Cortana Lands on Android and iOS; A Number of Us Are Rarely Offline

In what seems like quite a clever move (and a bit of bet-hedging), Microsoft gone live with Cortana for Android and iOS. 9to5google.com notes it’s been a small beta since last month, but now you can check out it’s functionality for real. Since it’s an app, and not baked in, don’t expect it to have the power of Google Now or Siri yet. With Windows Phone still in the basement, Microsoft is smart to be porting over to the two much more widely used mobile systems.

TV and Comedy have had a lot of fun with people being inseparable from their smartphones and computers…everything from chipped people to the Simpsons’ Eye Phone, where the thing replaced an eyeball…so now comes data from Pew research that 21% of Americans go online almost constantly. Drilling down, 73% are online daily, 42% several times a day, 13% several times a week or less. The Luddite contingent of people who never use the internet stands at 13%. They probably still have buggy whips…and I don’t mind insulting them, since they’ll never read this or hear it anyway!