Cortana is the intelligent, virtual, digital personal assistant that resides within my Lumia 635 smartphone from Microsoft. She is proving to be a steady companion, a helpful assistant, and a source of the latest news and weather, all done in response to the sound of my voice. Yesterday, while texting for the first time on the Lumia 635, I discovered that by tapping the “microphone” icon at the bottom of the screen I could call up Cortana within the texting function to transcribe my spoken words and she would transcribe them directly into text and enter them into the text message box automatically, all with an accuracy approaching perfect.
Microsoft
has hinted that it will include Cortana in its new Windows 10 operating
system. The company has already
announced that it will be incorporating Cortana’s speech recognition function
into Skype Translator at the front end and her speech synthesis ability on the
other end, having applied the capability of Bing Translator between these
spoken word events to translate the Cortana-derived texts from one language to
the other.
The more
language that Skype Translator processes, the better it gets at correctly
translating spoken text in one language into spoken text in another. It has also demonstrated “learning transfer,”
according to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, a process by which learning a new
language enables the Skype Translator program to function more efficiently in
translating languages it already knows.
Skype Translator is always learning.
The camera
on the Lumia 635 is a good one. I’ve
used it to take still photos and videos, which are easily uploaded to
Facebook. The phone is easy to use, has
good sound quality, and features an easy-to-use keyboard with a “Skype” option
that doesn’t seem to do anything yet.
The “Speaker,” “Mute,” and “Hold” buttons are arranged in a clean
lay-out that makes using them a snap. Contact
names and their respective contact numbers and addresses are elegantly
displayed on each person’s page. Cortana
will place calls for you to any of your contacts at the sound of your voice.
Cortana
knows what “yesterday,” “today,” and “tomorrow” are on any given day. She can be programmed to remind you of
appointments, or to tell a particular caller something you’ve asked her to
remind you about. Her voice, recorded by
Jen Taylor, who is also the voice of Cortana in the Halo series, is
pleasant and easy to listen to.
The phone
doesn’t have a front-facing camera, so videoconferencing seems out of the
question for now, but if you want a reliable digital companion and helper, a
great phone in an attractive package, and a very functional system for
recording and uploading digital images and video, then the Lumia 635 could be
the phone for you.
Join the
Cortana Users Group on Facebook at:
Join the
Skype Translator Users Group on Facebook at:
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