NEW YORK – Are you ready to turn your car, washing machine or running shoes into a point of sale? Visa is teaming up with IBM Watson to bring secure payment experiences to all sorts of connected products and services, embracing the ecosystem techies inelegantly refer to as the Internet of Things. IBM and Visa announced the collaboration Thursday at an event in Munich, Germany, where IBM is opening up a $200 million Watson Internet of Things headquarters. Via the partnership, the companies say they can support payments and commerce on virtually any of the 20 billion connected devices that Gartner estimates to be part of the global economy by 2020. "What we've seen over the last 12 months is serious companies committing serious business to IoT," says Brett Greenstein, vice president for IBM Watson IoT. Watson is IBM's cognitive computing platform, which leverages natural language processing and machine learning to learn from and extract patterns and meaning from mounds of unstructured data, from health care to sports.

IN A recent blog post, Gulliver expressed his exasperation at having to interact with other humans when he stayed at hotels. After all, in the age of mobile check-in and automated bartenders, it must be possible to swerve most of these pointless encounters (and avoid having to hand over tips for the most mundane services, such as pouring a beer or being shown to your room). One solution that didn't occur to him was robot butlers. The M Social Singapore hotel is introducing a droid that can deliver room service to guests. It navigates using 3D cameras and can negotiate lifts and manoeuvre around people wandering down the corridors.

NEW YORK--Are you ready to turn your car, washing machine or running shoes into a point of sale? Visa is teaming up with IBM Watson to bring secure payment experiences to all sorts of connected products and services, embracing the ecosystem techies inelegantly refer to as the Internet of Things. IBM and Visa announced the collaboration Thursday at an event in Munich, Germany, where IBM is opening up a $200 million Watson Internet of Things headquarters. Via the partnership, the companies say they can support payments and commerce on virtually any of the 20 billion connected devices that Gartner estimates to be part of the global economy by 2020. "What we've seen over the last 12 months is serious companies committing serious business to IoT," says Brett Greenstein, vice president for IBM Watson IoT. Watson is IBM's cognitive computing platform, which leverages natural language processing and machine learning to learn from and extract patterns and meaning from mounds of unstructured data, from health care to sports.

A new report from the UN's International Labour Organization (ILO) has found that working remotely can lead to insomnia and increased stress levels. The study, titled Working anytime, anywhere: The effects on the world of work, analysed the working habits of people from the UK, Belgium, France, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Argentina, Brazil, India, Japan and the US. It made distinctions between three groups of workers: those who work from home regularly, 'highly mobile' employees who work in various locations away from the office and those who split their time between the office and home. The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session A man looks at an exhibit entitled'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Electrification Guru Dr. Wolfgang Ziebart talks about the electric Jaguar I-PACE concept SUV before it was unveiled before the Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles, California, U.S The Jaguar I-PACE Concept car is the start of a new era for Jaguar. Japan's On-Art Corp's CEO Kazuya Kanemaru poses with his company's eight metre tall dinosaur-shaped mechanical suit robot'TRX03' and other robots during a demonstration in Tokyo, Japan Japan's On-Art Corp's eight metre tall dinosaur-shaped mechanical suit robot'TRX03' performs during its unveiling in Tokyo, Japan Singulato Motors co-founder and CEO Shen Haiyin poses in his company's concept car Tigercar P0 at a workshop in Beijing, China A picture shows Singulato Motors' concept car Tigercar P0 at a workshop in Beijing, China Connected company president Shigeki Tomoyama addresses a press briefing as he elaborates on Toyota's "connected strategy" in Tokyo.

Apple has announced when it will hold its Worldwide Developers Conference, the annual meeting where it reveals the future of its products. The major event will be begin on 5 June and run for four days, the company said. The first day is when Apple traditionally holds its major keynote, introducing the future of its software – with the rest of the days taken up with sessions for developers to learn how to use it. The company is almost certain to reveal iOS 11 and a new version of Mac OS, as well as new software for its other hardware like the Apple Watch and TV. Apple has sometimes used the event to show off new products and services, too.

IBM sees a big future in the Internet of Things. The company unveiled its $200 million IoT headquarters in Munich this week as part of its planned $3 billion investment in the connected devices industry. So far, however, the tech behemoth has mostly lent Watson's brains to larger companies and research projects. That's about to change thanks to a new partnership from IBM, Indiegogo and Arrow Electronics that promises to give independent developers and entrepreneurs access to those same machine learning tools. According to IBM, any qualified Indiegogo project will have free access to the Watson IoT platform and cloud services for an unlimited amount of time.

In April 2016, Uber announced the acquisition of Otto, a San Francisco-based startup that has developed a kit that can turn any big rig into a self-driving truck. The Otto technology enables complete autonomy on highways: trucks can navigate, stay in their lane, and slow or stop in response to traffic conditions completely without human intervention. Otto's equipment currently costs about $30,000, but that is certain to fall significantly in the coming years. Otto is by no means alone. Massive automated vehicles are already commonly used to move materials for the Australian mining industry.

Lab A: Virtual, augmented & mixed reality Monday 15 – Friday 19 May 2017 Cambridge Junction, Cambridge UK - This lab will take a practical and theoretical approach, framed within a peer-to-peer environment. There will be taught sessions covering Unity software, HTC Vive, HoloLens, 360 video, use of sound and project workflow. This will be balanced with theoretical talks on virtual, augmented and mixed reality by artists and our industry partners. Lab B: Artificial intelligence Monday 12 – Friday 16 June 2017 Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (University of Cambridge), Cambridge UK - Working with our partners, this lab will create a critical context for exploring AI from all perspectives, including the neighbouring areas of data culture and internet of things. There will be a mixture of taught sessions on how AI works, along with an AI'jungle' of devices such as Alexa, Siri, Cortana and WolframAlpha.

An "entrepreneurial" seven year old wrote to Google for a job and its CEO replied. After discussing her father's work, Chloe Bridgewater decided she would like to work for Google and penned a letter beginning "dear Google boss". It was only the schoolgirl's second letter, after her first missive to Father Christmas, but the search engine's CEO Sundar Pichai wrote back. Her father Andy said the girl "took it all in her stride". "We were gobsmacked, but I don't think Chloe could understand the magnitude of the reaction she'd got afterwards," said father Andy, a sales manager from Hereford.

Reddit has tweaked its front page to show more different posts – and exclude those from political forums. New users to the site and those who aren't logged in will be treated to a range of different posts than before, after the site made a tweak to what it will show. The change appears to be a response to the site's growing popularity – and fears that same popularity might be warping the kind of things that get shared and seen on the internet. The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session A man looks at an exhibit entitled'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Electrification Guru Dr. Wolfgang Ziebart talks about the electric Jaguar I-PACE concept SUV before it was unveiled before the Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles, California, U.S The Jaguar I-PACE Concept car is the start of a new era for Jaguar. Japan's On-Art Corp's CEO Kazuya Kanemaru poses with his company's eight metre tall dinosaur-shaped mechanical suit robot'TRX03' and other robots during a demonstration in Tokyo, Japan Japan's On-Art Corp's eight metre tall dinosaur-shaped mechanical suit robot'TRX03' performs during its unveiling in Tokyo, Japan Singulato Motors co-founder and CEO Shen Haiyin poses in his company's concept car Tigercar P0 at a workshop in Beijing, China A picture shows Singulato Motors' concept car Tigercar P0 at a workshop in Beijing, China Connected company president Shigeki Tomoyama addresses a press briefing as he elaborates on Toyota's "connected strategy" in Tokyo.