audio version (opens in a new tab)
Since virtual assistants have become popular, this article will focus on three of them: Amazon’s Alexa, Google’s Assistant and Microsoft’s Cortana. Alexa is available in a variety of products. According to
this 2019 article from The Verge,
Alexa was available, at time the article was written, in a variety of smart speakers, as well as Alexa-enabled facial glasses and a ring. In fact, you can even use Alexa on your Windows computer. Detailed tips for using Alexa for PC are available as part of this
help article from Amazon about using Alexa on various devices.
Here is a video about Alexa from the official Alexa YouTube channel.
video: “What Is Alexa? An Introduction to Amazon’s Alexa Voice Service”.
I have an Alexa Echo Dot smart speaker myself, and the stand-out feature for me is the wide variety of Alexa skills. Essentially, Alexa skills are functionalities created by a variety of developers which enable Alexa to do even more things. Speaking of Alexa skills, here is an article I found entitled
“21 Alexa skills you need to know now”.
People who want to browse Alexa skills and change some settings for which Alexa recommends using the Alexa app can do so without installing an app on a smartphone. This can be done via the
My focus now switches to Amazon Alexa’s competitor, Google Assistant.
Google Assistant is, like Alexa, available in several ways. Here is information about
Google’s smart speaker, Google Home.
Alternatively, if you have an Android smartphone as I do, you can use Google’s Assistant on the Android device. Lastly, according to this Google support article, you can
use Google Home smart speaker on some Apple products.
Here is a
video: “Italian grandmother learning to use Google home”.
The most useful feature I value on Google Assistant is the vast amount of information available through a Google-powered search. The last virtual assistant I will discuss here is Microsoft’s Cortana.
Cortana can function on several platforms, though the variety of Microsoft-powered smart speakers appears limited. This article from Cortana Help, a section of Microsoft’s support site, entitled
“Control your smart home devices with Cortana”,
explains how to connect smart home accounts to Cortana. While researching this article, I could not ascertain if a smart speaker powered by Cortana is currently being manufactured. However, according to this
article quoting a Microsoft executive last year,
Microsoft did not plan at that point in time to create a smart speaker device of their own. For those choosing to use Cortana on Windows 10, Cortana is part of the operating system. Here is an article from the web site Windows Central called
“How to setup and use Cortana on Windows 10 PC”.
Here is a
video: “Cortana: Your Assistant for Life”.
Based on my limited experience using Cortana on a Windows 10 computer, the most useful feature is the ability to summon her using the voice command “hey Cortana”. That is definitely more convenient than using keystrokes to accomplish the same task. Next month’s topic will be screen readers 101.
Blake's talk 