Siri now available on jailbroken iOS 5 devices, including iPhone 4

A fully functioning port of the iPhone 4S’s hyped Siri voice assistant is now available for almost all jailbroken Apple mobile devices and huzzah, it’s legal!

The somewhat gimmicky Siri assistant has been the focus of the iPhone 4S’s advertising campaign, and the feature is suspected to be helping fuel major sales for that device. But as the program only officially works on the iPhone 4S, other iPhone owners have been wanting to get in on the action. To date, the options have been either illegal or fairly technical in execution.

But now a new hack called Spire allows for almost any jailbroken iPhone or iPad to run the lusted-after Siri. Specifically, it allows Siri to work on a jailbroken iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, third-gen iPod touch, fourth-gen iPod touch and first-gen iPad.

The free Spire app is available to download from the Cydia app store on jailbroken devices and takes about 100MB of space. The jalibreak developers who created it, Chpwn and Ryan Petrich, recommend users connect to a Wi-Fi network when downloading the app.

One issue that had plagued earlier Siri ports was legality and concerns about copyright infringement. But Chpwn writes that the new app uses a different method to obtain data that makes the app legal. He writes:

Spire uses a new method to obtain the files necessary for Siri, so it doesn’t have the copyright issues encountered by previous attempts. Similarly, rather than directing all traffic through a specific proxy server (and the associated privacy issues), Spire allows you to specify your own proxy server.

Will you give the Spire app a spin on your jailbroken iPhone or iPad?

Nuance to acquire rival Vlingo to build a better Siri

Voice technology firm Nuance has agreed to buy its top rival Vlingo for an undisclosed sum, the companies announced this morning.

 

Nuance has been providing voice technology for years but has recently been getting a lot of attention for powering Siri, the well-advertised voice assistant on the iPhone 4S. Vlingo has been Nuance’s heated rival in the tech space, and interestingly enough, Nuance had sued Vlingo in court for patent infringement, while Vlingo bought its own set of patents to counter-sue Nuance and stop it in its tracks.

 

But the two are putting aside the lawsuits with the acquisition. Now they can work together to boost the power and innovation of natural voice technology. Most likely, they’ll do what they can to improve the highly-popular Siri and similar voice apps across mobile platforms.

 

“Inspired by the introduction of services such as Apple’s Siri and our own Dragon Go!, virtually every mobile and consumer electronics company on the planet is looking for ways to integrate natural, conversational voice interactions into their mobile products, applications and services,” said Mike Thompson, Senior VP of Nuance Mobile, in a statement. “By acquiring Vlingo, we are able to accelerate the pace of innovation to meet this demand.”

 

Nuance appears to be on an acquisition streak in hopes of neutralizing the competition. Before Vlingo, Nuance agreed to acquire texting technology company Swype for a reported $102.5 million back in October. Nuance’s T9 predictive text software is a direct competitor to Swype’s technology, which lets people quickly draw from point to point on touch-screen keyboards.