For those iPhone owners are who big fans of Siri, you will no doubt be interested in all of the extensions and additional functionality that developers are releasing into the Cydia store for Siri lovers who also enjoy the benefits of being jailbroken. The Siri modifications, like most tweaks, some to be broken down into two distinct categories – those that provide an actual tangible enhancement, and those that are designed and released purely for entertainment purposes.
The release of the AssistantExtensions Mobile Substrate tweak has made it a lot easier for developers who wish to produce a Siri-based modification, and as such, we have seen a number of additions to Cydia which are intended to work with Siri, but have a reliance on AssistantExtensions being installed. One of the latest tweaks to fall under this category is the rather long winded Awesome Facts for ChatBot/Siri tweak which uses the ChatBot facilities that are built into AssistantExtensions.
This particular tweak, released by Krishna Sagar, falls under the entertainment based modifications and gives the illusion that Siri has a wonderful sense of the world’s bizarre facts. The Awesome Facts plugin hooks directly into Siri’s absorbent brain and packs in over one hundred facts which the developer assures will blow your mind. Although, on actually testing this tweak, it seems that a number of the facts are actually anecdotes and mildly amusing jokes that take me back to my childhood. Still, considering it is a free of charge plugin for AssistantExtensions, it is worth downloading and checking out just to hear Siri read a story to you. When combined with the AnyVoice tweak from Cydia, it actually makes a hugely entertaining experience.
As you might expect from a tweak such as this, getting started is relatively simple. The installation process will need to determine whether or not the AssistantExtensions tweak is installed on the device, and if not, it will be installed alongside the Awesome Facts plugin as it is a requirement to function. No additional SpringBoard icons are installed with either of these tweaks, with the plugin being activated through normal Siri methods. One thing I did struggle with initially, was actually getting Siri to provide me with some of the awesome new facts which he/she has learned. It would seem that the Awesome Facts plugin makes use of the ChatBot feature of AssistantExtensions, and therefore that needs to be invoked in the first instance.
Activate Siri, give the command "let’s chat" and then wait for the software to load the required files. When prompted, users can then give the command "tell me something awesome", then sit back and listen to the wonderful things Siri has to share with you.
Awesome Facts for ChatBot/Siri is available as a free of charge download from the BigBoss repository and requires a Siri-capable device running iOS 5 or above.
Of course, you will need to jailbreak your device to install this tweak. For jailbreaking iPhone 4S and iPad 2, you can simply follow our step by step tutorial posted here to jailbreak iOS 5.0.1 using Absinthe on Windows or Mac. Those of you with an iPhone 4, 3GS, iPad 1, and iPod touches can use Redsn0w or Sn0wbreeze to untether jailbreak on iOS 5.0.1.
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