Never miss another workout with Cortana

It is that time of the year again – when all those New Year resolutions become a little fragile. At Bing we see the volume of fitness-related searches peak in January and from there on it’s a bit of a slide. But Cortana is by your side, ready to get you back on track.

Cortana is always learning and can now infer places that are important to you based on how often you visit them. So if you go to a gym or attend an aerobics class regularly, Cortana will soon learn your visitation habits, recognize that the place is important and prompt you to name the location. You can call it “gym” or “my swimming club” or “Aerobics world,” any name associated with the activity.

Powered by the knowledge of Bing, Cortana understands the purpose of real-world terms such as “gym” or “my swimming club.” Cortana also knows that despite our best efforts, our work-out regimens can slip. She will offer to help you maintain your fitness schedule.

Let’s say you are in the habit of working out every Tuesday and Thursday morning at the gym, but take it easy over the weekends. On Tuesday and Thursday mornings, Cortana will alert you that it’s gym day and remind you to take your training kit. Clicking on “It’s a workout day” will take you to the Health & Fitness app, where you can find different workouts to try.

Cortana looks out for you, so if you happen to miss your Tuesday morning workout, Cortana will ask if you want to block some time on your calendar to make up for it. With one click you can launch the calendar app and schedule another workout. Sometimes, a little nudge is all it takes.

We’re building Cortana to be an even more useful personal assistant, so that, with your permission, she can keep your fitness plans on track.

To use these features, users will have to turn on “Fitness Tracker” in Cortana’s Notebook.

– The Cortana Team

Image Favorites (BETA)

Bing image search makes finding photos and art easy. And now with Favorites it’s easy to find them again. Just sign in to your Microsoft account on any PC and start adding image results by clicking on the heart icon on the image you want to favorite:

Your Favorites are organized by your searches, and you can view them by clicking on “Images” in the top navigation bar. As long as the images you added to Favorites remain available on the web, they’ll show up in your Favorites. The Favorites feature is currently in Beta and available to all signed-in Bing users. We welcome your suggestions for making it better.

– The Bing Team