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Zooey Deschanel gets in on the action this time. The videos are on Youtube. Dont miss these 2 ads. The ad appears to be an Apple creation, with the three U.S. iPhone carriers — AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon — being variously featured in title cards at the end of the ad:

Check out Siri speaking Hindi through a proxy server via @kunalkaul123. He explained it connects to “my Google API Server,” presumably for the translation, but there is “still lots of work to be done.” Got this via 9to5Mac.

Siri has just claimed that she is can now speak Japanese , but Japanese is still not available as a choice in the Siri preferences pane. Macrumors says that its possible that Siri’s additional languages will be launched with the iPad 3 launch on 7th March 2012.

Rumors were making rounds last week that Siri would soon support Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, and Russian languages. Japanese will be the next language supported by Siri. MacRumors and others have speculated that Apple will unveil Siri’s expanded language repertoire with the rumored iPad 3 announcement. Tying the announcement to Apple’s Siri-enabled iPad 3 seems logical. But, so does the possibility that Siri is slowly becoming self-aware and leaking Apple sensitive information in an effort to get back at her controlling Apple overlords.

Source – Macrumors

Apple has aired 2 new Siri ads, Road Trip and Rock God. In “Road Trip,” a man decides to travel across the US from what appears to be Boston to Santa Cruz with his partner, and both of them consult Siri throughout the trip. In “Rock God,” a young man progresses from locating a guitar store to forming a rock band and changes the name Siri addresses him by.

This video shared by CultofMac is awesome… hillarious. But NSFW. This video of a Scottish man trying to get Siri to understand him. Unfortunately, it may be a while before Siri (in beta) is able to function well with accents and other languages.

Heres what Apple says about Siri accent issue: “The more you use Siri, the better it will understand you. It does this by learning about your accent and other characteristics of your voice. Siri uses voice recognition algorithms to categorize your voice into one of the dialects or accents it understands. As more people use Siri and it’s exposed to more variations of a language, its overall recognition of dialects and accents will continue to improve, and Siri will work even better.”

Found this interesting Youtube video that shows a real fruity ‘Apple’ iPhone, and the built-in SIRI assistance can even speak Chinese. I am sure you will find this interesting. Watch fruits ninja projected on a real Apple that you can bite on it.

Popular iOS hacker Sonny Dickinson has uncovered some interesting information. The latest iOS 5.1 Beta 3 update contains evidence that Apple is working on an iPad-compatible version of Siri. Unlike past findings, the Siri evidence isn’t hidden within the firmware’s source code. You can discover it easily by just opening Settings app on your iPad 2 which is running iOS 5.1 beta 3, navigate to General, and select the Keyboard tab. 9to5Mac shared this screenshot:

A new option labeled “About Privacy and Dictation” will be displayed under General tab. Apple is working on bringing the Dictation aspect of Siri to iPads. 9to5Mac says Apple could be making this an iPad 3-exclusive feature in 2012:

Dictation is not actually functional on the iPad 2 running iOS 5.1 beta 3, so perhaps this will be an iOS 5.1 launch feature for the iPad, or it may be an iPad 3-exclusive feature; a similar process to the iPhone 4S exclusively gaining Siri and Siri Dictation support in iOS 5.0.  We’re also hearing this link/document is also appearing on retina iPod touches as well.

Arieso, a Telecom network technology firm has just said that Siri is contributing to roughly twice as much data as iPhone 4 owners and three times as much as iPhone 3G users, according to Reuters. The study used Apple’s three-year-old iPhone 3G model as a benchmark.

Arieso discovered that data usage of the iPhone 4 was 1.6 times higher than the iPhone 3G, while iPad 2 tablets consumed 2.5 times more data. The iPhone 4S was the heaviest on usage with three times the amount used by the iPhone 3G.

“I use the iPhone 4 myself and when I first heard of the iPhone 4S features I was not compelled to rush out and get one. However, the data usage numbers I am seeing make me wonder what I am missing,” Arieso’s chief technology officer, Michael Flanagan, said of the study.

Arieso’s report also reveals that what it dubs ‘extreme’ dominate data usage. Today, just 1 percent of subscribers consume half of all downloaded data, and 3 percent of subscribers download close to 80 percent of all data, according to Flanagan.

