Linked List: April 2, 2014

Wednesday, 2 April 2014

Amazon Fire TV 

Like Apple TV but with games and voice search.

Cortana, Microsoft’s Answer to Siri 

Nick Wingfield, writing for the NYT:

Cortana is named after a virtual character in Halo, Microsoft’s science-fiction video game series, that uses her encyclopedic knowledge about the universe to help the game’s protagonist, Master Chief. The actress, Jen Taylor, who does the voice for the character, also provided recordings for the phone assistant’s voice.

Two things jumped out at me regarding this story. First, that Microsoft gladly credited the actress supplying Cortana’s voice. Second, that Google and Android went unmentioned in the article.

Update: More on Cortana from The Verge.

Windows Phone 8.1 

Massive upgrade to Windows Phone; seems like more new features going from 8 to 8.1 than there were going from 7 to 8. Hoping to get my hands on a device running this.

And: Microsoft is making Windows free for phones and tablets with screens under 9 inches. (Insert joke here about 10-inch phones.)

Apple Updates iWork for Mac, iOS, and iCloud 

Dan Miller on what’s new in iWork. (AppleScript improvements aplenty, too.)

‘Stampy in the Hunger Games’ 

Special guest John Moltz joins me on the latest episode of my podcast, The Talk Show. We discuss the just-completed Macworld/iWorld conference and expo, Microsoft Office for iPad, Minecraft, and more.

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