Hello there, hope you are having a good day. Today episode is dedicated to Cortana. I know what you are thinking: one we have never even talked about Cortana and two where’s Cortana?
I went ahead and looked at the list of featured skills in Cortana skills store, if store is the right word for it, how should we call it, the skills library? The store term comes from the app market where you effectively buy an app, should it be the same for skills?
Anyways, I’m getting sidetracked. Cortana has among their featured skills like tips on saving money, location reminder, check your email, send texts, etc. I was surprised not to see more skills directed at productivity. It would make a lot of sense for them to present themselves as the enterprise assistant, effectively repurposing Cortana as the workplace assistant more than a personal one. According to an article, the assistant is being redesigned to provide a more refine user experience for consumers, promoting a typing based-experience rather than a verbal one. This is being referred to as conversation canvas by Microsoft. The canvas is meant to be a thread with all you have said in the past. This is not news for Android phone users with Google Assistant since they already have this service for some time now. Microsoft will be looking to reposition it to other areas of Windows where it can become a more productivity-focused assistant rather than a personal one. The trail that left the lost of smartphone war can still be savored by the Redmond company. Having lost that war, Microsoft is struggling to position in the assistant space specially without a smart speaker.
Thanks for listening. Find the links referenced in this episode in voicefirstweekly.com searching flash briefing episode number.
Talk to you tomorrow!
