Siri

Turn off 'raise to speak' for Siri, and make it quit talking from your pocket

You may think Siri has a mind of its own when you randomly start hearing it beep and talk to you from your pocket.

Truth is, you aren't going crazy, the "raise to speak" feature for Siri can easily be triggered. Turning it off will eliminate the voices in your head, er pocket, and could potentially help increase your battery life as well.

To turn off "raise to speak," for Siri follow these four steps:

Go to the Settings on your iPhone 4S. Tap on General. Select Siri. Toggle the Raise to Speak switch to … Read more

Rumor: Siri to add Japanese, Mandarin, Russian next month

According to a new rumor, Siri may gain support for Japanese, Mandarin, and Russian as early as next month.

The news comes from a Chinese technology news site, DoNews (via Penn Olson), claiming to have spoken to an Apple engineer working on the Chinese-language version of Apple's voice-controlled personal assistant, Siri. The source told DoNews that internal testing has already begun and should result in a public product by next month.

With Apple widely expected to release a new iPad model next month (one that should include Siri functionality), having Chinese (Mandarin), Japanese, and Russian in Siri's arsenal … Read more

Siri brings nearly 25 percent of Wolfram Alpha traffic

According to a report by the New York Times, nearly 25 percent of the traffic handled by search engine Wolfram Alpha comes from Siri, Apple's voice-controlled personal assistant software.

Apple announced a partnership with Wolfram Alpha in October when it released the iPhone 4S and introduced Siri. Wolfram Alpha differs from other search engines in that its results are based on data curated by Wolfram Alpha, not on algorithms attempting to sort the Web like Google or Bing.

Despite early criticism of Wolfram Alpha's self-described "computational knowledge engine," including its initial focus on mathematical and scientific … Read more

'Psycho Siri': Scariest Siri parody yet?

There have been plenty of Siri parodies, but a new one called "Psycho Siri" is being lauded as one of the best yet.

Made by andrewm films, the short 4-minute video, which carries the one-line synopsis, "An abandoned iPhone turns out to be a killer of a deal," is quickly racking up the hits on YouTube.

It's got some nice special effects and a couple of memorable lines, including:

"I overheard you saying something about you selling me. I'm afraid I can't let that happen."

Creepy. … Read more

Apple's Siri the butt of Doritos Super Bowl ad

Make Siri mad and she'll let you know. For you might not realize that she actually has large metal tentacles that can get right into your chips.

This, at least, is the premise of a Super Bowl spot from Doritos.

No, they can't use the name "Siri." Instead, this cell phone helper is called "Suzie." But you know exactly who they mean.

Suzie is efficient at ordering pizza.

However, you shouldn't try to tease her by offering her a Dorito. You might think you're being clever in that Suzie has a mouth … Read more

MyAssistant app teaches Siri some new tricks

There may come a time when Siri can help you buy a new flat-screen TV from the comfort of your bed, but for now the gal's capabilities are limited.

For the misfits and troublemakers who have jailbroken their iPhone 4S, there's a new app that promises to change that. It's called MyAssistant, and for 99 cents on third-party app market Cydia, it gives Siri much deeper access to your system settings and software than Apple offers out of the box.

How deep you might be wondering? Once installed it lets you do things like reboot your phone, … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 1579: Facebook goes public: The Winners and Losers (Podcast)

The Buzz crew talks about Facebook's historic IPO, and the challenges the company will face moving forward. Zynga is smiling, and so is the invite-only Pinterest. We've figured it out, and it's the new social network for girls or metrosexuals. "Into it, Not Into it" brings us vacuum-sealed couples, and that's all you need to know.

Subscribe: iTunes (MP3) | iTunes (320x180) | iTunes (640x360)

RSS (MP3) | RSS (320x180) | RSS (640x360)… Read more

iPhone's Siri can't handle surly Scottish man

Inspired by a Los Angeles Times article about Scottish people having trouble with Siri on the iPhone 4S, comedian Gavin McInnes created a parody ad that will have you rolling.

While the "commercial" starts with the familiar soul-searching music and closeup of Siri's interface in a typical Apple advert, it becomes quickly obvious after the first question that this clip is not like those other civilized parodies. McInnes asks some simple questions, but the programmers behind Siri's voice recognition obviously are not prepared for references to "chip butty," "jammy dodger," or "Caledonian 80." The results (below) are hilarious. … Read more

Former Siri board member: She's 'not a data hog'

Reports of Siri's bandwidth hogging ways have been greatly exaggerated, according to a former board member of the namesake company Apple bought in 2010.

In a guest post on Forbes this morning, former Siri and Nuance Communications board member Gary Morgenthaler suggests that the research report put out earlier this month by mobile network management company Arieso--the one that claimed the voice assistant feature led to about twice the amount of data use--is untrue.

"Siri's average data consumed per query is less than 63 kilobytes, according to Ars Technica; and it's a number I can confirm, … Read more