What apps is Cortana likely to draw info from?

[Jcmg62]

I use a fair amount of location based apps (linkedin, foursquare, Facebook, etc) which obviously contain a quite a lot of information about me....where I go, what I do, where I shop, who my friends and associates are....all the usual stuff. I also keep my Nokia Here Maps well updated and have saved hundreds of locations of hotels I've stayed at, restaurants I go to, theme parks and attractions I've visited as well as family and business addresses. I do this because I use Nokia Here Drive a lot and find the integration between drive and maps to be seamless....its a definite key feature of the lumia range.

In brief, I tell my phone almost everything about me. It would take a below average NSA employee about 30 seconds to track my entire life

So how much of this info will cortana be able to tap into upon setting her up? Personally, I'm hoping as much as possible as it'll help her to build a quick repository of my general life on the go.

Do we know if Cortana will be sponging info from other apps or will she be totally dependant on Bing as an info source?

 

[unnatixlr8]

wolframalpha (may be)

 

[Alonzo26]

I use a fair amount of location based apps (linkedin, foursquare, Facebook, etc) which obviously contain a quite a lot of information about me....where I go, what I do, where I shop, who my friends and associates are....all the usual stuff. I also keep my Nokia Here Maps well updated and have saved hundreds of locations of hotels I've stayed at, restaurants I go to, theme parks and attractions I've visited as well as family and business addresses. I do this because I use Nokia Here Drive a lot and find the integration between drive and maps to be seamless....its a definite key feature of the lumia range.

In brief, I tell my phone almost everything about me. It would take a below average NSA employee about 30 seconds to track my entire life

So how much of this info will cortana be able to tap into upon setting her up? Personally, I'm hoping as much as possible as it'll help her to build a quick repository of my general life on the go.

Do we know if Cortana will be sponging info from other apps or will she be totally dependant on Bing as an info source?

I read somewhere that Microsoft was working with foursqaure to help in the development of Cortana....so I beleive it would most likely be those type of apps

 

[RustyU]

Probably none.

Android used to be able to search within installed apps, but Apple had a squinny over it and now it can't.

 

[Moiz Mian]

I haven't seen any mention of yelp. I'm not sure how big of a thing foursquare really is. But I personaly use Yelp a lot more than tripadvisor and whatever else Bing uses for localscout. I hope they use Yelp at some point too since Google Now and Siri use it as well.

 

[Jcmg62]

I think for true artificial intelligence to work with any hope of accuracy and success it needs to draw upon as many information sources as possible (notwithstanding the fact that it then has to make sense of that barrage of information).

On that basis I'm hoping cortana will have the functionality to deep dive into my contacts, maps, social and business media networks, diary, email, messaging, geo-locations as well as other local, national and directories like yelp, yell.com, free index and as many other local, national and international information portals as possible.

I appreciate that giving Microsoft that level of personal information isn't going to be for everyone, so hopefully cortana will be versatile enough at the point of setting it up to allow for how much info it can access.

If Cortana ends up being little more than a talking directory for Bing then its going to be a major disappointment.....pretty much like siri has been for a lot of Apple users who were expecting something a lot closer to genuine artificial intelligence on their phones.

I wonder what the main differentiators are going to be between cortana and siri?

 

[tgp]

I wonder what the main differentiators are going to be between cortana and siri?

I'm hoping that Cortana will be more AI like Google Now, rather than a voice assistant like Siri. I use GN all the time, but very seldom do I use the voice assistance. I like the AI part of it. If Cortana is true AI, that's one more bullet point checked off of WP for me.

 

[DavidinCT]

Thinking that Twitter and Facebook are built into Windows phone, it should be able to pull info from there.

To be dead honest with everyone here, I hope it can pull from all sources and give you a feel like you have an actuall assstant. As I know after the using the voice, if it cant do anything usefull, it will be pointless. I have seen tons of iPhone use Siri when they first got the phone but, after a few weeks, none of them really use it besides voice texting. It's neat but, if it can't pull the info you want or feel you should get, you wont use it any more.

Interesting subject on this feature, I would also love to know more on this one....

What I really need is a pocket shrink....then all lifes problems would be resolved but, I cant count on that one

 

[Joel S79]

On that basis I'm hoping cortana will have the functionality to deep dive into my contacts, maps, social and business media networks, diary, email, messaging, geo-locations as well as other local, national and directories like yelp, yell.com, free index and as many other local, national and international information portals as possible.

