Cortana is an Intelligent Personal Assistant created by Microsoft for Windows Phone 8.1 and for windows 10  like Siri in Apple’s Iphone. It is an Intelligent personal assistant and knowledge navigator for windows. It was launched by Microsoft and first demonstrated at Microsoft BUILD Developer conference in April 2014. The development of Cortana started in 2009 in Microsoft’s speech products team.

You can start Cortana after setting your phone for the first time. After setting you can see her when you press search button.

As of 2015, Cortana is available as beta to all the users of windows phone 8.1 in United States, China and United Kingdom. Microsoft also launched beta version of Cortana for Android and iOS.

Some amazing features of Cortana includes being able to set reminders for you, recorgnize natural voice input and answers questions from bing like current weather, live scores, traffic conditions etc. It also has a feature called “Concert Watch” which monitors your interest in musicians and bands and shows you relevant searches.

Here are some list of tasks or subjects with relevant examples to show what can you do with your Cortana:

• Chit-Chat – You can chit-chat with her and ask questions like “How old are you?”  or “Tell me a joke”.

• Calling – You can make her to call anybody in your phone list.

• Calendar task – You can re-schedule your saved meeting to another time or create an event by giving her proper command.

• Reminders – You can instruct her to remind you to “Pick your dry-cleaning tomorrow” or “remind you to call jonathan tomorrow”.

• Texting – You can instruct her to text your colleague.

• Notes – You can instruct her to make notes for you.

• Maps and direction – You can ask her questions like “Where am i ?” or “Give me shortest route to my office?“.

• Music – She can play music for you.

• Updates – She can give you updates about finance, current weather, current traffic conditions, sports scores, flight status etc.

You can also add your interest in Cortana’s notebook. Cortana also has a feature called as “Do not disturb” in which you can describe your “quiet hours“.

Cortana is region specific and changes her accent according to specific region, culture. For example, the UK version of Cortana speaks with British accent while the Chinese version speaks Mandarin Chinese.

Cortana’s natural language processing capability is derived from Tellme Networks, which Microsoft purchased in 2007.

As of April 2015, Cortana is restricted for users under age 13.

So, why are you waiting for, just go and get your cortana to explore “her”  amazing features.