You don’t need that rumored Toshiba phone that “acts like a secretary,” or even Maggie Gyllenhaal (though that would be nice), to have help when organizing your social life. Siri uses “speech recognition with a brain,” according to its CEO.

To use the iPhone app, you just have to say aloud a command like “Book a table for six at 7pm at McDonalds” (I’m sure you’re classier than that, but let’s stick with it for now), and then using speech-recognition technology and the iPhone’s GPS capabilities, your command is translated and processed by the app, responding with confirmation of booking—or lack of availability.

Siri, which has ties with Stanford Research Institude and DARPA, has collaborated with OpenTable, MovieTickets, StubHub, CitySearch and TaxiMagic to help with bookings and information, which pretty much wipes out the reason why you’d want to download any of those services’ apps individually.

It’s free to download on the iPhone now, but fear not, Android and BlackBerry users of the world—Siri plans on giving you a little phone secretary of your very own at some point.

[Siri via NY Times]

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