There's a lot of evidence suggesting it will be able to dig pretty deep in the stuff like contacts, email, messaging, and maybe even maps and what not. The 3rd party stuff, I'm not that sure. As was mentioned earlier, Apple sued Google over the ability to search within apps, and won, so it's been pulled, but MS and Apple do have a different agreement when it comes to patents and stuff... plus Bing does power Siri, so...

It's not realistic to expect it to work with everything under the sun, they'll likely get it to work with reliable sources of information people typically look for. That said, Cortana obviously will be able to search the internet, and many of those services make their data searchable/viewable via a search engine (bing actually links the Yelp reviews with the listing). Whether or not Cortana aggregates it so it's easy to read is another story.

 

[Alain_A]

well from what I know all the assistants need internet to work.....so not good....

 

[Jcmg62]

Its an interesting point that DavidinCT raises; when people first get an iphone they go nuts on Siri.....basically its like this super cool new plaything that, in theory, can hold a conversation of sorts and can even find the odd bit of useful information online. But after a few days people lose interest. Why?

Its a question that Microsoft need an answer on if they're going to put Cortana front and centre on the OS: 1) why do people stop using Siri after a few days?

 

[Joel S79]

Its an interesting point that DavidinCT raises; when people first get an iphone they go nuts on Siri.....basically its like this super cool new plaything that, in theory, can hold a conversation of sorts and can even find the odd bit of useful information online. But after a few days people lose interest. Why?

Its a question that Microsoft need an answer on if they're going to put Cortana front and centre on the OS: 1) why do people stop using Siri after a few days?

Why? That's an easy answer: because Siri requires interaction. It's cool for a while to tell your phone to do something for you, but after a while (and enough frustrations with Siri not able to understand you), you realize it's easier to just open the app and default to your old habits.

Google Now was/is seen as superior to Siri because it doesn't require interaction. You can ask it to do stuff for you, or you can just open it and see everything you need/want. Siri is like the assistant you have to call and tell to do everything, Now is the assistant who has everything you need for your day on your desk when you show up.

Cortana is looking to blend the two, provide a Siri like assistant who can understand conversational commands and control the phone while being preemptive with certain things like Google Now.

 

[Jcmg62]

Hi Joel, yeah I would agree. The downfall of Siri is the level of interaction it needs to do anything. That, and the fact that it incapable of learning..........

Years ago, I downloaded a primitive AI programme called Daisy onto my "fast-as-hell" Pentium 1 desktop. Basically, Daisy would try to interact with you and would get the ball rolling by saying "hi, my name is daisy, what's yours?"

And that was it.......from that point onward Daisy was a blank landscape and was 100% dependant on your input to learn anything at all. Needless to say, after months of very strange and often rather disturbing, random conversations with Daisy, I gave up. I'd literally given her a couple of novels worth of information and she was still as dumb as a post.

I think Siri is based on the Daisy programme......

Microsoft are touting Cortana as a form of AI that will learn from the user. Question is, just how deep will that level of learning go? Are we talking basic phrase learning or a more promising leap toward actual understanding of what the user wants or needs?

 

[Joel S79]

Hi Joel, yeah I would agree. The downfall of Siri is the level of interaction it needs to do anything. That, and the fact that it incapable of learning..........

Years ago, I downloaded a primitive AI programme called Daisy onto my "fast-as-hell" Pentium 1 desktop. Basically, Daisy would try to interact with you and would get the ball rolling by saying "hi, my name is daisy, what's yours?"

And that was it.......from that point onward Daisy was a blank landscape and was 100% dependant on your input to learn anything at all. Needless to say, after months of very strange and often rather disturbing, random conversations with Daisy, I gave up. I'd literally given her a couple of novels worth of information and she was still as dumb as a post.

I think Siri is based on the Daisy programme......

Microsoft are touting Cortana as a form of AI that will learn from the user. Question is, just how deep will that level of learning go? Are we talking basic phrase learning or a more promising leap toward actual understanding of what the user wants or needs?

Ahh, Pentiums... back when a 5GB drive was huge! My how times have changed.

The "Notebook" concept of Cortana is interesting. Here's a link with a little info: Apple has Siri, and Microsoft is about to get Cortana | The Verge

Obviously we can only speculate, and that article is based on the API and early builds, but it does look like the goal is to learn key pieces of info about the user's day to day life and then adapt to present useful information.