siri

Siri may gobble up some of your iPhone 4S' data plan, but fortunately she's not an overeater--just a bit peckish.

Ars Technica conducted a pretty thorough investigation into just how big a dent Siri users can expect the digital dame to make in their monthly data usage. See, whenever you talk to Siri, an audio file of your command is sent to Apple's servers for processing and then the requested data and vocal response is sent back over the network to your phone, even if the question is something that should be able to be gleaned from your phone's local data.

The results are pretty clear--unless you're attempting to have an intimate relationship with Siri and you're on the emotionally needy side, she's not going to blow out your monthly bill. Ars found that each Siri query ate up about 63KB of data on average, although naturally that figure will vary for different users and uses. Here's what Ars found when it extrapolated that rough amount out under different monthly usage scenarios:… Read more

Siri's exclusivity on the iPhone 4S may not be long for this world. At least unofficially.

Efforts to get the new software feature working on older Apple devices, including the iPhone 4 and iPod Touch, seem to have pushed past the biggest hurdle: slipping by Apple's security.

Over the weekend, Apple tracking blog 9to5mac posted a video of the software feature working smoothly on an iPhone 4, courtesy of Irish iPhone hacker Steve Troughton-Smith. That follows a demonstration from earlier this month where Troughton-Smith showed the software installed, but unable to run queries on an iPhone 4.

In an interview over the weekend, Troughton-Smith told 9to5mac that the working version of the hack runs on multiple devices, including Apple's fourth-generation iPod Touch. The feat was accomplished using "files from an iPhone 4S," that he said "aren't ours to distribute," alongside "a validation token from the iPhone 4S that has to be pulled live from a jailbroken iPhone 4S."

In other words, there are some things going on behind the scenes that Apple won't like, and could very well move to block if a working hack takes off, but the key takeaway is that there are seemingly no hardware hurdles standing in the way.… Read more

We can't remember the last time it snowed on Halloween weekend, but the cold weather kept all but one of us from dressing up today. Tune in to see who conjured up the spirits of Halloween!… Read more

Still don't have a Halloween costume? Check out Superpunch's list of downloadable masks--just print and cut them out, add a string or a Popsicle stick if you're extra lazy, and off you go. Happy Halloween!

Vampire power, also known as standby power, is a reference to some electronics sucking up juice even when they're turned off, but it also works for our ongoing Halloween show title theme! Check out this article on the Learning Thermostat to see what Nest Labs is doing to kill vampire power.

The iPhone Dev-Team is already close to finishing a preliminary jailbreak on the iPhone 4S that will eventually work with the iPad 2 as well, but what happened to good old analog piracy? As it happens, Activision Blizzard is knee-deep in pirates already circulating bootleg copies of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.… Read more

Apple's Siri voice assistant may soon have some competition in Singapore.

Local carrier SingTel has cooked up its own voice-recognition assistant application for iPhone and Android that's designed to understand the locals, reports Agence France-Presse.

The app, called DeF!ND, is able to pick up on what the AFP refers to as "Singlish" which is a blend of English and words in languages from neighboring countries, along with a helping of local accents.

By comparison, Apple's Siri (which is still in beta) currently supports English, French, and German. Apple has said that it's bringing … Read more

Nothing lasts forever in the tech industry, and Nintendo's upcoming Wii U, the Sony PlayStation Vita, and all other one-trick portable gaming consoles are next in line to get the axe! At least that's what Jeff hypothesizes, although the trolls in his CNET editorial have opposing opinions.

After we sort through all the hate mail, we turn to a story about Internet domain squatters taking advantage of the #OccupyWallStreet trend to make money off the protesters.

And in the same way that Bacolicio.us set the veganism movement back several years, a new site called OccupyTheURL is turning the 99 percent into an online gimmick. Type in any Web site--the 404 homepage works--and your page will soon be flooded with graphic pop-ups of protesters blocking your access. We'd rather have bacon.… Read more

When Siri for the iPhone 4S was announced, downloads for Vlingo, a voice command app for Android, shot up 50%. Why? Because voice command, especially with artificial intelligence, can complete tasks more efficiently than our own fingers.

The act of talking to our gadgets is still in the awkward stage, but pretty soon we'll all be voice-commanding our phones, forgetting that we ever lived without artificial intelligence.

Voice command (and speech recognition) isn't just available for phones. Check out our guides on getting these services on any of your gadgets:

Android

Everywhere you turn, it's Siri this and Siri that. Now Siri can help make all that Siri news go down smoother with a frosty cold brewski, poured just for you.

Advertising agency Redpepper wanted to spice up Siri's skill set. Naturally, the tinkerers turned to a monster truck toy and a can of Dale's Pale Ale. Hence, Beeri was born.

Beeri is an RC truck that has been modified to check the Twitter account @beeribot over Wi-Fi for new tweets with the "pour" command.

The makers achieved this by using an onboard open-source Arduino physical computing platform (as did this tweet-printing toilet paper dispenser). Beeri also has an unopened beer can strapped to the front bumper.

Redpepper created the @beeribot account and assigned a contact to it on the iPhone 4S. The soon-to-be-beer-drinker tells Siri to tweet, "Could you pour me a beer?" to @beeribot.

The truck picks up the word, revs itself up, and smashes into a sharp object to pierce the beer can. The frothy beverage flows down through a hole and into a pint glass below. … Read more

Although many seem to enjoy Siri for its silly one-liners and crowd-pleasing artificial intelligence, let's not forget what its true intention is: to make life a little easier.

Of course, that's easy to forget when Siri has a bounty of comebacks to commands like "Siri, talk dirty to me," or "Siri, I'm tired." But if you feel like you've exhausted its entertainment value, follow this guide to using Siri as a painless, superfast way to get things done.

1. Fill in the details Instead of relying on proper nouns for people and … Read more