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

[jleebiker]

For the FIRST time since Cortana went live, I got an alert from Cortana telling me when to leave for my next appointment! WOOHOO!!!! Unfortunately, when I created a test appointment with the location specified, it didn't work. Oh well. It seems like it is going in the right direction though!
​+928 on Verizon.

 

[mikeycl]

Figured out tonight, to get Cortana to understand me better I have to speak in an American accent.. Works a treat but the wife says I'm a f*****g ***** !! Woman will never understand the desperate need to get technology to work.. No matter what !

Anyway, the answer was Germany and I replaced 'game' with 'match'

Anytime i hear someone say they have to use an american accent with cortana i'm imediately reminded of this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ixQr7-3hyI

 

[Ploydd]

Interesting screen I just got from Cortana I hadn't seen before. I was connected and still am connected to my home Wi-Fi when this happened.
Also it worked just fine after I closed it and opened back up. Glitch i figure but just weird.



Sent from my Nokia Lumia 928 using Tapatalk

 

[tadevinney]

Will we ever be able to change the default alarm sound so that when I use Cortana to set an alarm it isn't so quiet that it makes it useless??

 

[GabrielStorm]

http://img.tapatalk.com/d/14/07/05/zydaryvy.png
Interesting screen I just got from Cortana I hadn't seen before. I was connected and still am connected to my home Wi-Fi when this happened.
Also it worked just fine after I closed it and opened back up. Glitch i figure but just weird.
Sent from my Nokia Lumia 928 using Tapatalk

getting the same, and have been for the last three or four hours as of 1908 (-4UTC)
soft reset does not help.

 

[David P2]

See here: Cortana outage causes the personal voice assistant to go quiet for some users | Windows Phone Central

 

[GabrielStorm]

^^been there not effecting everyone, but it does appear to be widespread enough to be noticed.

 

[azcruz]

Not at where I am. It still sounds and tell jokes like Jen Taylor.
Sent from my Windows Phone 8S by HTC using Tapatalk

 

[hopmedic]

Hey Talderon - how about changing the source for Windows Phone news? Softpedia just isn't a source that is anywhere near the same level as Windows Phone Central. :wink:

I might be a bit biased, but the headline on Softpedia that made it sound like the 1525 on TMO was a sure thing just turned me off completely. Yes, hopefully it will happen, but at this point it is still a rumor, and headlines that make rumor sound like sure thing just make me not want to look at a certain source.

 

[Joe920]

Cortana still isn't very good at telling useful info about flights. I had two successive flights, but after dismissing the first segment on landing, she refused to show me anything about the next segment. It just never came up, even if I could go in the 'interests' section and spot that the flight number was there. Bug? Has anyone seen this work correctly with two flights on the same day?

Edit: apparently during parsing of the multi segment confirmation email from Southwest one of the flights got placed on the wrong day. It would be nice if there was a way to report 'parsing errors' like that (alongside disclaimers that personal info will be disclosed to MS).

 

[Jcmg62]

DAF**K.......so now Cortana isn't coming to the UK in the discussed timescales. Talderon, I need to ask...is Ash and Belfiore from this planet???? Cause they have to be TOTAL friggin space monkeys if they think I'm gonna hang around and wait for them to sort this crap out. The WP user base is NOT in the USA. Looking at sales and market share figures, it's safe to say that even if MS give away their platform, hardware, code and every other little thing for free, it's still not going to be the primary market. So why the hell are the primary markets waiting around like second class citizens and being lied to by these space monkeys.

Screw it......OK Google, where can I buy an HTC M8

 

[Zulfigar]

DAF**K.......so now Cortana isn't coming to the UK in the discussed timescales. Talderon, I need to ask...is Ash and Belfiore from this planet???? Cause they have to be TOTAL friggin space monkeys if they think I'm gonna hang around and wait for them to sort this crap out. The WP user base is NOT in the USA. Looking at sales and market share figures, it's safe to say that even if MS give away their platform, hardware, code and every other little thing for free, it's still not going to be the primary market. So why the hell are the primary markets waiting around like second class citizens and being lied to by these space monkeys.

Screw it......OK Google, where can I buy an HTC M8

Because you have to start somewhere, and when something goes wrong, you don't want to send an unfinished product out that has a well-known issue. Instead, you delay to let the techs find out what's wrong or you'll get the same result that you did with the calendar fiasco. Let Microsoft make things better for you than they did with us in the States, so in the end you'll be a happier person for having that bug free experience.

The end of the world isn't tomorrow., only the beginning of a new day.

