Cortana News (Coming from the inside) (OP being updated)

[Dave Bhullar]

Hello, I'd like to change my region from Italy to US only to try Cortana. Might I have some problems, like apps that don't work correctly or other things? Have you switched your region only to try Cortana?

All apps would work correctly. But the store will show you US apps and if you're using a credit card tied to an Italian bank then you can't use that to pay for apps in the store, you'll have to switch your region back to pay for apps.

 

[Deepak kumar M]

No update for me Cortana

 

[Deepak kumar M]

I never want to hear her say that.

++1

 

[Nicola De Ieso]

All apps would work correctly. But the store will show you US apps and if you're using a credit card tied to an Italian bank then you can't use that to pay for apps in the store, you'll have to switch your region back to pay for apps.

I don't want to pay for apps, so for me it's not a problem. Thanks anyway

I changed mine from uk to us to get cortana the only problems I I cant download apps only in the UK but the ones I already have work fine so occasionally I switch back to uk to check for new apps and updates

Ah, so if an app is available only for UK, you can't update it because it's only for UK, right?

 

[Lumiamike]

Talderon, I have a suggestion for a Cortana use, can she become linked to the bing health and fitness app which I use to keep track of diet and cycle riding, Cortana could suggest routes after examining previous routes saved in health and fitness, or give suggested distance routes dependant on time starting and darkness falling so you are back before dark, adding food to the diet tracker via voice to health and fitness, asking Cortana questions about stats saved in health and fitness, a myriad of things Cortana could help with by being able to link with health and fitness

 

[anon(8913816)]

I have a suggestion for Cortana:
It would be very handy if you could say something like "Insert Text" and then she would ask whether you would like to insert (formerly) copied text or insert new text and then you could just speak something and it gets inserted.
For example, when you're in a Whatsapp chat and you're to lazy to type in a message. You just say: "Insert new text" and then speak something and it gets inserted without typing or anything.

 

[c0wb0ycliche]

Talderon,

Unique problem here that you might be able to shed some light on:



When I am at home (Plainsboro NJ, 08536) all of the Bing weather apps report that they "can't detect my location." This includes my Windows Phone, Windows 8.1 desktop and Surface. Compounding my theory that this is a Bing issue and not something with my devices or account is that the same thing happens on my partner's devices when he is home as well.



Here is where this relates to this thread- this also impacts Cortana's ability to respond to any location based inquiry. Asking about weather, places near me, and even the "news near me" all don't work, with weather and location based queries resulting in web searches. This happens on WiFi and on cellular, inside and out, and from what I can tell, pretty much anywhere that would show up as Plainsboro. If I drive for a minute into Cranbury, suddenly everything works.



Oddly enough, the issue is not related to GPS or network strength. All other GPS apps across platforms work with speed and precision. If I ask Cortana "where am I?" she responds accurately. Here Drive, Foursquare etc. also all work without issue. Even location based reminders work within Plainsboro, I set a reminder for when I get to the Dunkin Donuts around the corner and it worked. But all other Bing and Cortana location functions don't work.



The fact that this occurs across multiple devices and multiple Microsoft accounts seems to indicate that it is a problem on the Bing backend.



Any help you can provide would be much appreciated, it hampers the use of Cortana when many of the functions only work when not at home, and I can't imagine that I am the only one having this issue.



For what it's worth, when I click my weather from the Bing page, it says "Municipato de Plainsboro" which makes no sense because I'm in New Jersey! But it lends credence to my idea that Bing/Cortana are able to physically get my location but when they do are like "nope, error!"



Thanks!

 

[Joao Castelo]

Yesterday, I noticed something different about Cortana. She asked me to answer some questions. I also noticed that the part about "eat + drink" was changed after answering these questions. Cortana gets better and better :-D

 

[Panathas]

That's what we are talking about the last 5 pages or so

 

[Scott Franklin]

Hey, my cortana updated a few days back but ive noticed I haven't got a few things. Despite the update I haven't gotten the new quiz, and she is still not capable of telling me a joke when I say "Tell me a joke", instead she still does the "alright, who would you like me to send this too" or something like that. Anyone else experience this?

