Siri

A developer has managed to get Siri to control his home thermostat. The hack does not involve any jailbreaking but does involve setting up a proxy server which intercepts the Siri commands. This proxy server can then be used to add additional command functionality to Siri.

The popular productivity app Omnifocus has been updated wit the ability to capture reminders created with Siri. When the app is launched, it will grab the tasks in your Reminders app and add them to your OmniFocus inbox. Location-based reminders have also been improved with this update.

This week on iPhone Live we discussed rumors of new Siri functionality coming in iOS 5.1 and what we'd like to see. Seth wanted easy access to settings -- "Siri, turn off bluetooth" "Siri, turn on Wi-Fi". Rene wanted the current services evened out -- "Siri, read email" "Siri, send tweet". I want the ability to launch App Store apps, but what about you?

The guys from Applidium claim to have cracked Siri’s security protocol and it could open the floodgates to third party developers and of course other hardware too. There is a downside, in order to use Siri on one of these other devices; you still need to have a UDID of an iPhone 4S device. A UDID is a Unique Device Identifier and is a 40 character unique number assigned to every iPhone.

If you want to stop talking to Siri and just use your mind to ask it to do things, that possibility may have just become a step closer to reality. A couple of guys decided as a hobby, to tinker around with an iPhone 4S and some ECG (Electrocardiogram) pads. The ECG pads take brain wave patterns and translate them into synthesized speech. The speech is then directed through the 3.5mm headset jack and Siri hears it and acts on the command. The engineers working on “Project Black Mirror” have been able to link 25 brain wave patterns to Siri commands.

The provider of the voice for the UK version of Siri has been revealed and what makes the story even more intriguing is the fact that the guy who provided all the sounds didn’t even know it was him until he saw Apple's commercial. The voice, known as “Daniel”, was provided by former technology journalist Jon Briggs; but it was not provided directly to Apple. The voice over work was originally done six years ago for a company called Scansoft which was later purchased by Nuance, which subsequently licensed it to Apple.

bamf-hacker in our iPhone 4S Forum wrote up a quick but smart tip on how to use Siri to access Bluetooth and other Setting with only... the power of your voice.

All you need to do is create a contact and in the Web site field put the code for the system preference. for example.

Contact name is Bluetooth and the Web address is prefs:root=General&path=Bluetooth

Then activate Siri and say "Bluetooth" the contact card will open with a clickable link right to the Bluetooth settings.

If you have been wondering how Siri reacts so quickly when you "raise to speak", the answer is a tiny infrared LED that's added into the proximity sensor in the iPhone 4S. iFixIt discovered the sensor after a second look, determining that it shines brightly whenever the screen is activated. The light isn't visible to the human eye but it's there. And it's constantly letting Siri know how close your face is to your iPhone 4S.

Not really a great surprise to be honest, but when contacted by a developer about the chances of Siri coming to older iPhone and iPod touch models, Apple support responded with:

Courtesy of The Early Edition developer Nick Takayama, here's how to setup a shared Reminders list for shopping, and keep it updated via Siri. Hey, relationships are hard enough, so easy, fun, and geeky ways to reduce the friction are always appreciated.