Cortana

One of the coolest incoming features for Windows 10 is undoubtedly Timeline. With Timeline, you'll be able to access your apps across multiple devices, effectively allowing you to jump between your Windows 10 devices quickly by being able to pick up where you left off. It's an ambitious feature to be sure, but it turns out today that it may be a little too ambitious to release when we originally thought it would.

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There's no shortage of phone assistants for Android, some more popular than others. If you've never bothered to set one up, long-pressing your smartphone's home button will result in Google Assistant popping up, and that's fine if that is what you want to use. If you're more fond of Microsoft's alternative, though, you can replace Google Assistant with Cortana as your default Android phone assistant.

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The advantage of basing your AI-powered personal assistant off an existing fictional character is that you have a ready-made visual representation of the assistant. When said fictional character takes the form of a hologram, it is almost begging to be given a real-world form. In that sense, it's almost surprising that there are so few implementations of Microsoft's Cortana as a fully functional hologram that, of course, can tell you the weather as well.

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Microsoft's vision for Cortana goes beyond sitting in a smart speaker on your kitchen counter, with the company showing off some of the ways its assistant could follow you at home and on the road. Bringing Cortana's latest enclosure, the Harmon Kardon Invoke speaker, on-stage at the BUILD 2017 opening keynote today, Microsoft showed how the agent can expand into the car. It's part of a big expansion in what developers will be able to do with Cortana themselves.

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Cortana may have only just got a standalone smart speaker to reside in, but Microsoft's Alexa rival is set to get a whole lot smarter. The next generation of talents, AI abilities, and conversational computing for Cortana is being detailed today at BUILD 2017, Microsoft's annual developer event. That includes a significant push into AI across every aspect of the software behemoth's portfolio.

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Amazon's freshly revealed Echo Show may be represent an evolution for Alexa, but Microsoft wants to take things one step further. As it turns out, Microsoft may have something in the pipeline called HomeHub, which will use Windows 10 and Cortana as the backbone. The idea is to turn Windows 10 machines into the hubs for smart home interaction, potentially giving HomeHub more functionality than Alexa or Google Home.

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The Harman Kardon speaker with Cortana has been officially announced, adding yet another smart speaker to the growing market. Unlike most of these smart speakers, which run Amazon's Alexa, the Invoke speaker utilizes Microsoft's own personal digital assistant to support voice commands and more. The speaker itself provides 360-degree audio and a cylindrical tower shape not entirely unlike the Amazon Echo's design. Two different colors will be offered, both featuring what Harman describes as a 'sleek, modern design."

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It seems that Microsoft is really putting the heat on Google, among other competitors. Just days after it unveiled its Windows 10 S answer to Chrome OS and the first batch of Chromebook rivals, the company is partially unveiling its take on the smart home speaker niche market. For this round, it has partnered with the famed Harman Kardon to create Invoke, your premium, and most likely expensive, Cortana in a can.

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The personal assistant war has long moved from smartphones to smart homes the day Amazon launched its Echo speaker and introduced Alexa to the world. Pretty soon, Google followed with its Home (not Gnome) and Google Assistant and soon, Microsoft will do likewise with Cortana. That device has already been teased before to bear Harman Kardon's brand but very little else. Now some more details are falling into place courtesy of leaks, including a rather unusual but still totally generic name: Invoke.

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In just a few days, Samsung will finally be showing what its own Bixby personal assistant is truly capable of, but not before Microsoft has had a chance to cement the position of its own. Cortana is gaining a few new abilities, at least on Android. And to make sure more people will be able to bridge their smartphones and their Windows 10 PCs, Microsoft is making Cortana officially available in Australia, both on Android as well as on iOS.

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iPhone owners are probably most accustomed to using Siri for their voice-powered assistant needs, seeing as how well it's integrated with iOS. However, along with Google, Microsoft's Cortana is looking to make itself a serious alternative on Apple's platform, and the latest update brings it closer to matching iOS's native option. Released on Friday, the new Cortana for iPhone app has been overhauled with a new interface, and includes several new features that make it easier to use.

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Microsoft has announced the arrival of suggested reminders in Windows 10 via Cortana, its personal assistant. With this feature, Cortana mines your email to find any mentions of obligations or promises to deliver something by a certain time or date. When it finds such a promise, Cortana will prompt you with a suggested reminder about that item, ensuring you don't forget to follow through.

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