iPhone Siri Assistant

You can tell Siri to speak selected text displayed on your iPhone. By default the option is switched off, so by following a few steps you can enable Siri to read.

1. Navigate to Settings -> General -> Accessibility
2. Select Speak Selection -> Speak Selection -> ON

Now when text is selected, there will be a speak option displayed. Tap speak and Siri will read the text to you. To adjust the speed of speaking adjust the bar under Speaking Rate.

The wait is finally over. Apple showed off its new mobile operating system, iOS 6 at today's WWDC 2012 keynote event. The beta will be released to developers right away, with the rest of us getting the firmware update this fall.

There are over 200 new features in iOS 6, and these will be coming to the iPhone 3GS and later models. The improvements include new and completely redesigned apps as well as system-level Facebook integration. Here's a list of features highlighted by Apple:

Tweaks to Siri have been cropping up regularly thanks to the untethered iPhone 4S jailbreak. AssistantExtensions in the Cydia app store is available for free, and makes it possible to add all kinds of useful conversations to Siri's repertoire. We've seen add ons to ask SIri questions about jailbreaking and have her announce the latest sports scores and schedules.

Now thanks to BatteryLevelAE, iPhone owners can ask Siri battery-related questions such as "How much talk time do I have?" Siri will respond with a rough estimate of how much juice is left on the battery for both 3G and 2G network connections.

Thanks to iOS 5.1 the relationship between Siri and Yelp just got a little bit closer. The iPhone 4S has used Yelp from the beginning to provide answers to all of your questions surrounding local businesses, especially restaurants and bars. The latest firmware update provides more interaction from the results that Siri pulls up from Yelp.

Now with the Yelp iPhone app installed, tapping a business listed in Siri's search results will bring you directly to the business in Yelp. This provides full access to all of the pertinent information you may need before heading over to that address, such as hours of operation, review details, and photos.

Even disclaimers and beta software status hasn't prevented Siri from sparking a new lawsuit against Apple. iPhone 4S users including Frank Fazio, who is suing Apple in a California class action suit, have observed that Siri does not always work on their devices exactly how it works on television.

They claim that Apple is providing "false and misleading" advertising and that the iPhone 4S without Siri is simply a more expensive iPhone 4. Of course, this ignores the fact that the iPhone 4S has several hardware upgrades from its predecessor and Siri is just one feature of many available in Apple's mobile operating system iOS 5.

The popular Siri tweak AssistantExtensions has received an update. The Jailbreak FAQ Addon gives Siri the ability to answer your jailbreaking questions. Reading Siri an error message will prompt her to explain the problem and offer a fix. The addon will even answer questions about iTune errors that you may encounter while updating.

If you are new to AssistantExtensions it is available for free in the BigBoss repo. The Siri tweak adds built-in custom conversations, the ability to add your own Siri questions and responses, and it even teaches Siri to launch apps and search for YouTube videos.

Apple launched Siri beta with iOS 5 along with native Twitter integration. One thing that Siri can't do, however is update Twitter or Facebook directly. There is no built-in support for Siri to send updates to these social networking sites.

Luckily there is a simple workaround. Because Twitter can be updated via text message, Siri is capable of sending an update via text. See these instructions to configure your Facebook, Twitter or Google+ account to accept text message updates.

Siri has been receiving lots of attention lately from iPhone 4S owners looking to expand her capabilities. There are more tweaks and customizations arriving every day from developers in the jailbreak community. Of course, there are still things you can teach Siri to do without jailbreaking your iPhone 4S.

Although Apple has not included support for Siri to update social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, you can easily set up your iPhone 4S to make this possible. Siri will then take your commands and upload the message directly to your account. The same trick can even be used to let Siri update Google+ as well.

Back when Siri was first launched on the iPhone 4S, we highlighted the top 5 Siri alternatives for those with older iPhones including the iPhone 4 and 3GS. Now there's a brand new Artificial Intelligence available on the App Store for just $0.99.

The app is named Evi, and the software promises to give Siri a run for her money when it comes to answering questions asked via naturally spoken language. According to TechCrunch Evi can provide answers to questions when Siri gives up and asks to search the web. In fact, even iPhone 4S users might want to give Evi a try.

If installing full Siri functionality on the iPhone 4 sounds too good to be true, that's because it is. A new software package claiming to make Siri run on a jailbroken iPhone 4 has appeared on a repository that Cydia warns against. The package is called H1Siri, and there are a few reasons why you should stay away.

Not only does the repository containing H1Siri contain cracks and other illegal software, but the package itself comes from an unknown developer. Apparently a Chinese group dubbed CD-Dev Team is behind the Siri port, but the software illegally uses parts of Apple's copyrighted code.