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.
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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.
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.
Photo credit: Thinkstock
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