 

[Jcmg62]

Because you have to start somewhere, and when something goes wrong, you don't want to send an unfinished product out that has a well-known issue. Instead, you delay to let the techs find out what's wrong or you'll get the same result that you did with the calendar fiasco. Let Microsoft make things better for you than they did with us in the States, so in the end you'll be a happier person for having that bug free experience.

The end of the world isn't tomorrow., only the beginning of a new day.

Erm....it's Microsoft...it'll never be bug free

 

[LSDigital]

Because you have to start somewhere, and when something goes wrong, you don't want to send an unfinished product out that has a well-known issue. Instead, you delay to let the techs find out what's wrong or you'll get the same result that you did with the calendar fiasco. Let Microsoft make things better for you than they did with us in the States, so in the end you'll be a happier person for having that bug free experience.

The end of the world isn't tomorrow., only the beginning of a new day.

Let him go, he could never be a WP user... and he don't know nothing about localizing apps.

 

[Talderon]

Be nice all. I have not been to work in over a week or so, so I have not kept up on the pulse of things. I will be back tomorrow and will see what I can rustle up.

Thanks!

 

[Talderon]

DAF**K.......so now Cortana isn't coming to the UK in the discussed timescales. Talderon, I need to ask...is Ash and Belfiore from this planet???? Cause they have to be TOTAL friggin space monkeys if they think I'm gonna hang around and wait for them to sort this crap out. The WP user base is NOT in the USA. Looking at sales and market share figures, it's safe to say that even if MS give away their platform, hardware, code and every other little thing for free, it's still not going to be the primary market. So why the hell are the primary markets waiting around like second class citizens and being lied to by these space monkeys.

Screw it......OK Google, where can I buy an HTC M8

Ok, I did some looking around, but I will dig more tomorrow as promised.

I do not know what slipped and I do not know any timeline information, but the localization for the UK is taking longer than expected.

Look, I know Cortana is a hot item with WP users and everyone wants to have Cortana NOW, but there is SO MUCH that goes into her to make her function as expected for different local regions it's a toss up of:

1. Take the bad press for the delay
or
2. Take the bad press for a crippled not functioning "like it does in the US" bad press.

From a user experience point, they made the right move. If they released something "on-time" and it was not what users expected and people shy away from using Cortana, it would be MUCH harder to win then back after fixing it than doing the right thing and delaying the release until everything was right. First impressions are important and you have to remember than us users here are a VERY SMALL slice of the end users out here. It's a matter of taking the whole picture into account and seeing what's the lesser of the two evils.

Granted, we are also the most vocal and dedicated user base as well.

I know this won't mend all wounds and this is just my PERSONAL 2 cents worth, but I think Microsoft made the right call on this one.

 

[boxa72]

She gets 99% of my ****ed up Aussie accent correct n I've heard she does the same with Indian but I guess it would be much harder with languages other than English
Sent from my Lumia 925 8.1

 

[magicdesign]

I think the point is that if you want to gain market share from the other competitors, you need to stop playing catch up and start leading. Things like quiet hours which is only available in the USA is something that most people need now. Given the choice of a new handset in the next few months, it's looking like I will choose one with all the features I need. That means everyone (excluding microsoft) at this point.

 

[boxa72]

I think the point is that if you want to gain market share from the other competitors, you need to stop playing catch up and start leading.

Absolutely!

 

[Jcmg62]

I'd read somewhere on this site that bing us extremely US focussed and only really works well if your based in the States. I guess there's truth to that when you consider that bing rewards isn't available in the UK. By that extension one could include that Cortana will not work "properly" outside the US for years to come. If Cortana needs bing, and bing only "speaks" American, we're all wasting our time expecting that to change in a few short months.

Google have spent years developing a truly global web service with search, maps, business listings, reviews, videos, images, etc. And now they're in a prime position to connect that global data to offerings such as Google Glass and Google Now.

Is Bing focussed on a single region? Will Cortana ever catch up with similar systems that have been out there for a few years already? I honestly don't know, but here's one thing I'm very certain of; delays will be the death of the concept simply because your competition will smother you. You can bet your bottom dollar that both Apple and Google have teams of engineers in post rocking Lumia handsets and picking them apart to ensure Cortana brings nothing new to the market that they cant emulate almost instantly.

Windows Phone users are quite possibly amongst the most patient tech users on the planet. We're forced to wait for everything that other platform users have had at their fingertips for years already. But patience is a dangerous thing to hang your hopes on.

Frankly, for me Cortana has already lost its appeal. I could just about have remained interested if it had made it here in the original timescales but now.....meh.....so I can dictate reminders and ask who the president of Argentina is........meh.

Anyway, enough said