Microsoft’s virtual assistant, Cortana assists users in varying ways. From reminders, to opening other applications, to informing about health activities or turning on lights in a home. “Hey-Cortana, tell Xbox to turn on”, “Hey-Cortana, remind me to get groceries on Friday at 6pm”. With these and many more other requests, the personal assistant helps users stay productive and save time.
Latest Microsoft by the numbers details show the virtual assisant has been asked about 18 billions questions since its launch. That’s PC, mobile and IoT devices and across Windows, iOS and Android. Bringing it to several devices, platforms and markets can be a contributor to this growth.
“Cortana, Microsoft’s intelligent assistant, has been asked 18 billion questions since launch”.
By numbers that will mean:
4,500,000,000 – questions each year. 375,000,000 – questions each month 12,500,000 – questions each day 5,20,833 – questions every hour 9,680 – questions every minute 161 – questions every second
Microsoft continues to innovate how Cortana can help make life of consumers easier whiles saving time. At Build 2017 Microsoft demoed Cortana working with Amazon’s Alexa. A first of virtual assistants integration that Microsoft and Amazon say “offer more choice, value and access“. This collaboration will see Cortana users have their usual experience on an Alexa enabled device and vice versa.
Microsoft also continues to evolve and integrate it’s skills into all of its platforms. Cortana works well in Office 365 and Skype. With Office 365 Microsoft says Cortana helps you “prepare for meetings, learn about the people you work with and remind you where you need to be next so you won’t be late“.
How have you been using Microsoft’s virtual assistant these days? Still using it or not? Share with us.
Microsoft’s Cortana and Alexa of Amazon are Two Digital Assistants turned Intelligent friends helping customers do more
Microsoft and Amazon are working together to bring a much richer digital assistant experience to their customers. They are doing this by making both digital assistants, intelligent friends. Taking the strengths of both assistants, interacting with each other and making them available on every device possible.
“In the ambient world,
we believe that assistants will work together each and every day to help us”.
– Megan Saunders, GM Cortana
Microsoft believes the technology of the future is putting people at the center instead of devices. Explaining this as multiple devices interfaced in multiple locations with multiple people using multiple senses.
An example of how this comes together is Cortana and Alexa’s new partnership in enriching lives. Microsoft showcased early stages of this development on stage at Build 2018. Take a look at this demo by Megan Saunders, Cortana GM and Tom Taylor SVP Amazon Alexa in this video.
The Cortana Alexa partnership is still in a beta stage. If you’ll like to try it, Microsoft say visit https://aka.ms/cortana_alexa to be notified when it goes live.
The vision for Microsoft with Cortana is to meet customers wherever they are and no matter the device. Also for developers Microsoft is promising building skills for Cortana and Alexa will enable access to more devices across devices.
Excited about what partnering with other digital Assistants can and might bring or do? Surely it will be interesting to see Cortana, Alexa, Siri, Aura, Google all working together at a point.
The Spartan is a single browser designed to work great across the entire Windows 10 device family – from keyboard and mouse on the Windows 10 desktop to touch, gestures, voice, controllers and sensors.
Microsoft’s project Spartan, the brand new browser announced at the Windows 10 briefing will ship with the new operating system when available for consumers.
The brand new browser, codenamed “Project Spartan” is designed for Windows 10. Spartan is said to provide a more interoperable, reliable and discoverable experience with advanced features including the ability to annotate on web pages, a distraction-free reading experience and integration of Cortana for finding and doing things online faster.
The new browser will allow users to easily annotate (- a web page with a stylus and send the notes and annotations to a friend or colleague -), share Web pages, has a great built-in reading experience capability and Cortana integration and is expected to work on Windows Phones, tablets and PCs.
The browser is reported to support Chrome extensions, this would allow Spartan access to a lot of third party applications originally made for Google’s web browser.
About Project Spartan Microsoft says;
Powered by a new rendering engine, Spartan is designed for interoperability with the modern web. We’ve deliberately moved away from the versioned document modes historically used in Internet Explorer, and now use the same markup as other modern browsers. Spartan’s new rendering engine is designed to work with the way the web is written today.
