The voice interfaces Cortana and Alexa will soon be able to activate each other for functions that one does better than the other, Amazon and Microsoft announced today. It’s the kind of cooperation that we don’t see enough between the Big Five, or really any company that’s grown out of its “desperately cobble together…
As Google and Apple (and Samsung) scramble to build the smartest, do-anything personal assistant for your phone, Amazon and Microsoft have elected to take a different route: They’re working together rather than competing. The news arrived in the form of a joint announcement from both companies, and the New York Times is reporting
Usually, Cortana the personal assistant is just a disembodied voice. One Halo fan decided to take his Cortana to the next level by building a rad hologram appliance that responds to your queries.
With Microsoft’s Build developer conference just two days away, the company has revealed one of the most anticipated announcements from the event: A new Cortana-powered speaker made by German audio giant Harman Kardon.
The future of city driving—at least in theory—sounds amazing. We’ll have digital assistants in our vehicles to book last-minute restaurant reservations, and we’ll never have to touch a steering wheel again because our cars will drive themselves. At CES, I got a glimpse of how this technology is coming along, and…
Oh dear—not still clicking around with a mouse and keyboard are you? What is this, early 2015? Cortana comes baked into Windows 10 now, so you can shout out commands and control your laptop or desktop using your voice instead. Here are some of the neat ways you can make use of it.
Microsoft is a software company. Despite its more recent push into building impressive hardware, it’s made its name with code and services—not phones and laptops. Build 2016, a couple day’s sojourn in San Francisco, showcases what Microsoft does best, giving a glimpse of things coming for Windows users in 2016 and…
Digital voice assistants, like Apple’s Siri, are really bad at dispensing resources to users facing domestic abuse, depression, rape, or mental health emergencies, a new study finds.
Microsoft has put its digital assistant front and a little left of center, embedding it into every Windows 10-running device, and anyone who feels like downloading the app. Cortana’s getting some new tricks to go with her popularity, including a little extra nagging.
Another year, another couple thousand new apps for you to wade through in a befuddled haze. Which ones should you download? Which ones should you actually pay for? And which ones deserve to take up prime real estate on your home screen? Whether you’ve spent the last 365 days asking yourself those very questions, or…
Every mobile operating system comes with its own digital assistant. iOS has Siri, Android has Google Now, and Windows phone has Cortana. But now, Microsoft is giving all smartphone users some choice, now that Cortana has escaped (the sinking ship that is) the Windows phone and officially migrated to Android, iOS and…
Windows 10 gets its first major update today, with a number of features you’ve asked for—like colored title bars, fixes to the Start menu, and (finally!) a better way to activate your Windows 10 license.
One of Cortana’s capabilities that you might not noticed yet is the quick translation feature. Microsoft’s engineers recently upgraded this part of Cortana’s functionality, so you can now get multilingual help with words, phrases and sentences, assuming Cortana is supported in your part of the world (U.S. English and…
We’re busy preparing for all the new smartwatches, phones, and gadgets that will be coming out of IFA in Berlin next week, but let’s take a moment to remember all the neat software that will fill up those cases of aluminum, glass, and silicon. Here are the best apps from this week.
Microsoft just released the public beta for Cortana on Android. Though we already got a sneak peek thanks to a leaked private beta, anybody can now download the personal assistant software in the Google Play store. Just don’t expect to be blown away.
“Cortana, wake up.” Seriously, that’s it. Say those words to a snoozing Windows 10 computer with a sixth-generation Intel Core processor, and it’ll wake right up from sleep. That’s because the new Intel Skylake processors will always be listening for that command, thanks to a low-power digital signal processor (DSP)…
Cortana makes the jump to the desktop in Windows 10, meaning you can get a more personalized experience through voice commands or the good old mouse and keyboard. But what if kind of hate Bing’s search engine? You can use a browser extension to redirect Bing queries to any search engine you choose.
One of the coolest new Windows 10 features is talking to your computer. For many people, it’ll be the first time they’ve had a voice-activated personal assistant on tap. And yet, most computers won’t have Cortana turned on by default—allegedly because they don’t have certified high-quality microphones built-in.
Unless you’re one of the handful of people rocking a Windows Phone, you won’t have much experience with Cortana, Microsoft’s personal digital assistant. With the roll-out of Windows 10, Cortana is about to make a lot of new friends very quickly—and like me, they might soon find themselves shouting instructions at…
Right now you can download and install a leaked version of Microsoft’s Cortana voice assistant for Android. Suffice it to say, I am whelmed.
