Named after the fictional Halo character: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortana
and apparently voiced by the same actress.
Microsoft unveils Windows Phone 8.1 with personal assistant Cortana
31–40 of 118 posts
Re: Microsoft unveils Windows Phone 8.1 with personal assistant Cortana
#32I am slowly becoming convinced that the next killer app is the personal assistant app. My life is sharded between contact books and voip apps and IM and email that hardly if ever talk to each other or make my life easier. Its a huge market, but space for a lot of niches.
Google Now is already doing some of those, and keeps expanding. It's also available on iOS.
Re: Microsoft unveils Windows Phone 8.1 with personal assistant Cortana
#33I am slowly becoming convinced that the next killer app is the personal assistant app. My life is sharded between contact books and voip apps and IM and email that hardly if ever talk to each other or make my life easier. Its a huge market, but space for a lot of niches.
You get a lot more integration than you probably think with Google Now. It reads my e-mail to keep track of my upcoming flights and packages being delivered. It checks out my calendar and will conveniently provide directions to events on my schedule. There's not a great level of integration for the google chat and voice features yet, but it's coming I'm sure.
Re: Microsoft unveils Windows Phone 8.1 with personal assistant Cortana
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's basically a pluggable Google Now with APIs. I think it's great.
This thing appears to be more like Siri since it's so context aware and makes jokes.
I hope that as developers we're able to take advantage of this conversational style. At the moment, WP apps can hook into the rather limited "Tell Me" system that lets the user open various endpoints of an app via voice commands, and only using pre-defined parameters.
It would be awesome if the user could pass in any arbitrary data via voice commands (devs could make custom scheduler/todo list/note-taking apps that can receive data from Cortana), and even more so if voice commands could launch background tasks instead of just the entire third-party application (you could check into Foursquare without actually opening the Foursquare app and disrupting whatever you're doing).
Re: Microsoft unveils Windows Phone 8.1 with personal assistant Cortana
#35I'd like to be able to talk to my Windows 8.1 PC the same way I can talk to my Android/iOS/Windows Phone. Would be very handy I think.
You can use Google Now in Chrome now.
I don't think you can talk to it though, you can just click an alert button and see your cards.
Separately there is the hot word plugin (I think that's what it's called) that lets you say 'ok Google' when on the US Google homepage.
Re: Microsoft unveils Windows Phone 8.1 with personal assistant Cortana
#36Named after the fictional Halo character: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortana
I think it's a fascinating move on Microsoft's part to integrate a video game character into a users day-to-day reality. I can imagine some nostalgia fueled sales happening as a result. But moreover, I can't help but be reminded of the movie Her. Where the lines between our physical reality and our digital reality start to blur
The beginning where he talks to Cortana, it totally reminded me of the movie Her. [1] It seemed fascinatingly real. Although that bit might have been pre-recorded, I think we will eventually get there, where a computer's voice and its interaction would seem indistinguishable from a human's.
[1] http://channel9.msdn.com/?wt.mc_id=build_hp [~1:12:50]
Re: Microsoft unveils Windows Phone 8.1 with personal assistant Cortana
#37This might me really nerdy but the name reminds me of the Farscape Episode "DNA Mad Scientist" (1x9 or so). A lab rat with increased intelligence enslaves the original scientific staff, and keeps the original chief scientist as an assistant, called... wait for it... "Cornata".
My first thought was that it was based on the AI character in the Halo series. http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Cortana
In Halo 3, wasn't it revealed that Cortana was built from DNA from chief scientist whats-her-name?
Re: Microsoft unveils Windows Phone 8.1 with personal assistant Cortana
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
This thing appears to be more like Siri since it's so context aware and makes jokes.
I hope that as developers we're able to take advantage of this conversational style. At the moment, WP apps can hook into the rather limited "Tell Me" system that lets the user open various endpoints of an app via voice commands, and only using pre-defined parameters. It would be awesome if the user could pass in any arbitrary data via voice commands (devs could make custom scheduler/todo list/note-taking apps that c…
They just did a demo of exactly what you requested for sending a new tweet.
Conversational style instead of pre-defined phrases and it just sent a tweet instead of opening the twitter app.
Re: Microsoft unveils Windows Phone 8.1 with personal assistant Cortana
#39- How well can it handle natural language, compared to Siri? - Can it handle an interaction such as: -- "Michael, you've got a new message from Paul" -- "Read it for me" -- 'Ok, Paul wrote: "Where should we meet today?"' -- "Answer with "in the Starbucks, at noon as we discussed". -- 'Ok, here is what I understood: "In the Starbucks, at noon as we discussed". Shall I send it? -- "yes" -- "Ok, your reply has been sent…
Watch the presentation:
http://channel9.msdn.com/?wt.mc_id=build_hp
It starts around 1:12:00
Re: Microsoft unveils Windows Phone 8.1 with personal assistant Cortana
#40I'd like to be able to talk to my Windows 8.1 PC the same way I can talk to my Android/iOS/Windows Phone. Would be very handy I think.
They demoed this at //build/ last year...and then it never actually happened. I have no idea why. I assume it's coming, but have no idea when, at this point.