Items tagged with Cortana
Microsoft announces that it is killing off its productivity assistant, Cortana, in Windows later this year. While users will no longer have access to Cortana in Windows, Microsoft says the helpful assistant will still be available to use in other capacities, such as Outlook Mobile.
The announcement that Cortana is...
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All good things must come to the end. The Harman Kardon Invoke speaker will soon lose Cortana service integration. This smart device will now become a Bluetooth-enabled speaker with no access to a smart digital assistant.
The Invoke was originally released in October 2017 in the United States as a collaboration...
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Slowly but surely, computers are going the way of smart home speakers or HAL 9000, wherein you can use your voice to complete tasks. Now, Microsoft is testing a new feature called “voice launcher,” which could simplify how people use Windows 10 computers. It will be widely available to use with the Settings app, File...
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One of the biggest fears of the U.S. Government is that China will infiltrate communication systems and eavesdrop on Americans in an attempt to steal confidential information. These fears are a large part of the reason Huawei has been unable to market its products in the United States. Microsoft now stands accused of...
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While we're not yet ready to call the Windows 10 May 2019 Update (version 1903) as big a disaster as the October 2018 Update, it has been riddled with a number of mind-numbing bugs. One of the prominent bugs reared its ugly head late last month, and caused CPU usage to spike, and it was traced down to an issue with...
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Microsoft continues to tweak and polish an upcoming major update to Windows 10 that is scheduled to roll out in the first half of next year. As such, the latest Windows Insider 20H1 preview build (18975) contains some new things to play with, including the ability to move the Cortana window around to anywhere on the...
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Windows 10 1903 build 18362.329 (KB4512941) landed on the production ring as an optional update a short while ago. Some people who installed the optional update are now fighting a problem where their machine has spiked an abnormally high CPU resource consumption issue. The Windows 10 build was a cumulative update that...
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Over the last few weeks, there has been an increasing amount of concern over what Apple, Amazon, and Google are doing with the voice commands and conversations that their respective digital assistants hear and record. All of those companies have employees or contractors who listen to the transcripts of commands issued...
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When Microsoft launched the Windows 10 May 2019 Update last month to the public, one of the big changes came with how the Cortana virtual assistant is presented to the user. Previously, Cortana and Search were fused together in the taskbar. However, the May 2019 Update separated the two so that they could be further...
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Most people have used natural language computing in one form or another. thanks to voice assistants out there from Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and others. The idea is that you can interact with your device just as if you were talking to a human. The most popular of these voice assistants is Amazon's Alexa and...
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Kenny Rogers famously sang about knowing when to hold your cards and knowing when to fold 'em (and run). Microsoft appears to be taking that lesson to heart in the digital assistant space, and rather than try to usurp Amazon's popular Alexa with its current set of cards, it has decided to play a different hand—going...
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Microsoft has started pushing out a new preview build of Windows 10 (build 18317) to Windows Insiders who are subscribed to the Fast ring, and with it comes a pretty big change. The latest preview build separates Search and Cortana in the taskbar so they can be developed independently.
"Some Insiders have had this...
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The October 2018 Update for Windows 10 may have gotten off to a rocky start, but that has not deterred Microsoft from forging ahead with its next major update, which is due out sometime in the first half of this year. As work progresses on its next major update, Microsoft has made available a new test build to Windows...
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Loup Ventures has published the results of its Annual Smart Speaker IQ test where it took the four major Smart Speakers on the market that are packed with Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant, and Cortana and put them through a round of tests. The test asked each of the four smart speakers 800 questions to see which of the...
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Over the last few years, many consumers have complained that Microsoft has focused primarily on businesses. The company abandoned products like the Windows Phone and Microsoft Band Fitness Trackers, and has instead labored on its business applications, data, and AI. Microsoft recently stated that it would be working...
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Digital assistants are everywhere these days—maybe you routinely summon Siri on your iPhone to set a reminder or ask for directions, or perhaps you call on Alexa to fire up your playlist on your Echo speaker (or tell jokes through Jimmy Fallon). What about Cortana? Microsoft is still fleshing out its own digital...
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Microsoft hasn't exactly had smooth sailing with regards to its most recent major update for Windows 10. The company launched the October 2018 Update early last month, which was fraught with problems including a file deletion bug. Microsoft quickly pulled the update and has yet to release a replacement.
Despite...
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This is shaping up to be a busy month for Microsoft. The company has started pushing out its October 2018 Update for Windows 10, and just the other day, it held an event to announce a spattering of Surface products, including the Surface Laptop 2, Surface Studio 2, and Surface Pro 6 with 8th generation Intel Core...
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It's been a year in the making, but Microsoft and Amazon have finally announced a full public preview rollout of Alexa-Cortana integration -- at least for users in the United States. The two companies first announced the collaboration in August 2017, and gave a live on-stage demo of the pairing in action at BUILD...
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Digital assistants have become a part of everyday life for many people and are supposed to make interactions with technology easier and seamless. Unfortunately, they can also be used against us in some situations. Underscoring this point, McAfee discovered a vulnerability in Cortana that could allow an attacker to...
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Last year, Microsoft and Amazon announced that their respective AI voice assistants -- Cortana and Alexa -- would be joining forces to combine the best of both ecosystems on Windows 10. This week at Build 2018, Microsoft demonstrated how the pairing with work in the real world, and it isn't as complex as you might...
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Your mama, and now Microsoft, wants you to watch your mouth. Microsoft "may stop providing Services" or "close your Microsoft account" if you "publicly display or use the Services to share inappropriate content or material". "Offensive language" was listed as potentially inappropriate content. The new services...
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