Did you know that, more and more, you can just talk to your computer to do things?
Historically, computers have generally been difficult to use. But they’ve recently gotten easier…you can often talk to them now. So get out there and say “OK Google, Hey Siri, Hey Cortana” and see how many phones and computers you can get to respond at once. You can’t get everything accomplished by talking yet, but it’s pretty impressive sometimes.
Android
On an Android phone or tablet, you can tap the little microphone button and say things like “navigate to Smiths”, “set a timer for 15 minutes”, “remind me to water plants in 1 hour”, “note to self: buy milk”. Similarly, you can click the Microphone at google.com while using the Chrome browser. You can also set these up to respond to you saying “OK Google”.
iPhone
On iPhone 4S and above, you can hold the Home button and talk to it. (I think you can also set it to respond to “Hey Siri” or just hold it up to your ear too, assuming you have that set up.) Then you can ask it, “how do I right-click in OSX?”. (I never get tired of that joke.)
Windows 10
And now Windows is getting in on the game with Windows 10. Once you get things set up in Windows 10, you can just say “hey Cortana” and say things like “start calculator”, “play music”, or “show me pictures of dinosaurs”. For some reason, it doesn’t respond to, “shut down”. I wonder why?
If you update to Windows 10 in the next year, it’s free. This assumes that you have a laptop with a mic, a headset, or some other kind of microphone. This won’t work if you have no mic. Once Windows 10 is installed, click the little search bar in the lower left and set it up. You might have to click the little microphone icon down there and set that up. You’ll also need to set up voice activation by going to the start menu and typing Cortana to go to Cortana settings. Enable the “hey Cortana” feature. Once you do this, it’s pretty funny to say “hey Cortana” in a room with many PCs.
