Rest of the Day: Microsoft Limits Cortana Search to Bing
You don’t need Google! If you’re using Windows 10’s Cortana digital assistant to search the web, you’ll be better served with Bing. Microsoft wants complete control over search – that’s fine in theory – but it also means links will open in the Edge browser.
- Essentially, Microsoft wants to control as much of Cortana’s capabilities as possible in order to optimize its performance . That’s not unreasonable – and Google search using Cortana required a Chrome browser extension anyway . While having to open search results in an Edge browser (as opposed to Chrome or Firefox) is a little less sensible, MS wants end-to-end control. However, you can use any search engine for a search box other than Cortana on Windows. [Windows Experience Blog]
- If you are a Twitter freak like me, you may have noticed that the Magic Recs bot hasn’t slipped into your private messages for a while. (The bot will ping you if a lot of people you know suddenly signed up for an account or everyone was talking about the same topic and was surprisingly effective.) Now Twitter has admitted that he is dead . They just want to build these features into regular push notifications. [TechCrunch]
- eBay is now selling wine . Not used. [Business Wire]
- Microsoft is working on an IFTTT rival called Flow . It integrates apps to automate simple tasks like sending a text message when you receive an email from your boss. A preview was posted today and judging by the inclusion of Salesforce, GitHub, and Dynamics CRM, they seem to be aimed at professional use and not a simple joke. [Microsoft Flow via The Verge ]