Brace Yourself. Winter Is Coming...

Public Service Announcement

When it gets cold, Siri and Google Now are your friends.

If you live in a colder climate like I do, you've undoubtedly seen this: Somebody bundled up in a Super-warm jacket, heavy boots, wool hat, and one glove. The other glove is tucked under the arm or stuffed into a pocket so that this person can operate his smartphone. Happens all winter long. There are those special touchscreen-friendly capacitive gloves but they never work very well. So people go about freezing their fingers off all winter long.

Good news! If you have an iPhone or Moto X, you need not fear smartphone-related-frostbite. Both Siri and Google Now allow you to do almost anything on your phone with your voice. You can speak to your phone to open webpages, search for information, turn features on/off, post to social media, compose emails and messages. When it's cold, you don't have to remove your glove to invoke Siri from your iPhone. Just hold down the iPhone's home button with your warm glove-clad finger. Or, if you are fortunate enough to own a Moto X with it's always-listening feature, you can just say "Ok Google...". Technically you can do something similar with Samsung and S-Voice but I don't find S-Voice to be as robust as Google Now or Siri.

This winter, keep your hands warm and use your voice. Or move to Florida...