Siri Tips

Siri is the flagship feature of Apple's iPhone 4S. Even though it's still in beta, one look at Apple's advertising shows just how important they consider their digital personal assistant. Yet despite how natural Apple intends their voice-control system to be, it can still take some getting used to, and if you're new to the iPhone, you might find you need some help setting it up.

While the new iPad doesn't include full on Siri support, probably for a number of reasons, it does include the speech-to-text Dictation. However, Dictation may not be enabled by default, and if it's not, it's not at all obvious where to go looking for it.

Just a heads up -- if you send a contact via your iPhone 4S' built in sharing feature, you also share everything in that contact, including relationships set up by [http://www.imore.com/siri). For many this may not be a big deal, but if you value your privacy or you don't particularly want or need a business partner, for example, knowing who your mom is or that playful nickname you have for your girlfriend, you might want to think twice before sharing an entire contact card in the future.

Courtesy of The Early Edition developer Nick Takayama, here's how to setup a shared Reminders list for shopping, and keep it updated via Siri. Hey, relationships are hard enough, so easy, fun, and geeky ways to reduce the friction are always appreciated.