When Apple first introduced Siri three years ago, she amazed the world with her warm voice and her human-like voice response. But the years since her debut have been quietly underwhelming, in large part because Siri isn't able to access the wide range of apps that are available on the iPhone.

So a group of University of Pennsylvania developers have hacked Siri with the idea of going it alone and building their own Siri App Store. They call their hack GoogolPlex and after introducing their software a few months ago, they've rejiggered it and released it to the public as a platform where anyone can create custom commands.

"We looked at Siri and we realized that they had very good voice translation, but the problem was that Apple hadn't made the platform open," says Ben Hsu, one of the developers who worked on the project. "So what you could do was really very limited."

On the GoogolPlex, they show how the software can be used to give you voice control over apps that don't currently work with Siri including the Nest thermostat, Philips Hue lightbulbs and Spotify.

Watch a demo here:

Googolplex isn't for everybody. It's more of a cool tool for the tech savvy and a stark illustration of how badly Apple needs to open up Siri to third party developers. The reason we don't recommend it for most regular users is because there's a pretty big security downside to using the software. For GoogolPlex to work, you have to trick your phone into believing that a server run by the Penn developers is actually Google.com. That's a security no-no.

Once everything's been set up, you tell Siri to GoogolPlex things. Most of your Google searches go right to Google, but if the Penn server hears "Google Plex," then it processes those requests using a script that interfaces with Nest or Spotify or whatever service you want to use. On this site, you can see commands that flip coins, present random comics, and query Google Maps for directions.

Enjoy it now, before Apple's lawyers ruin the fun.