Cortana showcases her electronic wits in a series of entertaining videos

6. jroc74 (Posts: 6019; Member since: 30 Dec 2010)

Yea...that is a good point. lol.

It shouldn't have allowed the appt to even be made....should have gave the warning first.

10. airisoverrated (Posts: 44; Member since: 08 Jun 2012)

Speak for yourself. I constantly have overlapping appointments due to reminders, repeating calendar entries, full day events layered with sub appointments throughout the day, and facebook events that I don't necessarily care about.

If I tell my phone to add an appointment I want it to happen. A notification of the conflict is all i need. I can decide for myself if it's an issue.

12. jroc74 (Posts: 6019; Member since: 30 Dec 2010)

If DVR's could warn us before recording overlapping shows, movies....I think these apps can too. (the older ones anyway....I understand DVR features are better now.)

But you make a interesting point tho. Although....when would you get the notification? Would it be in enough time to let someone know you cant make it?

I wouldnt want to schedule an overlapping dr appt and job interview...or overlapping job interviews...

13. airisoverrated (Posts: 44; Member since: 08 Jun 2012)

Indeed, there are certainly appointments that shouldn't conflict. A neat expansion of this feature in the future would be the ability to ask Cortana if you have an appointment at a specific date and time, or to list your appointments on a given date. That would certainly expand upon the personal assistant feature set they're going for. And in the even more distant future, it would be awesome to set the appointment location through Cortana, and if it could let you know your allotted drive time between appointments is insufficient.

For now though, it's clear in the video that the notification comes immediately after creating the appointment. I don't see how immediate feedback is not going to let you know in time.

This is no different from Siri, and unless it's been added in a more recent update over the past few months (possible but I'm unaware of it) Google Now is extremely limited in adding and editing your calendar (it's one feature I wanted them to copy from Siri). So Cortana's current calendar interaction is at least as good as it's competition.

11. airisoverrated (Posts: 44; Member since: 08 Jun 2012)

A looooong way to go? Lets think about that.

Apple already purchased another voice interaction company to play catchup to google now and cortana. I'm not saying cortana has every feature of google now, (for example bringing up your airline pass in a scanable fashion right in google now is cool) but it's got many of the same abilities, and a few unique ones that google doesn't have that I personally will use much more often.

Reminders based on who you're calling? Awesome for me when I'm working so I can make sure I cover all of the topics I need with whoever Im speaking with. Location based reminders? Totally useful for everyone, from shopping lists to tasks to be completed. 3rd party app integration is the bees knees, though likely only to be implemented by larger microsoft partners in time for launch. But Apple still hasnt implemented this and it has huge potential for developers and can present even more ease of use for casual users (see that Hulu Plus part).

Notice I didn't bother comparing it to Siri much. At this point it seems to be the least capable of the three. It can add appointments, text for you, call folks, and look stuff up, but has no feature to set it apart from the others. Yes cortana seems to be a bit of Siri (natural language, personality) and google now (tracking relevant personal info like travel time to appointments), but with some unique features that set it apart. Thats what all these companies do, take the best of what your competition does and try to improve it.

We will see if it works as advertised when released (remember siris launch issues with servers being overloaded), but if it performs as well as this demo, It will be very powerful and a great platform to build on in future releases.