 

[Ploydd]

Woo-hoo! Got the new weather icon on my Cortana tile!

Sent from my Nokia Lumia 928 using Tapatalk

 

[zicoz]

Are there any plans for support in smaller nations like Norway?

 

[jleebiker]

Talderon, I have a suggestion for a Cortana use, can she become linked to the bing health and fitness app which I use to keep track of diet and cycle riding, Cortana could suggest routes after examining previous routes saved in health and fitness, or give suggested distance routes dependant on time starting and darkness falling so you are back before dark, adding food to the diet tracker via voice to health and fitness, asking Cortana questions about stats saved in health and fitness, a myriad of things Cortana could help with by being able to link with health and fitness

That's quite the requirement. You might be better off just hiring a personal trainer. ;-)

 

[ptptpt4]

Talderon, a suggestion: Cortana should be able to further limit location-based reminders within a timeframe, for example: "when I leave work on Friday, remind me to pick up the dry cleaning". I'm not sure if this was already suggested, but it's something that would be really useful for me and I'm sure others, too.

 

[Chakriau]

Seeing a lot of information about Cortana here... Thanks Talderon for the detailed information. Wanted to know how Cortana has Animated Live Tile? I mean can this be done for Other applications as well? If that is possible, this is will very good

 

[wpfanboy17]

Seeing a lot of information about Cortana here... Thanks Talderon for the detailed information. Wanted to know how Cortana has Animated Live Tile? I mean can this be done for Other applications as well? If that is possible, this is will very good

WP8.0 XBox music, games have animations in their tiles. Yes, animations add elegance.

 

[Idiosyncrasy]

Talderon, a suggestion: Cortana should be able to further limit location-based reminders within a timeframe, for example: "when I leave work on Friday, remind me to pick up the dry cleaning". I'm not sure if this was already suggested, but it's something that would be really useful for me and I'm sure others, too.

You can do this already... I use it all the time

 

[Jesse Sasso]

I have a suggestion for Cortana:
It would be very handy if you could say something like "Insert Text" and then she would ask whether you would like to insert (formerly) copied text or insert new text and then you could just speak something and it gets inserted.
For example, when you're in a Whatsapp chat and you're to lazy to type in a message. You just say: "Insert new text" and then speak something and it gets inserted without typing or anything.

A version of this can already be done. Using the app 'Copy This' a user can speak something to Cortana and have it applied to the clip board. Though it's not entirely hands-free because you still have to press paste on the keyboard. However, it's a much faster method than typing entire sentences.

 

[ComputerBear01]

Does Cortana (or Bing for that matter) integrate with other services such as Wolfram Alpha? I know Siri uses Bing and Wolfram Alpha to get data, and it could be very interesting for Cortana to similarly pull from more sources (ideally, it would be Bing being able to pull from more sources as Cortana would naturally incorporate the results)

I noticed last night when I used Cortana to look up Iliza Shlesinger after seeing her on The Tonight Show that clicking on the "card" Bing pulled up for her in the web results spit out a lot of interesting information, images, links, etc. and when I scrolled all the way to the bottom it said "Data from: wikipedia | imdb | freebase" (each of those was a link to the corresponding source info. So I guess what I'm trying to say is that Bing does use multiple sources but so far I haven't seen Wolfram Alpha as one of those. Freebase is sort of similar to WA.

TWO SUGGESTIONS about this for Talderon:
1. If Bing has this type of card why didn't Cortana just return that for me? That would make her look a lot smarter.
2. If Bing has the type of card why doesn't it appear at the top of the "web" results? That would get me to relevant information much faster.

Thanks!

 

[Joe920]

If this is not secret info, are there any plans to expose the Cortana TTS (text to speech) component to developers at some point? I mean, what could be better than having Cortana read you a bedtime story?