The Most Creative Siri Hacks We've Seen So Far

Still hacking Kinect? Stop living in 2010 and get with 2011 already. There’s a new hack in town and it’s voice-controlled. Yep, Apple’s AI software on the iPhone 4S, Siri, has become the new favorite among hackers—after French firm Applidium figured out how to hack Siri’s security protocol, hacker and developer @plamoni released Siri Proxy on GitHub. It’s a proxy server that allows hackers to create custom functionalities for the software that weren’t originally intended, which’ll no doubt act as a catalyst for a hacker offensive in voice-controlled WiFi Siri hacks in the coming weeks and months. A website’s also cropped up—SiriHacks.net—showcasing emerging Siri hacks just like the Kinect hack sites.

Whether this current trend will snowball into the ubiquity and volume of the Kinect hacks remains to be seen, but for now it looks like Siri may become your new voice-controlled digital serf. So, as the hacks gain in numbers we thought it was about time for a roundup.

Voice-Controlled Thermostat

This is Pete Lamonica’s (aka @plamoni) demo hack, which he created using Siri Proxy, allowing Siri to interact with a thermostat that has built-in WiFi. So Siri can check the temperature of the thermostat, its status and set the temperature—all just from hearing your voice.

Beer Pouring Robot

Using the tweet by text message service, Redpepperland linked an iPhone 4S contact to a Twitter account (@Beeribot), so when Siri’s asked “Could you pour me a beer please?” the message gets tweeted to @Beeribot. Then a remote controlled truck that’s activated by the word “pour” slams a beer can into a spike and the beer is channelled through a funnel and into a glass.

Get the Latest Hockey Scores

This hack from Sam Lu uses the Siri Proxy too, and provides a plug-in so that Siri can give you the hockey scores in real time.

Open a Door

Laan Labs created this one using a WiFi-enabled door lock—ask Siri to lock or unlock a door and using some sorcery not of this earth (or some clever hacking with an Arduino microcontroller), it obeys your command. Read more about the hack here.

Surf TV Channels

For when pressing remote control buttons is just too much effort, call on Siri to change the channel for you. In this hack from @ninja98—that also uses the Siri Proxy (starting to see some kind of pattern here…)—Dreambox, an Enigma2 enabled set-top box, becomes an iTV with Siri as the controller, allowing you to turn the TV on and off (via the set-top box), as well as surf channels by saying “previous,” “next” or the channel’s name like “HBO.”