Helping 
Master Chief out of perilous predicaments is one thing, but can Cortana help you get to your meeting on time?
Microsoft is working on a digital personal assistant for its Windows Phones to compete with Apple’s Siri and Android’s Google Now. And it has chosen the beloved Halo artificial intelligence character as its namesake.
Voice 
command may seem like a natural evolution for television, given the popularity of Apple’s Siri on the iPhone. But is it ready for primetime?
Samsung’s ES8000 LED set, the company’s flagship “smart TV” model introduced at last year’s CES, can be turned on simply by talking to it. LG’s Magic Wand remote control uses gesture control. Even accessories like Google TV and Microsoft’s Xbox 360 videogame console let people search for programming by shouting at the devices.
There was no new iPhone, no new iPad and certainly no news about the long-rumored TV set, but Apple still had plenty to say at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference Monday.
CEO Tim Cook announced a refresh of the company’s laptop series, a forthcoming series of advances to the iOS operating system and the long-awaited arrival of Siri on the iPad.
If you 
don’t have Siri on your iPhone, you sometimes have to dig around to find the information you’re looking for. Well the company behind the Dragon speech-to-text word processing program now offers an app to handle your web searches.
If you want Apple’s Siri, but don’t have the money to buy an iPhone 4S, you’re pretty much out of luck as far as the original goes. There are alternatives, though, and Evi could be the best of the bunch.
While the 
Consumer Electronics Show includes just about every type of gadget imaginable, the star of the show is almost always television.
Every year, manufacturers roll out their latest and greatest, touting a new technological advance they hope will resonate with consumers. But for the past few years, the reaction among shoppers has been more “ho hum” than “I gotta have it.”
It was hardly 
a secret that Apple would be rolling out its next generation iPhone at a press event Tuesday, but the Cupertino-based company still managed to sneak in a few surprises.
The iPhone 4S, which will be available for pre-order on Oct. 7 and will launch Oct. 14, will look almost exactly like the current 4G model, but a number of under the hood enhancements could be noteworthy for the entertainment industry – as could the expansion of the iPhone’s retail footprint with the addition of Sprint to the carriers offering the phone.
Chris Morris: Journalist 