SRI International, the research institute, is hoping to bring the concept of virtual personal assistants closer to reality. Although SRI does roughly 80 percent of its work for the federal government, many of its technologies have been adapted for commercial purposes. Recently, the institute has set its sights on the mobile phone and Web market, especially on creating applications that perform personal functions.

SRI’s newest venture is a Web-based personalized news feed, Chattertrap, that monitors what people are reading to learn what they like, and then serves up articles and links that suit their interests.

Another recent project is a mobile application, Siri, that allows people to perform Web searches by voice on a cellphone. Siri users can speak commands like “find a table at an Italian restaurant for six at 8 tonight,” and the application can translate the request and use GPS functions and search algorithms to find an answer.  The application has already been a big hit; in April, Apple acquired it.

Norman Winarsky, vice president at SRI, says that SRI is in the early stages of determining what will be the next start-up to become an independent company and that an area of interest is translation.

See: The New York Times