New day dawns for apps

"It monitors your data to provide you with alerts or information to be prepared for whatever is going to happen at once," Shah said. "What we’re trying to do is make your phone more intelligent — or make your interaction with the innovation more intelligent."

Zazu formally announced the product’s launch at the DEMO emerging research conference in Silicon Valley this week.

Now, a human voice will greet users and read them the time and weather in the free version of the new app. A $2.99 upgrade as well includes a smoother sounding, computer-generated voice — developed with licensed innovation from Burlington-based Nuance Communications — that will read all other data, just as news, calendar items and the daily deals.

Zazu was among last September’s 10 start-up winners of the inaugural PepsiCo10, an incubator program that pairs innovation, media and communications entrepreneurs with PepsiCo brands for digital media and social marketing programs. It’s now experimenting with targeted Pepsi brand advertising that relates to the environments of its free app users — just as an ad for warm oatmeal when it’s cold outside.

Zazu as well is experimenting with how its cloud-based research ties into the connected world. It’s working with Breville on a concept coffeemaker that’s connected to Wi-Fi and "talks" to Zazu’s innovation, turning on the appliance when its users awake to the Zazu app.

Proactive research for users

"We want to be a proactive research for users," Shah said. "You in effect don’t want to have to tell your coffeemaker to make coffee. You want it to know that you just woke up."