Cortana To Launch With Windows 8.1 Update

“Hi there. I’m Cortana. I can help make life a bit easier for you.” This is the greeting of new Microsoft Windows Phone and Windows 8.1 devices’ virtual assistant, code-named Cortana, after the famous Xbox game Halo character. A leaked video reveals some of the Cortana’s features, and if it’s true, the service is going to be really great.

At the beginning, you will need to set up the service, so you will have to login with your Microsoft account, and according to the permissions page, Cortana needs access to your location data, contacts, voice input, calendar, emails and texts, search history, browser history and some more.

Once you log in, Cortana and you will have to get acquainted. To help you setup the software correctly, Cortana will ask you four questions about yourself, and the service then uses your answers to personalize its own performance to suit your interests best.

Quiet hours

Cortana will be able to take care of your calls and text messages while you sleep or work, giving you the relevant notifications after you get back to normal working mode.

Data

Cortana will aggregate data from services like Foursquare and Bing to have some contextual power found in Google Now. In addition, the voice recognition digital assistant will do its best to learn more about users from collecting and analyzing information in contacts, locations and behaviors.

Design

Unfortunately, instead of Halo’s female high-tech character, Microsoft’s Cortana is represented by an animated circle, which gets to live when it’s speaking or processing user commands.

Personalization

Cortana will allow Windows Phone users to set up how they want Cortana to address them. Your digital assistant can call you by your name or use nicknames like “Master Chief” when you enable the function in the settings.

Notebook

This is one of the key functions of Cortana – it is able to save information and other data in a notebook system. Notebook allows your digital assistant to access information about you, such as reminders, contacts, location data and behavior. For example, Cortana can track flights or other events mentioned in your emails to send you notifications similar to those of Google now.

Cortana will replace the forgotten and rarely used voice recognition app built in the Bing search engine. Windows Phone digital assistant can contact people in your contact lists when you say the person’s name and responds to your questions.

Build Conference

We have to wait for the Microsoft’s next Build conference on April 2^nd-4^th, where it will unveil the new digital assistant software and release the developer preview of its next Windows phone 8.1 OS.