How significant is Siri, the brand new iPhone app that acts like your VPA – Virtual Personal Assistant? The “do” engine? Well, in the past three years as the editor of AltSearchEngines I have published over 4,000 posts covering essentially every alternative search engine on the planet, steadfastly refusing to call any of them The Next Big Thing.

In fact, I got so frustrated with my own inability to persuade them to act in concert that I began to draw up my own plans for TNBT. Well, those plans are in the recycle bin now. Siri is The Next Big Thing.

Why? Well not because you can talk to it (speech to text), or because it understands what you what you say (semantics), or can make a reservation or buy a ticket (vertical search), or learn more about you (personalization), but because the folks at Siri have learned – just so – how to put all of these elements together to give the feeling of a human secretary (AI).

This will be the #1 app for the iPhone and will stay there.

Thanks to Philip of topikality.com for “Siri ously”