Cortana improvements: recommendations based on Foursquare and imitations of animals and characters

Continuing with its policy of continuous improvement, the Cortana team has just added a couple of interesting features to this voice assistant. The most useful of these is the ability to recommend us nearby places to visit, using Foursquare's database and recommendation engine. Recommendations are based on criteria such as proximity to venues, user reviews, number of check-ins, and newness of the venue.

Remember that in February Microsoft made a strategic investment in Foursquare precisely to be able to use information like this in its services.Of course, the implementation of information about places seems to be a bit limited for now, since there is no possibility to filter the recommendations by category Foursquare data is not available either still integrated into Bing and Cortana search results, although it is very likely that they will be in the future.

Additionally, Cortana can now recommend local apps, that is, apps related to places and services close to our location For example, if we are in Paris, Cortana will recommend us applications to use public transport in that city, or if we are near a ski center or a cinema, she will recommend applications to have more information about those services, and so on.

Another addition, perhaps less useful, but one that many will surely like, is the ability of the virtual assistant to imitate movie characterswhen we ask you to.Among the characters imitated by Cortana are Master Yoda from Star Wars, Buzz Light Year from Toy Story, and Gollum from The Lord of the Rings. For Cortana to carry out an imitation, you simply have to ask her by voice (always in English) and the assistant will tell us a famous phrase from one of these characters, even imitating her tone of voice.

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Along with this, Cortana also imitatesanimal sounds(or at least she tries to). By saying something like what does the sheep says? , she will answer us with the onomatopoeia of the sound of that animal (in this case, baaaah). As an Easter egg we have the case of the fox, since when asked what does the fox says? she will answer us by referring to the famous YouTube viral video. "

Clearly imitations are not something that will change our lives or solve problems, but they are welcome details as they give Cortana more personalityand allow us to interact with it in a more natural way.

Via | WMPowerUser, WPCentral