Written by: Jeffrey Powers - @geekazine
on October 17, 2011.

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Siri

In the last week, people have been snatching up the newest Apple product – the iPhone 4S. With the new phone (and the new iOS5 software inside) you get some new software options. One of them is called Siri. Now before you ask “why did they put the ‘i’ at the end”, we’ll talk about where it came from and what it means for you.

What is Siri

Siri is a company that was founded in 2007. Siri is software that was to help you find whatever you are looking for. Think of it like a personal digital assistant. It uses language processing so you can ask Siri a question, and it will respond with an answer.

Dag Kittlaus, Adam Cheyer, and Tom Gruber were the co-founders of Siri. They raised over $24 million in 2 series funding. Apple liked the software, so they bought it.

Siri is also a female name, short for Sigrid. Siri also was a fictional character in Hyperion - a novel by Dan Simmons. There is no word how Siri was named, but one other thought was the venture group (SRI International) might have been an influence.

Siri in iPhone 4S

Although there are reports of some people getting Siri to work on a iPhone 4, Apple only supports this software on the 4s. The 4S has a dual-core processor, which gives Siri optimal performance.

One thing to remember, Siri is in BETA right now (as the photo above says). There are still some glitches to fix – I would guess it’ll be an ongoing update project.

How to Use Siri

1. Get an iPhone 4S
2. Press the Siri option
3. Ask a question
4. Let Siri give the answer.

How Siri Made the 4S Popular

If you watched the iPhone event 3 weeks ago, you might have been the multitudes who criticized that it was not an iPhone 5. If it wasn’t for this new feature, I would venture a guess to say the 4S would have been the worst selling phone (with the only savior being the addition of Verizon and Sprint). Instead, the 4S had killer sales and sold out.

It is also the most talked about product on Apple in the last week.

Photos of Siri on the Web

A website has popped up called Sh*t that Siri Says. It shows off pictures of people asking Siri questions. We have collected a few ourselves:

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