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.

Using a feature called Activator, users can verbally do things like lock the phone, turn WiFi and Bluetooth on, run a Spotlight search and much else. Activator lets you define your own customized requests, so if you want Siri to open a new email every time you say "Abracadabra," then so be it.

Tweaks like this begin to show the real potential behind Siri, as is often the case with features that only work on jailbroken devices. Apple ships a solid, but limited offering, and then developers get their hands on it and in improve. In many cases, some of the best new features find their way into Apple's next official release.

Even before the Absinthe A5 jailbreak tool was released, developers wasted no time modifying Siri to do things like start cars and adjust thermostats. Such cross-device hacks require coding skills, a third party service like SiriProxy and a compatible, Web-connected appliance to mess with. It can make a fun weekend project, but it's probably beyond what most users are willing to get their hands dirty doing.

This new breed of device-based Siri tweaks is much more in line with what the average user would likely be interested in using. If history is any indication, these may be standard features in iOS before long.

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.

One thing Apple apparently plans to have its devices do is automatically detect those hands-free scenarios and adjust the UI accordingly. That is, when you mount your phone in the car, the device realizes it's time to substitute certain core elements of its GUI with voice and audio-based controls.

The wording of the patent itself is not exclusive to smartphones. Indeed, it lists personal computers, tablets, televisions and gaming systems as devices with which this technology could potentially be used. There should be little doubt that the company plans on expanding Siri beyond the iPhone and building it into other hardware, quite possibly including the forthcoming new iPad and Apple's much-anticipated HDTV set.

The Role of Siri-Hacking

Some of the more exciting clues about Siri's future potential come not from patents but from the community of developers who have already started tinkering with what Apple released and putting it to new uses. Early examples built using the SiriProxy hack include remotely adjusting the thermostat and starting one's car, as well as calling up television shows on a Web-connected set top box.

While Apple officially frowns upon such tinkering, it has a tendency to borrow heavily from the iOS jailbreaking community when developing its own products. It's even hired a few notable iOS developers with roots in the jailbreaking community. Each new version of iOS pulls in a feature or two previously only available on jailbroken devices. The recently overhauled Notification Center is just one substantial example.

When users started hacking the Kinect, Microsoft famously endorsed the practice, going so far as to offer cash for the best hacks. If Apple embraces Siri-hacking, it will likely be in more subtle ways, probably by quietly rolling a few of the best hacks into its own official offering. The line will always be drawn at features that go too strongly against carrier wishes, present user experience challenges or otherwise don't meet Apple's strict requirements.

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.

Even local tasks like setting an alarm or adding a reminder use some data, since Siri bounces requests off of Apple's servers before executing them. Naturally, those types of queries take up less data. More Web-reliant requests like searches can use closer to 100 KB apiece. At the end of the month, it may not be enough to blow your data cap to smithereens, but it can add a good dozen or two megabytes.

The news that our smartphones are getting more data hungry comes at an inconvenient time, just as carriers are getting less generous about doling out those bytes. Sprint is now the only carrier offering unlimited data for smartphone users, and even that plan reportedly has its limitations. As smartphone usage has exploded, charging customers based on their data usage has become a way to both maximize revenue and keep congested networks under some control.

Regardless of the handset, data usage in general has been on the rise for the last few years thanks to the proliferation of devices, popularity of video and our increasing propensity to keep our digital stuff stored in the cloud.

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.

Whether deliberately or not, Apple has unencrypted system files within iOS 5 that were previously locked down. As self-described iPhone hacker @MuscleNerd pointed out on Twitter, them doing so enables developers to port Siri to other devices without infringing on the company's intellectual property.

It may well have been an oversight, which may be patched up when iOS 5.1 drops, but for the time being developers are free to tinker with Siri and make it work on iPads, iPods and older iPhone models.

It remains to be seen if Apple embraces Siri-hacking in the longrun. Such a move would be rather unlike them, but if it can perceive a branding or other business advantage to letting the hacking continue, Apple could follow the precedent set by Microsoft earlier this year. Instead of frowning on developers who hacked their Kinect motion control technology, the company actively encouraged them and even offered cash prizes for the best hacks.

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.

The XBox 360 adds this feature on top of an already revolutionary user interface control mechanism in the Kinect. Users can swipe through Netflix movies by reaching out and waving their hand right to left, for example. From browsing content to playing complex video games without a handheld controller, the Kinect has already begun to change the way people interact with machines. Like Siri, it was also hacked by users, leading to a wide range of new uses and applications, some of which Microsoft is even willing to pay developers to create.

