Microsoft’s digital assistant Cortana has been landing on PCs over the last few months as Windows 10 climbs to over 100 million installs. Cortana can help manage a user’s day by surfacing traffic info, package tracking, news alerts, and email and calendar reminders to the desktop.
While Cortana can be used as a strictly business experience, the assistant also shines at more casual use cases. Microsoft has shown off its ability to sing songs, play trivia games, make predictions and ramble off impersonations. Thanks to an open API, 3rd party developers are adding to the list of things the digital assistant can do.
Developers Liquid Daffodil have created their own app that ties into Cortana and enables the digital assistant to respond to twenty creative commands. The app, Cortanium, allows Windows 10 users to summon up Cortana on their PCs or phones with queries for movie and TV recommendations, daily horoscopes, and Foursquare check-ins amid a host of other searches.
The app offers:
- Get movie recommendations
- Get TV show recommendations
- Get your daily horoscope
- Get OneDrive storage information
- View and check SharePoint documents
- Get random interesting facts
- Create new and random passwords
- Check-in to Foursquare
- Interact with your Microsoft Band
- Get a Microsoft Healthy summary
- Get Xbox gamer stats
- Save current locations for later references
- Get Klout score (if that is still a thing)
- Search locations, contacts, restaurants, etc. and them to Contacts
- Integrate Contact Search with Microsoft and Exchange accounts
- Discover secret commands
The developers are working on adding more controls in the future and ask users to submit commands they would like to see incorporated. As Cortanium continues to evolve, the developers over at Liquid Daffodil are also hoping to offer the app in more countries that already have Cortana access. Currently, Cortanium is only being offered in U.S. and U.K. markets, but folks in Germany, Canada, France and Australia could have access to the app as early as November.
Word of caution, Windows 10 Insiders may experience some glitches in-app as they update to new builds of Windows 10.
