’t be US-centric. The company says that this feature has been one of the most highly demanded requests that it has received.

The <3 of EU tech

The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol' founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It's free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!

Lastly, the app will take into account day-long events, such as anniversaries and birthdays. After all, what good is a personal assistant if it’s not going to tell you that today is a family member’s birthday or that it’s your anniversary? If Donna is going to be the replacement for a real-life assistant, then it needs to make sure you don’t forget a thing, even those events that last the entire day.

The above features are available now through the Apple App Store. Unfortunately those with Android devices will have to wait for a companion version to be released.

Donna for iOS

Photo credit: Thinkstock

Disclosure: This article contains an affiliate link. While we only ever write about products we think deserve to be on the pages of our site, The Next Web may earn a small commission if you click through and buy the product in question. For more information, please see our Terms of Service.

Get the TNW newsletter

Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.