Wildfire is famous as the
virtual personal assistant /
voicemail service made available on several (mainly mobile) phone networks.
The name is taken from the name of the company which created it,
Wildfire Communications (
wildfire.com)
Wildfire Communications suggest that
Wildfire is an established leader in the personal assistant market and the only carrier-grade personal assistant available.
Indeed, Wildfire has been purchased by all of these companies:
Wildfire recognizes certain phrases. The intention is that the user converses with it in the same way as they would a human
personal assistant. Here's a typical exchange:
<Her>  Hello you have a message from John
<You>  What's it say?
<John's message>
<You>  Throw it away
<Her>  Done, that's it for messages.
<You>  Goodbye Wildfire
<Her>  Thank you. Goodbye
The logic that supports Wildfire is quite neat. When you first start using it, prompts will frequently be offered listing the
commands you can use at that point. For example, having played John's message, Wildfire might offer
"'Create a contact' or 'throw it away'?"
This is quite useful. What's even better is that after you've used the available options a few times the prompts will no
longer be offered. If you ever forget the available options there is always the fall-back of asking
"What can I say?"
to be given the list again.
Wildfire also has some Easter Eggs. A friend of mine discovered these while exploring the various options available.
It's already been listed one the Easter Egg archive at eggs.com though, so I guess he wasn't the first.
<You> Do me a favour.
<Wildfire> (Suggestively) What kind of favour?
- <You> I'm depressed.
or
- <You> What does a cow say?
I have Wildfire on
Orange. I paid a
£10 fee to get access to the service and the calls cost the same as
calls to my regular
voicemail would do. I don't think Wildfire saves me much time but it
is quite cool.