SEO is a constant source of anxiety among business owners and marketers; especially in recent years, as Google has introduced and increased its focus on "contextual" search. The Knowledge Graph is one of the best examples, because it presents a tremendous opportunity for quicker and more detailed viewer engagement--but only if you know how it works and how to get yourself listed. With the above in mind, in this article we'll go over what the Knowledge Graph is, why it should matter to you, and how to best optimize your website for inclusion. The Knowledge Graph is a knowledge base used by Google. It was created in 2012 by Google so that it could better understand the world the way people do by using entity-based searches.

R is the world's most popular language for developing statistical software: Archaeologists use it to track the spread of ancient civilizations, drug companies use it to discover which medications are safe and effective, and actuaries use it to assess financial risks and keep economies running smoothly. The Art of R Programming takes you on a guided tour of software development with R, from basic types and data structures to advanced topics like closures, recursion, and anonymous functions. No statistical knowledge is required, and your programming skills can range from hobbyist to pro. Along the way, you'll learn about functional and object-oriented programming, running mathematical simulations, and rearranging complex data into simpler, more useful formats. Whether you're designing aircraft, forecasting the weather, or you just need to tame your data, The Art of R Programming is your guide to harnessing the power of statistical computing.

The news was the big surprise saved for the end of a two-hour keynote at the search giant's annual Google IO event in the heart of Silicon Valley. "We have started building tensor processing units…TPUs are an order of magnitude higher performance per Watt than commercial FPGAs and GPUs, they powered the AlphaGo system," said Sundar Pichai, Google's chief executive, citing the Google computer that beat a human Go champion. The accelerators have been running in Google's data centers for more than a year, according to a blog by Norm Jouppi, a distinguished hardware engineer at Google. "TPUs already power many applications at Google, including RankBrain, used to improve the relevancy of search results and Street View, to improve the accuracy and quality of our maps and navigation," he said. The chips ride a module that plugs into a hard drive slot on server racks.

Last October, a computer system beat a professional human player at the ancient Chinese board game Go. The AI system, AlphaGo, was built by Google and trained using machine learning techniques. Google built the hardware that powered AlphaGo in-house, as it does with most of its infrastructure components. At the core of that hardware is the Tensor Processing Unit, or TPU, a chip Google designed specifically for its AI hardware, the company's CEO, Sundar Pichai, said from stage this morning during the opening Google I/O conference keynote next to Google headquarters in Mountain View, California. This is the first time Google has shared any information about the hardware backend that powers its AI, which will play a central role in the company's revamped cloud services strategy, announced earlier this year.

Futurist, author and inventor Ray Kurzweil delivered a keynote speech to 800 attendees at 2016 Tech Leadership Conference in Waterloo, Canada. Ray Kurzweil envisions the future -- by year 2020, 3D printing will transform manufacturing. People will print their own clothing, he predicts. In Asia, builders are making small office buildings using modules made by 3D printers. Inventors created jet engines and cars out of printed parts, Kurzweil says. Impact on a declining manufacturing industry could be catastrophic. Jobs will be lost, manufacturing will turn into an information industry, but there's a silver lining behind industry disruption, he says. The fashion industry will explode with new ideas as people design, make and share clothes using 3D printers. Kurzweil sees manufacturing moving into open source design and production.

Life would be pretty dull without imagination. In fact, maybe the biggest problem for computers is that they don't have any. That's the belief motivating the founders of Vicarious, an enigmatic AI company backed by some of the most famous and successful names in Silicon Valley. Vicarious is developing a new way of processing data, inspired by the way information seems to flow through the brain. The company's leaders say this gives computers something akin to imagination, which they hope will help make the machines a lot smarter.

At long last, it appears the Siri virtual assistant is making it to Mac desktops. MacRumors reports that sources close to Apple have shared screenshots that show Siri icons appearing both in the dock and menu bar of early versions of Mac OS X 10.12, due in the fall of this year. The site did not have any other evidence at the time beyond what its sources were telling it. Macrumors says the images come from a source that provided "reliable information about Apple's software plans in the past." Apple is widely expected to unveil Mac OS X 10.12 at WWDC next month.

Google, playing catch-up with Amazon's surprise hit Echo speaker, unveiled a rival device called Home that promises even more dazzling artificial intelligence. The Home, slated for release later this year, will be powered by the impressively chatty Google Assistant, a voice-activated rival to Amazon's Alexa and Apple's Siri that Google execs said can better understand human speech and complex queries. Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai -- who took the reins of the search giant last year after founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin created its holding company, Alphabet -- showed off the assistant's abilities at Google's annual I/O developer conference Wednesday in Mountain View, Calif. In addition to showing it ordering movie tickets, arranging travel and answering trivia questions, Pichai demonstrated how the Assistant can answer queries about photographs. It can even group them into surprising categories, like those that show "hugs."

If opening musical numbers are any indication, Google wanted to make sure everyone knew it was going to be a mind-blowing yet quirky day right from the start. After two years holed up in San Francisco's Moscone Center, Google's annual I/O developer conference kicked off outside on Wednesday, in a white-tented amphitheater on the company's campus in Mountain View. To begin, two musicians, placed in what looked like giant crows' nests, played strings that ran the length of the forum, stretching from their perches to the metalwork above the stage where Google CEO Sundar Pichai would soon appear. The tune was a number by Yann Tiersen, whose jaunty French folk music has found a wide and loving audience through films like Amélie. The video that followed took that vibe and gave it a Four Loko.

Google (GOOGL) kicked off its developer conference Wednesday by highlighting its progress with artificial intelligence. CEO Sundar Pichai opened and closed the closely watched event at its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters by outlining the Internet giant's research in AI and machine learning. Among the applications Google sees for this technology is teaching computers how to "see" what's in a person's photo, as well as understanding what users are asking a software program to do, rather than simply deciphering spoken language. All of that baseline research, which companies such as Facebook (FB), IBM (IBM), Microsoft (MSFT) and China's Baidu (BIDU) are also pursuing, today is already being used in Google products in some way, he said. Notably, Pichai explained, Google's focus on AI shows its efforts to move away from its search engine's reliance on links and instead delivering information based on where users and what they have asked for in the past.