Siri - page 39

Last week we told you about Evi, an iPhone app that challenges Apple’s own Siri voice control technology. Powered by the same Nuance backend, Evi and Siri offer similar voice control/assistant features. The main difference between the two is that Evi is available on the iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS, while Siri is only available natively for iPhone 4S owners.

Another App Store app has come to our attention, and its name is vokul. As the first and only 100% handsfree voice control app for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, vokul allows users to dictate text messages, make calls, and play music without ever having to lift a finger.

Siri’s notorious inability to understand a thick Scottish brogue is pretty notorious at this point, but perhaps no video makes the point more humorlessly than this mock advertisement for Siri from Apple Scotland. It’s more than a little foul-mouthed, so if you’re at work, put some headphones on.

The Flaming Lips are huge Apple fans. Heck, they covered The Beatles’ famous song “Revolution” in tribute to Steve Jobs. But their latest track takes it a step further. Frontman Wayne Coyne roped in Siri to lay down some vocals on “Now I Understand” — a “sound construction” piece available for one week only.

I’m not a huge fan of The Big Bang Theory, but this clip from the latest episode is too good not to post.

What if Siri wasn’t just Wolfram Alpha stapled onto a smart text-to-speech program, but instead an actual woman, working a call center, and just as slinky and sexually promiscuous as any bro showing off in front of his drunken friends by asking for a blow job could ever hope?

That’s probably not many people’s fantasies, but it is the hilarious chimera of Big Bang’s Raj, who is as cripplingly shy as he is addicted to his new iPhone 4S.

The hope of a new Apple product on the horizon tends to make tech blogs a little fanciful, sometimes even delusional, so it’s hard to fault Techno Buffalo too much for their “exclusive” report that an Apple-made OLED HDTV with Siri functionalities — the much talked about iTV — is coming out “this April, or possibly May at the latest.” Hey, we all get carried away from time to time.

That said, TechnoBuffalo’s report isn’t too be trusted. In fact, it’s total bullshit. Here’s why.

Since the Absinthe jailbreak tool was released for Apple’s A5-powered devices last week, we’ve seen all sorts of tweaks that maximize Siri functionality on the iPhone 4S. The latest is one of the most impressive. It’s called Lingual, and it provides quick and easy voice translation to over 30 languages, using Microsoft Bing Translate API.

A new jailbreak tweak by the name of Sireet has surfaced in Cydia. Developed by Tyler Nettleton, Sireet lets jailbroken iPhone 4S users tweet natively with Siri.

Sick of the boring old gray linen background on your Siri? If you’ve got a jailbroken iPhone 4S, why not try the new Custom Siri Background Cydia tweak, which allows you to apply a picture from your Camera Roll as Siri’s background wallpaper.

Meet one-eyed Evi, a one-dollar alternative to Siri which works on older (non-4S) iPhones.

She’s had a bit of a rough introduction to life, thanks to a much-hyped launch followed by 24 hours or so of struggling to keep up with demand.

As part of its annual promotion to get more Americans to cram nacho cheese-flavored asbestos triangles down their gob during halftime, Doritos throws a Crash The Super Bowl contest where they invite fans to make their own commercials. Win the contest and your winning ad gets aired during the Super Bowl.

I don’t usually pay attention to stuff like this, but this entry for the contest is just wonderful. It portrays Siri (or a Siri-like) as a magical genie in a smartphone capable of automatically beaming bags full of Doritos, a festive sombrero or even three hot, bikini-clad girls into a bro’s apartment at just a long press of the home button, no questions asked.

The only problem? In Dorito’s land, Siri’s speech-to-text transcription abilities have a couple of small auditory processing kinks to work out. The result? A guy’s request for hot wild girls leads to him being torn apart by… well, you’ve got to see it for yourself. Brilliant.

[via iDownload Blog]

A Cydia package by the name of SiriToggles brings functionality to Siri that Apple should have included from day one. With the free SiriToggles tweak on your jailbroken iPhone 4S, you can launch any app, change your system settings, and even turn your iPhone off with your voice.

While Apple has restricted Siri to a limited set of capabilities by default, SiriToggles liberates the virtual assistant for jailbreakers.

Siri has a new competitor, and her name is Evi. Developed by True Knowledge and powered by the same Nuance-based backend as Apple’s virtual assistant, Evi is available for all iPhones in the App Store. There’s also a beta app available for Android handsets.

While Evi doesn’t have the integrated advantage that Siri wields, she is perhaps the first clone that’s just as smart, if not smarter, than Siri.

Thanks to the newly-released Absinthe untethered jailbreak for the iPhone 4S and iPad 2, you can finally get Siri up and running on Apple’s latest tablet. The process isn’t an easy one, as you will need to set up your own SiriProxy server and edit your iPad’s filesystem.