Kinect, Siri and the Future of Human-Machine Interaction

The iPhone 4S has only been available for a matter of weeks, but already users are growing accustomed to verbally asking their phones for information. Aside from a few gaffes and the occasional abortion controversy, people seem to be pretty enamored with Siri, which is already being hacked to do things Apple never intended. If the company follows Microsoft's lead and embraces the fact that users are creatively tinkering with its product, we could see voice control built into apps and controlling everyday appliances and objects. Then again, this is Apple we're talking about.

Voice search. Wireless motion-based control. Multitouch screens. In just the last few years, we've seen several viable glimpses of what the future of human-computer interaction will look like. It's not just one big tech company pushing the envelope. Several companies big and small are doing their part. It's worth recalling that each of these innovations is very much in its early days. Imagine what things will look like a decade from now.

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.

The first Siri hack to gain considerable attention was Lamonica's voice-controlled thermostat. He set up a proxy server to trick Siri into thinking it's communicating with Apple's servers and wrote some custom handlers for actions related to controlling his WiFi-enabled thermostat. In a video posted online, Lamonica successfully gets Siri to tell him the current temperature and even bump it up a few degrees.

2. Start, Stop and Lock Your Car

After Lamonica's thermostat hack made the rounds, another developer used a similar approach to tap into his car's computerized control system, which allowed him to start and stop the car, as well as lock the doors and set the car alarm. Like the thermostat example, this hack will only work with a car that has such a system to tapped into. In this case, he's using the Viper SmartStart app for iPhone, which requires an in-car installation to work.

3. Watch Seinfeld (Or Anything Else on Your TV

In a possible foreshadowing of Apple products to come, another developer was able to commandeer Siri to find and play video content on Plex media center software. The result is a scenario right out of Back to the Future 2. Simply ask Siri to play the most recent episode of The Simpsons, and almost instantaneously the opening credits will begin.

4. Have Siri Read You the Latest Headlines

For news junkies who aren't in a position to stare at their phone (for example, while driving), one hack will read back headlines from a given RSS feed. All you have to do is ask. A developer known as @JailbreakMatrix, who also wrote a hack that lets Siri control iTunes playback, posted a video online showing Siri read back Endgadget headlines.

5. Dim the Lights and Close the Curtains

Pretty much any household item that can be connected to the Internet can theoretically be controlled by Siri. Thankfully, that list is growing. In one recent hack, a developer was able to get Siri to close his curtains, dim two different lights and turn on his ceiling fan. This tweak utilized an iPhone app written by the developer that could control various household items. He just simply built a bridge between the app and Siri, enabling futuristic voice-control of the room around him.

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.

Microsoft embraced the Kinect's customizability, releasing an SDK for developers to use. Now there are countless uses for the Kinect, which may well prove to be a substantial part of the future of how humans interact with machines. Intelligent voice control like Siri has been touted as another potential piece of that puzzle. It remains to be seen whether Apple will be as receptive to the idea of letting users tinker with Siri in this fashion.

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.

Yap is an advanced speech recognition company with "IP in every iPhone and Android device," as co-founder Igor Jablokov told CLT Blog. But its consumer product - discontinued last month - was a voicemail-to-text service. Siri, as Steve Jobs said after the acquisition, was "an AI company." Technology onboard a device is the way to turn sounds into text input. But Siri does much more than that for iPhone 4S users. It talks to Apple servers and searches the Web for answers.

Voice as the user interface is the new frontier. Taking voice input and reliably turning it into text isn't brand new, though. Google's iPhone app had it in 2008, and now it's all over Google's Web properties, even on the desktop. But voice-to-text search is just a new interface for the same old input.

Siri goes far beyond that. It uses AI to understand your question and create its own input. The results are sometimes goofy, but Siri is in beta, and Apple doesn't ship public betas lightly. Siri still has a lot to learn, but that's the point. Siri can learn.

Siri Is A Web Service

Jobs made clear that the AI was his main interest in Siri. The other half of that answer, though, was that Siri was "not a search company." But now that seems like a smokescreen. Apple may have bought Siri for the AI, but it's certainly using it for search now.

Currently, Google is the search company in most cases, but Apple deliberately partnered with Yelp to bypass Google in local business searches, one of Google's key areas. Meanwhile, Apple is buying 3D mapping companies and clearly looking for ways around Google Maps. Eric Schmidt himself has publicly recognized Siri as a threat.

