Google has announced Google Assistant, a cloud-powered artificially intelligent personal assistant. Unlike Google Now, you interact with it in the form of a conversation - either in Google's new mobile chat apps or at home using an Amazon Echo-like mic-equipped speaker. Allo is a competitor to WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, with the benefit of Google Assistant. It can automatically suggest replies to messages in your conversations, even if it takes the form of a photo. So, if someone sends you a photo of a cat then Allo will suggest a reply of'that's a cute British short hair' using its image recognition algorithms. Allo will link your conversations to the wider web too.

Conversational bots, which can understand complex voice commands and complete tasks for you, are quickly becoming the rage. Earlier this month, the inventors of Siri showed off their creation Viv, which ordered flowers and booked a hotel in under a minute. Google Assistant, revealed this week, promises similar capabilities. Microsoft has now let slip that it's also working on a bot to help get things done, reports ZDNet off of a job posting from the company that's now been removed. Our biggest ever edition of TNW Conference is fast approaching!

We live in a world of information abundance. The ability to create, produce, market and distribute content in almost any form has becoming very easy. So easy that a shocking amount of what we're reading is created not by humans, but by computer algorithms - perhaps even this post;). In the most recent post on strategy4telcomediatech I highlighted the need to consider the role that'bots' play particularly in automating conversational commerce - 'sales and service'. In this post I take a look at the use of'bots' or algorithmic content in digital media, how it is shaping our consumption habits, content creation and some of the capabilities required in both traditional and new media organisations. Algorithms and natural language generators have been around for a while.

SAP rolled out a series of partnerships and advancements at its Sapphire Now event. Google unveiled a host of initiatives at Google I/0. HP Enterprise introduced an Internet of Things (IoT) platform. And AtScale, a BI for Hadoop platform provider, raised a new round of funding. We've got it covered in our Big Data Roundup for the week ended May 22, 2016.

One day in January, Eric Wilson dashed off a message to the teaching assistants for an online course at the Georgia Institute of Technology. "I really feel like I missed the mark in giving the correct amount of feedback," he wrote, pleading to revise an assignment. Thirteen minutes later, the TA responded. "Unfortunately, there is not a way to edit submitted feedback," wrote Jill Watson, one of nine assistants for the 300-plus students. Last week, Mr. Wilson found out he had been seeking guidance from a computer.

In the television series Star Trek, the tricorder is a machine that collects information about a patient's body to diagnose diseases. Although it started as an idea in science fiction, the technology is fast becoming a reality. Scientists have developed the first flexible wearable device that can monitor biochemical and electric signals in the human body. The'Chem-Phys' patch takes two separate kinds of signals in real time, to keep track of people's health during intense exercise. The'Chem-Phys' patch takes two separate kinds of signals in real time, to keep track of people's health during intense exercise.

The fear of the Earth being struck by an enormous asteroid has been the source for many science fiction films, but the threat of mankind being wiped out by an impact may be lower than we think. Until now, scientists used the strength of rocks found on Earth to model the damage these giant space boulders would cause. But researchers have now sacrificed a rare sample of meteorites to test the physical properties of asteroids and found they crumbled more easily than expected. It is an idea popular in science fiction, but the threat of mankind being wiped out by asteroids (artist's impression pictured) might be a lot lower than you think. Even though space rocks fall to Earth as meteorites all the time, very few are recovered.

From jumping out of a plane to riding rollercoasters again and again, some people thrive on thrill. But unlike excitement or fear, thrill can't be defined as a single emotion. In an attempt to define what makes an experience thrilling, and why some people can't get enough, a self-titled Thrill Engineer strapped cameras and heart rate monitors to volunteers. In an attempt to define what makes an experience thrilling, and why some people can't get enough, a self-titled Thrill Engineer strapped cameras and heart rate monitors to volunteers. Professor Of Thrill Brendan Walker (pictured) tries out the Ultimate Abyss aboard Royal Caribbean's Harmony of the Seas These participants then plummeted towards the ground on a 100ft-drop (30 metre) slide to help the professor determine the science of thrill.

BEIJING – A Chinese government bureau is planning a base station for an advanced rescue ship in the disputed Spratly Islands, state media reported on Monday, as China continues its push to develop civilian and military infrastructure in the contentious region. The ship, which would carry drones and underwater robots, is set to be deployed in the second half of the year, said Chen Xingguang, political commissar of the ship, which is under the South China Sea Rescue Bureau of the Ministry of Transport, according to the official China Daily. The civilian bureau has 31 ships and four helicopters conducting rescue missions in the South China Sea, and officials from the department told the China Daily they work with the military on such efforts. Officials said the rescue ship base station would enable rescue forces to aid fishing boats in trouble, and shorten the distance they need to travel. It is unclear on which island the ship will be based, but China has carried out land reclamation and construction on several islands in the Spratly Archipelago, parts of which are also claimed by the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia and Taiwan.

Passengers on a 14-day cruise were treated to an unusual sight in Shark Bay, Australia - about 70 tiger sharks feeding on a dead whale. Tour group Eco Abrolhos told the BBC the humpback whale had died naturally. It said the sight was "something to tell the grandchildren".