If you have the time and stamina to get Siri up and running on the iPad 2, you’ll be able to take advantage of all the voice assistant goodness that’s available on the iPhone 4S. You’ll also be able to install other jailbreak tweaks to enhance Siri’s functionality.

Purple Siri is soo boring. Why not change it up a bit? If you’ve jailbroken your iPhone 4S, then you can take advantage of a fun tweak called Siri Mic Colors. Once installed for free in Cydia, this simple package spices up your iPhone’s digital assistant with some rainbow flair.

While the feature is currently still in beta, Apple is yet to extend Siri support to apps that aren’t already baked into the iOS operating system. But did you know that the company’s own Find My Friends app, which debuted alongside iOS 5 last summer, does include Siri support, allowing you to locate your pals using only your voice?

Here’s you to find your friends using Siri.

Since Apple launched Siri on the iPhone 4S back in October last year, hackers have been working their socks off to port the intelligent assistant to other iOS devices. But it seems all their hard work may have been wasted, because one guy claims he got Siri on his new iPod touch simply by restoring from an iPhone 4S backup.

Apple is expected to revolutionize television with a set of its own later this year, and while we’re all expecting the device to feature Siri, there’s very little else we know about it. But according to a relatively new Apple patent, credited to Steve Jobs, it may also feature digital video recording capabilities that allow you to save your favorite shows for viewing at a later date.

We’re only about two or three months away from the iPad 3 dropping and blowing our socks off. Right now, we can tell you a lot about what the iPad 3 will probably be like. It’ll feature Apple’s new, quad-core A6 CPU. It’ll feature a 2048 x 1536 resolution Retina Display. It may — but probably won’t — be the first iOS device to ship with LTE support.

But what about Siri, Apple’s amazing new voice control technology prominently featured in the iPhone 4S? Surely, that’s a lock for all future Apple devices starting with the iPad 3, right?

Well, hold on. Don’t count your chickens before they hatch.

Nuance, a speech recognition company that powers Apple’s Siri service, has launched a new voice-controlled platform for television sets called Dragon TV. The service allows you to navigate your way around different content by “speaking channel numbers, station names, show and movie names” using natural language.

It’s everything you’d expect a Siri-powered Apple TV to be.

Today’s iOS 5.1 beta 3 makes some interesting references to Siri’s Dictation feature. On both the iPod touch and iPad, a new Dictation text file has appeared under the keyboard settings window. This new document is not present in the same place on the iPhone 4S, suggesting that this reference does indeed foreshadow what’s to come.

The text file outlines iOS Dictation’s privacy details. While Siri Dictation is currently an iPhone 4S-only feature, it’s plausible to assume that Apple is working to bring the feature to other iOS devices.

The Consumer Electronics Show has officially kicked off here in Las Vegas, and if there’s one thing every Mac fan should go into CES knowing, it’s that the whole television industry is petrified of Apple entering it.

As CEA’s Chief Economist and Director of Research Shaun Dubrovik made clear in his introductory presentation on the trends they expect to see this year at CES 2012, the whole television industry is scrambling. They are all trying to anticipate just what the heck Apple is going to do when they unveil their long rumored television, the iTV.

What are TV makers betting that Apple has up its sleeves? A bezel-less, ultra high resolution TV that runs apps and is controlled by a mixture of gestures and voice control and effortlessly interact with tablets and smartphones.

No wonder they’re scared: no one is better positioned to roll out a next-gen television that does all of the above things than Apple.

If you’re a carrier scrambling for ways to make up dwindling voice and texting profits, Apple’s iPhone 4S is not just a product, but a dreamy pin-up, a new report on smartphone data usage finds. What’s more, Siri — the iPhone 4S’s hallmark feature — is a down-right wet dream.

It would seem that popular music streaming service Spotify is cooking something especially juicy in the voice department. Forbes is reporting that Spotify’s CEO has shown off a “hack” that involved telling the service’s iOS app to play some tunes.

Known developers Grant Paul (a.k.a ‘chpwn’) and Ryan Petrich have released a working Siri port for older, jailbroken iOS devices in Cydia. “Spire” will install Siri on older-generation iOS devices, including the original iPad.

Spire downloads Siri directly from Apple’s servers. The only catch is that you will need access to an iPhone 4S and your own proxy to get the port up and running.

Santa has come and gone on his sleigh, and Apple has profited along the way. A survey from Ace Metrix, a TV ad analysis firm, has revealed that Apple’s Santa Siri commercial beat out 34 other Santa-themed spots to win the crown of most effective ad for the 2011 holiday season.

Apple’s commercial, featuring Santa and the iPhone 4S’s Siri assistant, scored a 652 out of a possible 950 points in Ace Metrix’s survey, topping competitors like Pillsbury, Coca-Cola, and Nintendo.