Lucky summers for Xbox One users as they will be getting one of the much-awaited updates from Microsoft, the Cortana is about to be rolled out.
For those who have no idea what Cortana is, well, it is a Microsoft’s virtual assistant which lets you communicate with your device like "Siri" on Apple iOS and "Google Now Assistant" for Android. You can talk to your device by saying “Hey Cortana” and you can then give all the instructions through voice.

The purpose of launching Cortana is to integrate Windows 10 and the Xbox console. Though initially the update will not be available for Windows 10 but at a later stage, you will be able to use it with Xbox app on Windows 10.

What to Expect

So how Cortana will change your gaming experience? How can it be of any help? Is it really a much needed feature?

Cortana is referred to as the ‘personal gaming assistant’. It will assist you in gaming, of course, but this is just the beginning. Right now, you will be able to use Cortana for gaming features only but in near future, it will work with other devices and will include a whole lot of other exciting features.

Cortana lets you communicate with your console over voice. It can let you find new games, turn on the Xbox, you can start a party, and you can perform several other tasks. You can also use it to search stuff on Bing, simply give a voice instruction to search something and voila, you are done.

The good news is that there are multiple updates that will be rolled out so you will see some nice changes this summer, for example, a new game collection will be rolled out, improvements in screenshot sharing feature, some of the famous PC games will be added to your Xbox live, and much more.

This is just the beginning. Microsoft is very enthusiastic about the update and it has already announced that Cortana is not limited to gaming only, so you should expect some good new features being added in recent times.

When you have giants like Apple Siri, Google Now and Microsoft Cortana to your competition things can be very hard to get going. SoundHound, a new app for Google Android and Apple iOS is aiming to do exactly that, challenging them at being a better "Speech-to-Meaning" engine with better performance and competence.

Hound takes speed and accuracy to a whole new level by combining Speech Recognition and Natural Language Understanding to become a "Speech-to-Meaning" engine. Hound understands both context and detail, this Speech-to-Meaning capability makes Hound the new way to search and do things faster without typing. Hound gives user the ability to get fast and deep results like looking up the weather, placing a phone call, sending a text message, finding a hotel matching a detailed criteria, navigating to an address, checking the stock market, searching and playing music, and even playing interactive games.

As per the demonstration video posted ahead, the Hound beats the competition hands-down with it's insanely fast results to very very complex queries.

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Microsoft has now officially announced the arrival of Cortana Voice Assistant on rival Google Android and Apple iOS platforms. Labeling Cortana as "the first personal digital-assistant who works across your PC & your phone", the idea here is to enable the power and intelligence of a personal assistant available across device's be it your Desktop or mobile device. The idea also opens up the opportunity to sync, analyze and share the collective wisdom derived from the data across user devices enabling smarter suggestions from the virtual-assistant.

The announcement also detailed a new Windows 10 feature, the ‘Phone Companion App’ on the PC. The Windows 10 application will not only help users install Cortana app from the Google Play or Apple App Store onto their phones but which will also allow seamless data-sharing and syncing of any Windows phone, Android phone, or iPhone to Windows 10 PC. Do watch the official introduction video to checkout what exactly Microsoft has in store for your computing future.

The voice-activated personal assistant on your phones are getting smarter by the day and the battle for most usable artificial intelligence is being fought between Apple Siri, Google Now and Cortana. Stone Temple, a consulting company decided to put these three against each other to determine the best technology amongst them by evaluating each with no less then 3,000 voice queries.

Want to know who won the fight? Just watch the video below and click the "Read More" link below to get the exact results.

"Now that is a smartphone," admits Siri as the comparison ends in the latest Windows Phone 8.1 commercial promoted by Microsoft. Pitting the Apple’s Siri digital assistant against the newly unveiled Cortana in Windows Phone 8.1, the advertisement shows how an iPhone 5S pitted against a low-end Lumia 635 fairs as Cortana handles location-based reminders, along with traffic alerts which Siri is not able to do. Do enjoy the "Siri vs. Cortana - Happy Anniversary" commercial shared below.