One of the benefits of Cortana is that we can make updates behind-the-scenes on the servers that light up new capabilities without the need for a software update. We added the ability for Cortana to predict the winners in popular soccer matches in Brazil courtesy of Bing magic earlier this month. Starting today, Cortana will now proactively showcase local recommendations from Foursquare on devices running Windows Phone 8.1 in the U.S. To turn this on, go to Cortana’s Notebook and then Interests and look for “best nearby” and then toggle this option to “ON”.
How this works is that Cortana talks to the Foursquare service in the cloud and gets the best recommendations for your location and time of day. If a particular interest catches your eye, you can click on it and Cortana will open up that location in the Foursquare app. W00t! If you don’t have the Foursquare app installed (you can install it here!) then it’ll take you to the Foursquare web experience.
This is another example of Bing magic at play. For more, read this blog post from the Bing Blog.