While Siri is only on the iPhone 4S so far, voice as an input method is part of iOS now. Neither Apple nor Amazon has revealed plans for voice as a tablet interface, but they're both buying into voice recognition. But while Siri is useful for transcribing text, Apple already positions it as a Web service, too. When it comes to cloud-backed intelligence in a voice interface, Siri and Yap cannot be compared.

Voice Is Just An Interface

The Kindle Fire doesn't even have a microphone yet, and the iPad 2 doesn't have Siri yet, either. But when consumers try to decide whether to buy a future iPad or a Kindle Fire, voice as an input method is going to matter. It comes down to the question of what consumers are going to do with their devices.

A recent survey found that 26% of likely Fire buyers are delaying purchase of an iPad. Meanwhile, Barnes & Noble has introduced a new Nook Tablet to compete with the Fire. But those devices are aimed for consuming media. Their marketing reflects that.

Voice input on a Kindle Fire (once it has a microphone) would undoubtedly make it easier to find the movie you're looking for. But a Fire with no 3G isn't going to help much if you're out looking for directions in a new city. But asking Siri "Where is the museum?" on a 3G iPad with Siri - and 3D mapping technology - would do the trick.

Reliable voice input is the next step for interfacing with small devices, and Amazon is wise to be building it in. But Yap is just voice as a feature. Siri, fully realized, is an AI assistant. Just like the Kindle Fire and the iPad, these are different tools for different jobs.

Lead image credit: CLT Blog

Do you like voice input, or would you rather type?

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.

Siri, Pour Me a Beer!

The Beeri story captivated many of our readers (and our writers). The folks at RedPepper hit a home run when they automated the beer pouring process in such a fun, if messy, way.

The comments had several readers reminiscing of the good ole' nerdy days in college, when they used the burgeoning internet to automate other potent potables.

Google Denies Requests To Remove Videos of Police Brutality [UPDATED]

In their continued efforts at transparency, Google announced it had turned down requests from law enforcement to remove videos that show alleged police brutality or misconduct. This comes not long after the search giant handed over the IP info and contact list of a WikiLeaks volunteer to the U.S. government. Whether their response in both cases was correct or incorrect was the subject of several of your comments.

ReadWriteWeb Meetups Around the World

If you're itching for a bit of tech conversation, join us for our next ReadWriteWeb worldwide technology meetup on November 15! Right now we already have meetups planned in Tokyo, Seoul, Vladivostok, Russia, Amsterdam, New Zealand, St. Louis, MO, Washington, DC and more. Don't see your city listed? Add it in one click!

Reach out to our community manager if you have any questions or need some help with promotion.

More Top Posts:

• Developers: Your Google Maps API Free Riding Days Are Over
• Engage! Why Google Is Talking Up Google Plus Engagement, But Not Other Metrics
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• How to Find Out Who Looks at Your Facebook Profile
• The Steps You Should Take to Secure Your Facebook Account
• Google Plus Finds Sweet Spot Between Facebook & Twitter
• Microsoft + Mozilla = New Firefox, With Bing
• Should Facebook be Worried About Unthink? I Think Not
• How Link Placement Affects Clicks on Twitter

ReadWriteWeb Channels

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• Should Facebook be Worried About Unthink? I Think Not
• How IT Can Empower Your Employees
• HP: PC Business Not Moving Anywhere, WebOS 'the Next Piece of Work'

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Follow ReadWriteCloud on Twitter and join the ReadWriteCloud LinkedIn Group.

• Will Your Next Server Be Designed by Facebook?
• The Strange Bedfellows of CRM: How to Connect Your Cloud Data
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• 17 Alternatives to Klout
• CPAN Turns Sweet 0x10: How it Changed the World
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• Want OS Updates? Go iPhone, Android Leaves Users in the Lurch
• The Customer Connection Isn't the 'Last Mile'

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Sometimes it's difficult to catch every story that hits tech media in a day, so we thought it might be helpful to wrap up some of the most talked about stories. Assuming this goes over well, we're going to give you a daily recap of what you missed in the ReadWriteWeb Community, including a link to some of the most popular discussions in our offsite communities on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google Plus as well. This is a new feature at ReadWriteWeb so we covet your feedback. If you have suggestions, please leave them in the comments below or reach out to me directly at robyn at readwriteweb.com.