Like Windows 10 itself Spartan will remain up-to-date: as a service, both providing new platform capabilities security and performance improvements, and ensuring web developers a consistent platform across Windows 10 devices. Spartan and the new rendering engine are truly evergreen.
Spartan provides compatibility with the millions of existing enterprise web sites designed for Internet Explorer. To achieve this, Spartan loads the IE11 engine for legacy enterprise web sites when needed, while using the new rendering engine for modern web sites. This approach provides both a strong compatibility guarantee for legacy enterprise web sites and a forward looking interoperable web standards promise.
Spartan is the internal codename that Microsoft is currently using for the project and has not made it clear if that will be the final name of the browser. Windows Central reports possible names being considered include Edge, Entourage, Elixa, Evo.
Lumia Denim is Microsoft’s unique latest firmware update to it’s range of Lumia Phones. The update is expected to bring changes like Passive voice “Hey Cortana”, Optimized Glance, Live folders, SMS merging, the best personal assistant on mobile Cortana as well as some imaging enhancements.
Users with devices such as the Lumia 520, 530, 535, 620, 625, 630, 720, 820, 920, 925, 1020 and the 1320 will not be seeing some of the changes as this has to do with these not running on latest / higher hardware.
Microsoft explaining on the issue said;
“Lumia Denim is the marketing name for latest Lumia software update, which is a combination of firmware, OS (operating system) and Lumia exclusive applications. Exact contents coming with Lumia Denim vary depending on the device model, and some devices are not requiring new firmware for the new features to be enabled, so firmware can in some cases remain unchanged.”
Other new features include a smoother and faster browsing experience, VPN support and Apps Corner, the newest and easiest way to keep your personal life and business life organized on your Lumia smartphone.
Optimized Glance Screen. For owners of Lumia smartphones with glance screen, you’ll now be able to see more of what’s important to you, even when your phone is locked. In addition to the current time, missed calls and app notifications, your glance screen is now able to show you the local weather from MSN Weather as well as MSN Health & Fitness data.
Live Folders. Organizing your Lumia’s Start screen is now better than ever with Live Folders. Keep your games and apps grouped in a more personal way simply by holding and dragging an app over another app to create a new folder on your fully-customizable Start screen. Rename folders and rearrange tiles within a folder for an even more personalized Start screen experience.
For the owners of the Lumia 830, 930 / Icon and 1520 who’s hardware run on the latest hardware there are a load of new imaging innovations coming, and these include:
“Hey Cortana” – an always-on app where you can activate Cortana by simply saying “Hey Cortana” on your Lumia 930 and Lumia 1520
A faster and more intuitive Lumia Camera app. The app will deliver images of the highest quality at the fastest speed, allowing you to capture multiple photos with just milliseconds between shots.
Moment Capture. This feature provides the quickest and easiest way to capture memories in high definition. A long press of the camera button automatically starts 4K-quality video recording at 24 frames per second. With each frame at 8.3 megapixels, you can save individual frames as high-quality still images. Due to hardware differences, Lumia 830 shoots Moment Capture in Full HD, not 4K, and with reduced 2-megapixel per frame quality.
Rich Capture. This simplifies picture taking with auto HDR, Dynamic Flash and Dynamic Exposure. Avoid the hassle of adjusting camera settings and focus on capturing the moment: Shoot first, edit and select the perfect shot later.
Latest imaging algorithms. Capture even crisper photos in daylight or low light, with our latest generation of imaging processing algorithms
” The Lumia Denim update has started rolling out to a limited number of devices in selected markets, and will continue arriving in waves by device. A wider rollout of Lumia Denim to all Lumia smartphones running Windows Phone 8.1 is expected to begin in early January, following partner testing and approvals.”
So far the updates have been rolled out to the following devices with the rest still undergoing testing.
Lumia Denim Ghana CV roll out
As a note, this detail is for the GH country variants devices, if you purchased your device from out of the country or any other store that didn’t get their device supplied by Microsoft mobile Ghana then yours will definitely be of another’s and you’ll need to wait on their device update schedule.
Your phone should automatically notify you when an update is available, but you can also check this manually by tapping Settings > Phone Update.
