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You don't need to talk to use Cortana. I had Cortana disabled until the Anniversary Update came. If you don't agree to letting it see your emails/calendar/perso

by gbl08ma 10y ago

You don't need to talk to use Cortana. I had Cortana disabled until the Anniversary Update came. If you don't agree to letting it see your emails/calendar/personal stuff, it will become a limited version of itself (in fact, it didn't prompt me about it until I actively tried to do something that needed it). I was OK with letting that limited version enabled, and thought I would still not use even that. A few days ago, however, I had to set a five minutes timer. It was much easier to press the Windows key and type "set a timer for five minutes" than to go search for whatever app is responsible for timers. I find the "grandma-friendly command line" part of Cortana much more useful than the voice control part, and I can see why it comes enabled by default. I mainly use Linux and wish I had something like that in my KDE desktop (the Alt+F2 command bar is similar, but nowhere close).

aruggirello 10y ago
OTOH in KDE Plasma 5, if you have the great event calendar widget, setting a timer is just a couple mouse clicks away :)
dietrichepp 10y ago
You can do some of that online. Please forgive the LMGTFY link, since I'm really just trying to demonstrate a feature of Google's search engine: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=5+minute+timer http://lmgtfy.com/?q=5+minute+timer
- gbl08ma 10y ago
  Yeah, but I don't have Google mapped to a keyboard key, but even if I did, googling for "5 minute timer" (and similar variants, like "1 minute timer" or "30 seconds timer") yields the usual search results for me. At least Cortana is (at least since the Anniversary Update) consistent with what features it offers to each user, unlike Google which will randomly not present those built-in tools. And since I can't try it, I'm wondering: to use Google's timer, do I need to leave the tab open until it ends? Because in that case it's nowhere as nice as Cortana, which just goes into background...
  - Sylos 10y ago
    I just tried it, and it seems to me like it shows the timer only on google.com, not on the Google-domain for my country, so maybe that was a factor. The other comment pointed out more inconsistencies, though, so might really just be Google's algorithm judging at random who's allowed to get a timer and who not. DuckDuckGo's implementation [0] seems more robust to me, but if you don't use it as your default search engine, it's probably easier anyways to just click on the first link in the Google search results (or use Cortana obviously). And yeah, you do need to leave the tab open until it ends. I don't see that as that big of a flaw as you do, since most people have a browser open all the time anyways, but yeah, whatever floats your boat. Certainly isn't terrible to have another option for it. [0] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=5+minute+timer https://duckduckgo.com/?q=5+minute+timer
    - gbl08ma 10y ago
      Indeed DuckDuckGo's timer appears to be quite nice, I have it as my main search engine but didn't notice it had that. It's probably a recent addition. I agree that having to keep a browser tab open is not much of an issue, but for longer timers (hours) that can be an issue (although for that case, alarms are better suited... but then you need an alarm app, and while Cortana and Google Now will AFAIK set the alarm on their respective platforms, DuckDuckGo has no "platform" to do it...).
- cnvogel 10y ago
  Funny, if I search at work (using Chrome on Windows) for "Stopwatch" on google, I get the stopwatch "app". [I know, because I use is very often] Now, at home, when logged in chrome with my google account, I get... search results for the term "stopwatch". When I search for "stopwatch" in an incognito window, I get the "google search app", like so (just as I get at work): http://imgur.com/a/9r7Z2 http://imgur.com/a/9r7Z2 So, some people following your "lmgtfy" link might just get... search results for a "5 minute timer". When logged in, url-bar search redirects to https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome-psyapi2&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8&q=stopwatch&oq=stopwatch&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j0l5.1066j0j4 https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome-psyapi2&ion=1&... (yields just the search terms, for me..) When anonymous, url-bar search redirecty to https://www.google.com/search?q=stopwatch&oq=stopwatch&aqs=chrome.0.69i59.1285j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=stopwatch&oq=stopwatch&aqs=c... (yields the stopwatch)
pawadu 10y ago
Same here, I started using it after the anniversary update came out about a week ago. Before that Cortana was a privacy nightmare

by gbl08ma 10y ago

aruggirello 10y ago

OTOH in KDE Plasma 5, if you have the great event calendar widget, setting a timer is just a couple mouse clicks away :)

dietrichepp 10y ago

You can do some of that online. Please forgive the LMGTFY link, since I'm really just trying to demonstrate a feature of Google's search engine: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=5+minute+timer http://lmgtfy.com/?q=5+minute+timer

gbl08ma 10y ago
Yeah, but I don't have Google mapped to a keyboard key, but even if I did, googling for "5 minute timer" (and similar variants, like "1 minute timer" or "30 seconds timer") yields the usual search results for me. At least Cortana is (at least since the Anniversary Update) consistent with what features it offers to each user, unlike Google which will randomly not present those built-in tools. And since I can't try it, I'm wondering: to use Google's timer, do I need to leave the tab open until it ends? Because in that case it's nowhere as nice as Cortana, which just goes into background...
- Sylos 10y ago
  I just tried it, and it seems to me like it shows the timer only on google.com, not on the Google-domain for my country, so maybe that was a factor. The other comment pointed out more inconsistencies, though, so might really just be Google's algorithm judging at random who's allowed to get a timer and who not. DuckDuckGo's implementation [0] seems more robust to me, but if you don't use it as your default search engine, it's probably easier anyways to just click on the first link in the Google search results (or use Cortana obviously). And yeah, you do need to leave the tab open until it ends. I don't see that as that big of a flaw as you do, since most people have a browser open all the time anyways, but yeah, whatever floats your boat. Certainly isn't terrible to have another option for it. [0] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=5+minute+timer https://duckduckgo.com/?q=5+minute+timer
  - gbl08ma 10y ago
    Indeed DuckDuckGo's timer appears to be quite nice, I have it as my main search engine but didn't notice it had that. It's probably a recent addition. I agree that having to keep a browser tab open is not much of an issue, but for longer timers (hours) that can be an issue (although for that case, alarms are better suited... but then you need an alarm app, and while Cortana and Google Now will AFAIK set the alarm on their respective platforms, DuckDuckGo has no "platform" to do it...).
cnvogel 10y ago
Funny, if I search at work (using Chrome on Windows) for "Stopwatch" on google, I get the stopwatch "app". [I know, because I use is very often] Now, at home, when logged in chrome with my google account, I get... search results for the term "stopwatch". When I search for "stopwatch" in an incognito window, I get the "google search app", like so (just as I get at work): http://imgur.com/a/9r7Z2 http://imgur.com/a/9r7Z2 So, some people following your "lmgtfy" link might just get... search results for a "5 minute timer". When logged in, url-bar search redirects to https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome-psyapi2&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8&q=stopwatch&oq=stopwatch&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j0l5.1066j0j4 https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome-psyapi2&ion=1&... (yields just the search terms, for me..) When anonymous, url-bar search redirecty to https://www.google.com/search?q=stopwatch&oq=stopwatch&aqs=chrome.0.69i59.1285j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=stopwatch&oq=stopwatch&aqs=c... (yields the stopwatch)

pawadu 10y ago

Same here, I started using it after the anniversary update came out about a week ago. Before that Cortana was a privacy nightmare