I finally get how Siri can change the world

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A colleague this morning introduced me to the wonderful world of Siri proxies. As expected some clever guys have reversed the protocol used by Siri, the voice service for iOS devices. So you can now have your own proxy that intercept Siri’s query to Apple’s server and provide your own answers to specific commands. I think this opens a world of cool possibilities. Imagine sitting at your favorite coffee shop and ordering your favorite coffee drink using Siri. Once Siri’s API is available to iOS apps, you could do this with a specific app for the coffee place. But by doing it via a network proxy, you can integrate your commands in canonical Siri interface. This seems like a much smoother solution.

The flipside, as always, is that these methods could be used for more nefarious purposes. For example a store could provide free Wi-Fi but block access to competitors or price comparison sites. Worst they could let you access these sites but change the content of the page to increase their competitors’ prices or stocks. This shows once again the importance of making SSL more ubiquitous on the web.

Currently Siri proxies are a bit of a hack. I really hope that Apple will officially support them soon and I can’t wait to see how businesses, public services and home automation nuts will use them.

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