Microsoft and Amazon’s Incredible Collaboration | Loginworks

“Hey, Siri”…..is the most popular Apple’s digital assistant command that you use every single day. You used it to get things done faster from your Apple device. But now, Alexa and Cortana are also in the race. Recently Microsoft and Amazon have announced their incredible collaboration. Under this alliance, Amazon’s Alexa and Microsoft’s Cortana work hand-in-hand to give more choices and access to the users.

This collaboration will allow you to use Alexa through Cortana on Windows 10 systems, Android, and iOS devices. Equally, you can access Cortana on Alexa facilitate devices such as Amazon Echo, Echo Show, and Echo Dot. Microsoft and Amazon show that when people and technology work together it brings a win-win situation to all. The teams of these big giants already started planning to make their assistants available to their customers everywhere and across every device.

How it’ll Work?

Alexa is an Amazon voice assistant that works on simple voice commands. It can play music for you, control smart home appliances, can shop for you on Amazon. Furthermore, it can search for you over the internet and set reminders for you. It has a very powerful microphone that consists of far-field technology. It is so sharp that it can catch your voice even from another room. Cortana is also a voice-controlled virtual assistant for Microsoft Windows 8.1. It uses the Bing search engine to give information, answers, set reminders, notebook features, and calendar options.

So if you’ll use an Alexa device you need to give the command like “Alexa open Cortana” to get its digital assistance. On the other side if you’ll use Cortana, then you need to give the command “Cortana open Alexa.” It appears that both companies have simply created skills on each other’s platforms to enable these IT services globally.

Alexa works on Cortana

With this one of its kind collaboration, Cortana users will have an amazing online shopping experience. For instance, if you’re at work and receive a text from your babysitter that she is short with baby diapers, then all you need to simply say “Hi Cortana open Alexa”. When you can see Amazon’s application on your phone just give voice commands and order the baby’s diaper while choosing your preferred payment method.

Cortana works on Alexa

Cortana, as a guest on Alexa, will help users to stay more organized. Suppose you need to attend two meetings in a day but want to go out for a lunch with your friend. In this case, you can command “Hi Alexa open Cortana” and ask about the timings of your meetings. There you can easily check the time gap and set a reminder for your next meeting. In this way, you can enjoy your lunch without getting late for it.

Things Cortana And Alexa Can Do For You

Cortana and Alexa both can do lots of things that really make your daily task easier. Let’s have a look at the wonders they can do for you:

Set Reminders

All you need to say “remind me” to these virtual assistants to get them started. These virtual assistants remind you of your specific time, specific location, or a specific person. You can also use speech such as “remind me to take fruit juice at 7 pm” to set the reminder. You’ll notice that their reminder will buzz on the set time. This is a powerful inbuilt reminder feature that helps you to perform your daily task right on time.

Make Search Easier

These virtual assistants support natural language really well. You can also use natural language to search for files on your computer. You need to say “Hi Alexa play shape of you from my playlist “. It’ll play that song for you within seconds. In this way, you can see that they support natural language really well. Cortana and Alexa both have a superb feature to respond to natural language that makes your every search quicker than ever.

Do Calculations

Virtual voice assistants also do different types of calculations and conversions for you. You can either type or speak out the numbers with whatever functions you want to calculate. They make all sorts of unit conversions or mathematical calculations very easy. You can blindly trust the result as they ensure 100 % accuracy.

Track Flights

Tracking your flight is another marvelous feature of these virtual assistants that you can enjoy. You need to enter your flight and packages tracking numbers into the search box to view its current status. Virtual assistants such as Cortana give departure and arrival time of your flight and show you if there is any delay as well.

Find Facts

You can also find facts and direct answers to your common questions related to any topic from virtual assistants. You can take the example of Cortana or Siri where you just need to speak your questions and you’ll get the answers in just microseconds. In fact, you’ll get a number of related searches and answers that offer you wide knowledge.

Get the Directions

Just like Google Map, Cortana is also going to help you with directions. You just need to ask Cortana for any particular location and it will open Windows 10 maps app with the directions. You can use it as a Google Maps alternative and feel the difference.

Send Your Email

These virtual assistants also help you to send emails. You can configure your email id in the inbuilt mail app and send emails accordingly. You can also try voice command such as “send email to Merry” if you have that person on your contact list.

Upshot

Amazon and Microsoft both have to worry about their counterparts like Google and Apple those who can give tough competition to this collaboration. But undoubtedly, Cortana and Alexa’s friendship makes life a bit easier. The updated versions of Cortana and Alexa assistants will be available sometime later this year. Together Cortana and Alexa’s strengths will complement each other and provide you a richer experience.