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How to use Siri to see which plane is flying over your head
We already told you about Wolfram Alpha's cool flight-tracking capabilities, but what about Siri? Siri uses Wolfram Alpha, after all.
A while back, news broke of Wolfram Alpha's cool flight-tracking capabilities.
As you probably know, Siri uses Wolfram Alpha to provide search results, so theoretically Siri should also be able to tell you what flights are overhead, right?
At first glance, no.
(Credit:
Screenshot by Jason Cipriani)
Simply asking "What flights are overhead" gets you the above response.
The key to getting the results you want, is to ask the right away, as TUAW points out.
(Credit:
Screenshot by Jason Cipriani)
By saying to Siri, "Ask Wolfram what flights are overhead," you should get the response you are looking for.
(Credit:
Screenshot by Jason Cipriani)
The results are displayed in the normal Siri fashion; details include airline, flight number, altitude, and degrees off horizon.
(Credit:
Screenshot by Jason Cipriani)
There is even a graphic display showing where each flight should be located.
The TUAW post points out some issues with the location of results being accurate. In our testing, we didn't seem to experience this, though it certainly is something that can happen. We did encounter a few instances when Siri would attempt to send a text message with the above phrase; instead of asking Wolfram, Siri wanted to tell someone else to ask Wolfram. Closing Siri, relaunching, and restating the command seemed to clear up any confusion.
So there you have it, yet another fun and amusing thing you can do with Siri. If you have any other tricks you haven't seen covered, leave a comment below and let us know!
