Member AnonTechie guides us to an article at The Verge, "Leak reveals Cortana, Windows Phone 8.1's mashup of Siri and Google Now."
From the article:
Microsoft's upcoming Windows Phone 8.1 update will include Cortana, a personal digital assistant designed to rival Siri and Google Now. Sources familiar with Microsoft's plans have revealed to The Verge how Cortana looks and operates, replacing the built-in Bing search functionality on Windows Phone 8.1. While the feature is named after the Halo game series, Cortana will take the form of a circular animated icon instead of a female character. Cortana will animate when it's speaking or thinking, forming a personality not dissimilar to Apple's Siri.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by dotdotdot on Tuesday March 04 2014, @03:50PM
Windows Phone has always had pretty good voice integration for calling people, getting directions, searching with Bing, and text-to-speech/speech-to-text for messaging. This is just a natural evolution with a few more features and a catchy name.
No, it's not groundbreaking, but neither is it just me-too.
(Score: 1) by Woods on Tuesday March 04 2014, @04:05PM
Yeah, Android was the same way, and so was IOS... And then Apple decided that their voice recognition software should start talking back to you.
Really instead of a "Personal assistant" or "AI", they made a text to speech app.
So then Google played along and made their app talk back as well. I remember when Siri was announced and people were showing it off, and I would do the exact same things with my Android phone, but people were less impressed because it did not speak back to me.
Personally, I find the whole thing uninteresting. All the features were already there, but now instead of reading the results of my query, I listen to the results. And for some reason, that is considered a breakthrough.
(Score: 1) by mrclisdue on Tuesday March 04 2014, @05:13PM
Wow, you sure spared no vile words with your vicious, insult-infested attack on, erm:
I'm thinking that if I take the first letter of each word, give it the old rot-13, and translate to Sanskrit, you've just called a gay black autistic woman a handmaid.
Now, knock it off, ya hear?
(Score: 2) by dotdotdot on Tuesday March 04 2014, @05:27PM
Yeah, I don't see the reason for the downmod either. Maybe I didn't express enough Microsoft hatred. This is starting to feel more and more like the old site.
(Score: 2) by dotdotdot on Tuesday March 04 2014, @05:25PM
Flamebait? What, pray tell, about my comment was flaming or baiting?
(Score: 1) by moozh on Tuesday March 04 2014, @06:40PM
I have to agree that it's possible that Siri-like functionality could be considered an expected feature of modern/future phones and Microsoft, in order to stay competitive, has no option but to include their own offering.
(Score: 1) by EvilJim on Tuesday March 04 2014, @10:52PM
What is catchy about the name? 3 syllables sounds like a waste of time if you're using this frequently, one syllable and they could possibly beat out apple. "Bob, what is the best mobile phone?"
(Score: 1) by EvilJim on Tuesday March 04 2014, @11:07PM
"not that piece of shit windows thing you're using Jim, try something by Apple" - Bob
(Score: 1) by EvilJim on Tuesday March 04 2014, @11:11PM
Why did M$ name you after something and not pick a new name for you? - Jim
because my overlords dont innovate, they imitate . - Bob
your name makes you sound like a Ford Cortina - Jim
your name makes you sound like a fucking idiot - Bob
Fuck you! - Jim - I hate this thing already.