Donna for iOS is a brainy personal assistant
Donna entered the App Store in the spring of last year. Since then, the app that lets you manage your day has added many new features, fixed a few bugs along the way and done a nice re-design for iOS 7. It's also now free.
Donna can tell you when to leave for a meeting, can dial into conference calls, give you the weather outlook for upcoming appointments and let people know if you are running late. It knows when you are on the way without having to input that information, and it provides daily summaries and summaries in the evening for your activities the next day.
With all that power, Donna is easy to operate. You do need to sign up for a free account. Favorite locations can be saved, and it syncs with your calendars including Exchange, Google, Apple's iCal and Yahoo. The app can provide driving or transit and walking directions, and using Google Street View, it will show you your destination.
I set the app up, and it scanned my calendar and showed me what's coming up. Some of my appointments didn't have addresses, so I added those and saved them as favorites.
The company has fully stated its privacy policy, and they pledge to keep your personal information personal and private. The Donna servers do store quite a bit of information about you, because that's what makes the app useful. Of course, this information could be retrieved with a court order, like a lot of other information that comes from your phone, so heads-up.
Donna is very useful. It's intuitive to use and can really help you keep track of a busy day. The app settings are granular, so you can decide what notifications you get or don't get, and how much of your location information is shared.
The features are similar to Google Now on Android. Some of those functions were incorporated into the Google Search app on iOS, but Donna has more extensive personal assistant functions.
Having tested the app, I'll keep using it because it puts a lot of functions in one place. If you are looking for a smart digital personal assistant that goes a bit beyond what Siri can do, (but without voice interaction), give Donna a try.
The app requires iOS 7, and it's optimized for the iPhone 5.
