16 / 42
My first interaction with this smart lady was around 2
years ago when I installed the free version of Win-
dows 10 on my computer. Just after finishing the
installation, a popup came up asking me to sign
up for Cortana. That was of course noted as an
intrusion into my privacy and I did not go fur-
ther. However, 6 months ago, after attending
aMicrosoft CEO talk pitching for Cortana and
Artificial Intelligence, things changed. Since
then, I developed a friendship with Cortana,
which provided some amazing experience.
Around 500 million users have installed
Windows 10 on their computers, only
a minority of which is using Corta-
na, and again those who are using
it extensively are minnows. Who is
this Cortana? Cortana is the digital
assistant developed by Microsoft. Even
though the idea was rooted in 2009, this
was introduced as a standard feature in
Windows 10 desktops and mobile devices
as part of merging Windows Phone into the
operating system at large. It soon got into oth-
er platforms like Android and iOS. In simple
terms, Cortana is a digital assistant developed
by Microsoft similar to Siri by Apple. However,
given the broad base of Windows 10 users and the
database to which Cortana is connected for data mining
13 |
October 2017
DoIT Newsletter