In a large surprise, it appears that the ReadWriteWeb community appreciates RC cars, automation and beer... Who would have imagined? Our coverage of Beeri was well received and offered up some really fun tweets and comments.

Want to read more about Beeri? Of course you do! Check out the story and the comments on the original Beeri post.

Google Plus Fun Updates

The Google Apps news was well received, sure, but the ReadWriteWeb community seemed just as excited, if not more, with the visualizations, photo fun and trendspotting additions to the search giant's social network.

Still reading? Here are a few more must read posts, chosen by your fellow community members.

Who Says the iPad Isn't For Programming? Meet Codify

Google Plus Now Available For Apps Customers

Want OS Updates? Go iPhone, Android Leaves Users in the Lurch

Dropbox for Teams Not Ready to Take on Box.net

How Deep is Amazon's Love for HTML5 in Kindle Format 8?

QR Codes: Useful Tool, Neat Toy or Robot Barf?

Storify Update Feels Like a Cleaner Social News Experience

SoundCloud Launches a Sleek, Super-Functional iPad App

Interested in a chance to win an iPad? Send in your question, by October 31, 2011, for our next Live Chat coming up on 11/1 at 10:00am PST. The topic? Intelligence Matters: Virtualize your Business Critical Workloads with Confidence (rules)

The latest version of Apple's mobile operating system went live last week, five months after being unveiled by Steve Jobs at the World Wide Developer's Conference. The new operating system seems to be having a strong first week, despite issues experienced by many users when the software was first made available last Wednesday.

iPhone 4S Helps Drive iOS 5, But That's Just a Minority of Installs

Despite a lukewarm initial response to its launch, the iPhone 4S has shattered the company's sales records, first by exceeding 1 million devices sold in its first day of pre-sale availability, and then this weekend by more than doubling the iPhone 4's first weekend sales, according to Apple.

While iPhone 4S owners comprised a few million of these iOS 5 users, the vast majority are owners of other devices who have eagerly made the upgrade themselves. This includes all iPad, iPhone 4 and 3GS owners, as well as third and fourth generation versions of the iPod Touch.

iOS 5 is one of the most substantial upgrades Apple has pushed out for its mobile operating system. In addition to wireless syncing of apps and content across devices, the new version of the OS features a radically overhauled user notification system, deep Twitter integration, a digital newsstand and about 200 other features.

One feature that doesn't come with iOS 5 on non-iPhone 4S devices is perhaps the new iPhone's most talked-about feature: Siri, the voice-controlled "digital personal assistant" that retrieves data and performs actions based on the user's vocal commands. One developer has claimed to port Siri to the iPhone 4, but it's not clear how effective that hack is.

Google can't do that without its mobile vehicle, Android, the most popular smartphone OS in the world. Mobile computing is becoming the most important kind. Its use surpassed desktop computing this year, and mobile ad revenue is exploding. Location-powered search is the key to the business, and Apple - Google's mobile competitor - is revving its engines in that space. Google Plus, the big Q3 experiment, is tailor-made for Android use. So where is Google's mobile vision in its Q3 earnings results announced yesterday? Good question. It isn't there.

Did Google forget that it bought Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion in August? Doubtful. That's a lot of money, though, and it's Google's first adventure in the handset-making business. Google can't comment on the specifics of the deal until it closes, but shouldn't Google have given its investors some clues about its handset intentions? Well, it didn't. Not in the quarterly report.

Yesterday, @Android joined Twitter, Ice Cream Sandwich avatar and all. I guess he (it?) had nothing better to do, since he wasn't invited to the earnings call going on at the same time.

Numbers And Silence

Google's overall revenue grew by 33% year over year. But its quarterly report lumps mobile revenues in with the rest. On the live call, CEO Larry Page said he expects Google to earn $2.5 billion in mobile ad sales this year, but that's just an expectation. Actual, measurable quarterly mobile performance was not something Google deigned to report.

Let's compare this year over year. The Q3 2010 earnings report mentions mobile channels seven times and names Android three times. Yesterday's Q3 report mentions neither at all.

Mobile Is A Channel

Google makes mobile apps, but mobile isn't really a Google "product." The Android licensing business is about getting onto as many phones as possible. Google's even willing to pay heavy taxes to its competitors to license all the patents involved. Google gets a little defensive about that sometimes. Patents are an obstacle to getting Android everywhere.

Google treats mobile as a channel - a very important one. It's not just about Android; that's just one of many vehicles in Google's overall mobile ad business. Google incentivizes mobile heavily. It even gives away mobile sites for free to businesses.