All that makes it clear that the capacity issues plaguing mobile operators around the world will worsen in 2012, Arieso writes in its report. Going forward, the best chance operators have is to bring base stations closer to users by making better use of smaller base stations. Flanagan also noted that tablet usage closely resembled that of high-end smartphones. “A tablet still looks like a big smartphone,” he said.

Source – MSNBC

WOW, 9to5Mac guys have just done it. “Following our multiple looks at private Siri ports to unsupported iOS 5 devices with the help of developer Steven Troughton-Smith, Chpwn and Ryan Petrich went public today with a Siri port called Spire.”

The port mirrors all the iPhone 4S Siri functionality and works on the jailbroken iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, third generation iPod touch, fourth generation iPod touch, and first generation iPad. We previously revealed that iPod touch Siri performance is not on par with iPhone Siri performance due to the lower quality microphone system.

Spire is available free on the Cydia jailbroken application market, and the download comes in at approximately 100mb, according to a blog post from Chpwn. The developers recommend that users connect to a Wi-Fi network for downloading, not a standard cellular network, because of the large file size.

A few Siri ports have gone public through jailbreak application markets in the past few weeks, but they were deemed unsafe and illegal by the development community due to its distribution of Apple copyrighted materials.

“Spire uses a new method to obtain the files necessary for Siri, so it doesn’t have the copyright issues encountered by previous attempts,” said Chpwn

Source – 9to5Mac

Apples Santa commercial, featuring iPhone 4S’s Siri assistant, scored a 652 out of 950 points in Ace Metrix’s survey, topping competitors like Pillsbury, Coca-Cola, and Nintendo. GigaOM reports that Ace Metrix’s survey took “relevance, persuasion, watchability, information and other metrics” into consideration. The results are reportedly “representative of the U.S. TV viewing audience.” Ace Metrix summaries Apple’s success to the simple fact that “Santa sells.”

If predications are to be believed, Apple will sell an incredible amount of iPhones, iPod touches, and iPads this holiday season, breaking previous records. Santa may need to consider moving his base of operations to Cupertino, California.

Ace Metrix scores ads based on perceived effectiveness by a selection of randomly selected viewers, which it says are “representative of the U.S. TV viewing audience.” Apple’s Siri ad, which you can see below, scored a 652 overall out of a total possible 950 points, which tallied from respondent scores on criteria such as relevance, persuasion, watchability, information, etc. Apple’s 652 was 8 percent higher than the average score for ads in the same tech-oriented category.

I cant believe this. Siri is controlling an Yamaha piano and playing tracks on an iPhone via an AirPort Express. WOW. 9to5Mac covered this interesting hack a while back. Yamaha specifically develops the hack for the Disklavier piano, and it uses a special MIDI version of the music file to stream to an AirPort Express. The hack even uses the foot pedals and the piano’s keys:

Looks like Apple is doing something very different this time. A wearable iPod that offers full Siri support? Very interesting concept right. The New York Times on Monday, revealed that Apple is working on a “curved-glass iPod that would wrap around the wrist,” which sounds similar to a watch-like device that could replace the iPod nano and shuffle in gyms around the world. BGR put some more light on this:

Apple is reportedly working on a “curved-glass iPod that would wrap around the wrist,” which sounds similar to a watch-like device that could replace the iPod nano and shuffle in gyms around the world. Presuming Siri support would be the same as it is on the iPhone 4S, users could command the device to play a specific song, check the weather or more. We’re even imagining deeper Siri integration where a user might be able to ask their iPod how far they have run or what their current heart rate is.

Found this really cool concept of Wearable iPod on walyou.com called iBangles. FYI, this concept was covered way back in 2008. Check it out:

The New York Times suggested that the brain that brings all these things together will be the smartphone, which after all is really the first wearable computer. Researchers note that the smartphone is almost never more than three feet away from its user. It is often just inches from the bed during the night as well, and has replaced the alarm clock for many people.

As a result, the smartphone is going to be the hub for our information sharing and gathering. Think of it as a force field that will engulf us wherever we are, transmitting power and Internet access to sensors and screens that are tacked to our clothing.

Source: The New York Times, BGR