14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft's very own personal assistant Cortana is getting smarter with a new set of improvements prepared by the company, that should ship to all devices running it this week.
As most Windows Phone users know by now, Cortana provides them with a daily glance every morning, displaying quite an impressive amount of helpful information, such as current weather, calendar schedules, headlines, and other details that you wish to see when you wake up.
Starting with this update, Cortana will do the same thing every evening, just to prepare you for the next day. Microsoft says that calendar items will also be displayed, and so will travel time to home. The company warns that users must update home and office addresses in Cortana in order to benefit from these improvements.
Concert recommendations also added
This feature has already been spotted by some users, but Microsoft is finally ready to make concert recommendations in Cortana available for everyone using the personal assistant.
This new update will allow Cortana to keep an eye on the searches you make on Windows Phone, Windows 8, or Bing.com, and detect which queries are related to music and artists. Based on this data, Cortana can then provide recommendations for concerns that are taking place within 100 miles (160 km) of your home.
The feature will be available to all users running Cortana, but it must be activated manually by going in the notebook, tapping on “Music” and then on “Concert Watch.”
Flights and app suggestions
Cortana is getting even more personal with this update, so in addition to keeping an eye on searches related to music, it can also monitor searches for flights. Users checking out flights twice within a week on Bing.com will have Cortana providing information on all of them, as the personal assistant “knows” that these are important to you, Microsoft says. This feature is only available in the United States for the time being.
Users in the UK and the US are also getting app recommendations for their location. Microsoft guarantees that all these suggestions won't be intrusive at all because if you do not respond to any of them the first times they are shown, Cortana automatically turns them off to never bother you again.
The new Cortana features should arrive on all Windows Phone handsets in just a couple of days, so keep an eye on the settings of your personal assistant to know when they become available.