Google needs small, local businesses on board. That's where the meat is. Local, mobile, location-powered search - and hence advertising - is the best cookie in the jar. And Google is making moves in that space that seem almost panicked, seizing control of the content of business listings, buying up all kinds of local-focused companies, and even trying to make cash registers dependent on Android phones.

Siri: No Mere Android

Why so serious, Google? You're the king of search, and your general financial situation seems quite comfortable. What's the problem?

Well, here's one: the iPhone is already the most popular smartphone handset in the world, and Apple just released a version with an artificial intelligence that performs searches for its users. In one of Apple's first deals for Siri, it uses Yelp, Google's competitor, for local business searches. And that's just on the high end; on the same day, Apple started giving away the iPhone 3GS for free.

Google's Big Wait

Google is spending and scaling aggressively; expenditures were up 34% over Q3 2010. The majority of that spending was on IT infrastructure investments, but Google is also investing heavily in people. Its workforce topped 30,000 people this quarter, adding over 2,500 full-time employees. It also bought a phone company.

In general terms, Google did very well in Q3. It made a great deal of money. But it's also reinvesting tons of it in machines, humans, and phone manufacturers. Google is working hard; so hard that its new experiment, Google Plus, is rolling out at a painstakingly slow pace. Where's the rest of the API? Where are the distinguishing features?

How many things can Google do at once?

Google touts this as a convenience and points out that a business owner can quickly log in from the email and correct any erroneous changes. But this is sort of a strange update. Google Places listings are an important way for businesses to be discovered from Web search, and business owners might not be partial to those listings updating without their expressed consent. Then again, some might feel that maintaining Google listings is a hassle, and this update will save them the effort.

This update indicates that Google needs tighter control over the information in its business listings. It's hard to spin an update that takes control out of business owners' hands as a good thing. Local businesses are an important strategic part of Google's expansions into local and mobile revenue streams, and imposing automatic updates on those listings is an aggressive play.

It's worth noting that this part of Google's business is under scrutiny for anti-competitive practices. Yelp, Google's most celebrated competitor in local business listings, testified in Washington against Google for scraping Yelp's content for its own purposes and pushing Yelp results out of the way.

Google is pushing hard to control this market. It bought Zagat to get better content about local businesses, it bought Dealmap to push against Groupon on local deals, and it's using Android to close the loop and get businesses on board with Google Wallet NFC payments.

What's the rush? Well, Google rules search for now, but Apple just shipped a record number of iPhones loaded with an artificially intelligent search assistant called Siri. Location - and thus mobile devices - is an essential part of connecting consumers to local businesses, and Siri is the most convenient way to make that connection on the new iPhone. Guess what: Siri uses Yelp.

Are you a business owner? What do you think of the change? Does it make your life easier, or would you prefer to have control?

But for how long will this kind of search query dominate the way we find things on the Web? With today's release of iOS 5, Apple - Google's mobile rival - sets the stage for Siri, an artificially intelligent voice search assistant that goes out of its way not to use Google to find results. Google is winning the search game, but Apple is about to change it.

It isn't news that Google's dominance in Web search is well established in the U.S. It accounts for nearly two thirds of search queries, while Bing-powered searches from anywhere, not just from Bing.com, provide a little over a quarter.

But the parameters of search are changing. Social signals are becoming increasingly important for determining relevance, and Bing got the jump on Google there by striking a deal for Facebook integration.

Google's real-time search agreement with Twitter expired this year, but the search giant has since struck back by incorporating Google Plus into its search results. But Google Plus is having trouble gaining traction. It certainly doesn't have as much social data as Facebook's hundreds of millions of users provide to Bing.

Your Wish Is Siri's Command

Meanwhile, Apple is about to head Google and Microsoft off at the pass. With today's launch of iOS 5 and the impending deliveries of the record-breaking iPhone 4S, Apple will debut Siri, an artificial intelligence that understands human language much better than the Google search box does. And while Siri will search Google as a last resort if it can't find your answer, it (she?) will go out of its (her?) way to use Google competitors.

For local stores and restaurants, Siri uses Yelp. For math problems, Siri uses Wolfram Alpha. Each query from Siri for one of those things is a query Google didn't get. With iOS 5, Apple has also married its handheld devices with Twitter, providing a vector for real-time social search with no Google in sight. Apple can just keep adding more non-Google services, and iPhone users will keep using Google less and less.

What do you think? Can Siri do better than Google Web search?