Make your list and check it twice because the biggest shopping weekend of the year is just a few short days away. But before you head to the store or log on to your favorite shopping sites, head to Microsoft Edge and Bing, to get several new tools to help you find the perfect gifts and save money. Get access to coupons with Microsoft Edge and Cortana Microsoft Edge notifies you of the best coupons Cortana can find for a retailer without you ever...
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Get your weekend movie recommendations from Cortana If it’s Thursday and you’re wondering what fun things to do over the weekend, Cortana might just have the answer for you. Especially if you love going to the movies. Cortana continuously learns new things about you and will suggest new activities that you might enjoy. Last October, we announced that Cortana will keep an eye out for your favorite artists and will let you know in advance if they...
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Last month, we announced the expansion of Windows Phone 8.1 with Cortana to China (nicknamed “Xiao Na”).  As you can read about here, the team did a tremendous amount of work to tailor the experience to ensure that Cortana felt intelligent and natural for Chinese speakers. Today we wanted to share some related work that was inspired by the question Alan Turing posed in 1950: “Are there imaginable digital computers which would do well in the...
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Today, people in the US with phones running Windows Phone 8.1 will have a new way to experience Foursquare recommendations.  Now, based on your location, Cortana will proactively showcase local recommendations from Foursquare on the Cortana home screen, along with your other interests. [To turn on the feature, pull up Cortana’s notebook go to Interests, look for “best nearby” and then toggle to ON] Cortana talks on your behalf to the Foursquare...
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At Build, we previewed Cortana powered by Bing which will ship with the upcoming release of Windows Phone 8.1. One of the things that makes Cortana so helpful is her ability to learn about your preferences and interests. As we talked about last week, it is the Bing platform that makes this possible, earned through years of experience doing web search. Starting today, we are unveiling a set of personalized cards on the Bing homepage that will help...
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Last week, we took the stage in San Francisco and proudly announced Cortana as part of the Windows Phone 8.1 update. You’ve likely already read about how Cortana will use the power of Bing to deliver personalized, natural experiences to users. What you may nothave read is how Cortana empowers application developers to deliver robust, natural experiences of their own. Windows Phone 8.0, our previous release, brought with it the Voice Commands...
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For Bing, the future of search is not about more search boxes – it’s about building a platform that enables applications and devices to empower people with knowledge and help them do more – not just search more. Today, we showcased work we did to enable Cortana on Windows Phone. By building a new set of Bing-powered services, we enabled a new experience that is more personal, intelligent and helpful. Last year at Build, we took...
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The world is a chaotic place. From the billions of Facebook updates made each day to the constant tick of stock quotes for the 3,571 companies listed on NASDAQ, there are trillions of pieces of information about the real world swirling out there every day. While there are plenty of apps and services that can help us manage what’s happening, we’re often left feeling buried by the weight of it all. Instead of feeling empowered, we feel...
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