I have an iPhone, but I have to admit, I don’t use Siri much. The male, British Siri is about 80% less charming than the female, American one. The things I need, it just won’t do: SiriUK’s restaurant database appears to have been composed by a hungry flock of starlings pecking the keys at random; and he doesn’t understand the word “Eben” no matter how I pronounce it. (“Calling Adam now.”) I do use Siri to set reminders, add things to shopping lists and call my Mum’s number and the numbers of other people whose name it recognises, but that’s about your lot.

Not the people I was trying to call. Although they do look as if they’d be a blast at parties.

Over on our forums, DarkTherapy has just made Siri a whole lot more useful. He’s got SiriProxy running on the Raspberry Pi, along with wiringPi, which he’s used to access the Pi’s GPIO pins and turn a relay on and off. That relay is then hooked up to an automatic garage door system – meaning Siri can open and shut the doors on command.

There’s code and instructions in the forum thread. Do you have any ideas of your own for extending Siri’s capabilities? I’m rather liking the idea of telling it to turn lights on and off in my house when I’m away, for simple burglar-foxing.