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The first untethered jailbreak for the iPhone 4S and iPad 2 dropped two weeks ago, much to the excitement of the hundreds of thousands of people who rushed to download it.

Despite its recent growth in popularity, jailbreaking is still not a mainstream activity among iPhone and iPad owners generally. It's more for the tinkering type and those who want to customize their device's functionality and UI design. Whether it's done to download unauthorized (yet often quite useful) apps from Cydia or customize the look and feel of the OS, there are a lot of reasons why people jailbreak their devices. For iPhone 4S owners, that list is made all the more compelling by one thing: hacking Siri.

It's only been three months since Apple unveiled Siri, the voice-controlled personal assistant built into the iPhone 4S. Although the product is technically in beta, it has already spawned imitations and Web video parodies. What is perhaps most exciting about Siri is not what it does now, but in its potential future uses.

The latest clues about that future come from a newly-published patent, which hints at some of the things Siri may be able to do after its first iteration.

Just to be clear, Lingual is an extension for phones and iPads that are jailbroken (big surprise), but as you can see from Jeff Benjamin's preview, it's pretty remarkable. Not only will it translate individual words (it supports more than 30 languages), it can do phrases, too: "What's 'I need an iPhone 4s, please.' in simplified Chinese?"

With each new iteration of Apple's iPhone, we expect to see the addition of new features like speedier processors and better cameras. What isn't necessarily expected is that each subsequent device will consume way more data than its predecessor. But, in fact, this is the case.

The iPhone 4S uses about twice as much data as the iPhone 4 and three times the data than the iPhone 3G, according to a new study by Arieso. What causes the 4S to hog so much data? Just ask Siri.

Apple isn't exactly known for letting consumers and developers tinker with its products. While the Apple II had expansion slots and a relatively open design, later hardware shipped by the company would become harder to modify. What they sold was what consumers got, with very little room for customization.

Today, developers are having a field day jailbreaking each subsequent version of iOS and even hacking Siri to put its voice control technology to use in unique and interesting ways. Officially, Apple discourages jailbreaking, even though the practice has been a source of good ideas, some of which the company has borrowed.

Tomorrow, Microsoft will push out a huge update to its XBox Live platform, adding a host of new content options, including both Web-based video and live broadcast TV. It marks a significant step in the device's evolution from a gaming console to an all-in-one entertainment hub, which Microsoft hopes will be the digital heart of every family's living room.

The update also brings improved voice search capabilities to the platform, which allows viewers to simply ask for a given TV show, movie or video game and have it pop up on the screen. It's not unlike what many people think Steve Jobs was dreaming up for the upcoming Apple HDTV, and indeed it's something a few developers have already started to cobble together by hacking Siri.

Since launching with the iPhone 4S in October, Apple's new voice-controlled personal assistant feature called Siri has been enamoured of Apple fans, mocked by others and been found to have a few humorous Easter eggs built in.

As cool as Siri seemed to many at launch, like so many things, it's true potential wasn't really unlocked until a crafty developer got his hands on it and started tinkering. Pete Lamonica managed to create a hack called SiriProxy that allowed him to control his thermostat using only his voice (more on that below). He set up a proxy server and posted his code on GitHub so that more developers could take advantage of it and push the limits of what Siri can do. And indeed they have.

If you thought the idea of using your voice to control your smartphone was neat, just wait. One developer has hacked Siri to allow it to control third party devices, starting with his WiFi-enabled thermostat.

In what he says is his first-ever Ruby project, St. Louis developer Pete Lamonica set up a proxy server in order to effectively trick Siri into thinking it's communicating with guzzoni.apple.com, the server on which Siri's functionality actually happens. Developers can write their own custom handlers for various actions. In this case, Lamonica uses Siri to get a reading off of his thermostat and then change the temperature.

Charlotte-based CLT Blog connected the dots and found that Amazon has purchased a speech recognition startup called Yap, according to an SEC filing. While neither company has made a formal announcement - and the filing doesn't even mention Amazon by name - it says that Yap merged with a company called "Dion Acquisition Sub," which has the same address as an Amazon building.

With the Kindle Fire about to hit stores, it's tempting to compare this acquisition to Apple's purchase of Siri. But is that a fair comparison? Yap transcribed voicemail. Siri was based on a DARPA-funded military artificial intelligence project. With some consumers hesitating between the iPad and the Kindle Fire, there's bound to be a feature race. But speech-to-text input is one thing. The AI-powered future of search is another.

The imaginative team at RedPepper have dreamed up the most fun, automated way to have Siri deliver you a beer... RC car. Google also stepped into the limelight when it announced it had denied some requests from law enforcement to remove alleged police brutality videos.

After the jump you'll find more of this week's top news stories on some of the key topics that are shaping the Web - Location, App Stores and Real-Time Web - plus highlights from some of our six channels. Read on for more.