At long last, Apple's HomePod is here--or reviews of it are, at least. The HomePod, Apple's answer to the Amazon Echo and Google Home, begins shipping on Friday, but early reviews of the $349 smart home speaker began making the rounds Tuesday morning. The initial verdict, it would appear, is decidedly mixed. The smart speaker faces stiff competition from Amazon and Google's product lines, which have both been available for multiple years and experienced booming sales in recent months. However, Apple has positioned its entrant as not just a voice-based smart home assistant but as a high-end audio device and musical companion.

Various technologies at Microsoft that began transforming the lives of individuals and communities in India last year will gain further momentum in 2018, the company's President Anant Maheshwari said on Tuesday. In a mission statement, Maheshwari said he is proud to play a role in the transformation of India's core pillars of education, health care, agriculture and governance, among others. Today, about 25 per cent students drop out from grade 10 to grade 11. "We have partnered with Andhra Pradesh government to see how machine learning can help educators foresee signs of a student being on the risk of dropping out and take preventive action. In 2017, the government expanded the rollout of the programme to all 13 districts in the state," Maheshwari said. Microsoft has also initiated "Project Sangam" that aims to upskill the workforce to prepare it for jobs that exist now and in the future.

If the fragmented media environment is a sick patient, machine learning may be the cure. That was the proposition Andrew Heyward, visiting scholar from MIT's Media Laboratory and former president of CBS News, outlined in his presentation, "Can Robots Solve Your PR Problems?" at the New York offices of agency Makovsky on Feb. 6. Heyward and his colleagues at MIT Media Lab's Laboratory for Social Machines are studying artificial intelligence solutions to modern plights of the PR practitioner: fake news, polarization, the public's lack of faith in journalism and short attention spans, to name a few. Heyward's group uses machine learning algorithms as their primary tool to map and track the overall health of the public sphere. And soon, PR pros may be able to use those AI insights to make better decisions--whether they're managing a crisis or planning a national campaign. Here are four PR applications of AI and machine learning shared by Heyward.

Let's look at some headlines: These articles were published mere hours before I wrote this post. There are countless more like it. There will only be more to come. The problem isn't with Artificial Intelligence, though the idea of extremely sophisticated machines enabled with intelligent software able to mimic or surpass a human's cognitive abilities surely merits further study. The possibilities associated with Artificial Intelligence are wonderful and terrifying (wondrifying). The problem is with sans serif.

"Hey Siri, why should I buy a HomePod?" If you were to ask that question a few months ago, the answer may have been more clear. When Apple unveiled its $349 Siri-equipped HomePod speaker in June, it was poised to fill a big hole in the smart speaker market. While the Amazon Echo and Google Home were pretty good at answering questions, they wouldn't blow anybody away when it came to audio quality. Apple, then, pitched its smart speaker as a piece of high-end audio gear aimed at music aficionados, with Siri on board as a bonus. But the HomePod, which finally starts shipping this week, was delayed for several months.

With less than 72 hours until its release, the first HomePod reviews are in from a hand-picked group of media outlets, and they're very positive--as long as you're buying Apple's $349 smart speaker for sound quality. The Homepod's "smarts," though, leave much to be desired. That's not a total surprise, since Siri is woefully inadequate on other devices and Apple hadn't given us any indication that it has enhanced Siri for HomePod. But in action it's even worse than we expected. Brian X. Chen of The New York Times laments Siri's capabilities on the new speaker and concludes that "Siri doesn't even work as well on HomePod as it does on the iPhone."

At Chordify we love two things: music and technology. Luckily, one does not exclude the other. But, becoming more and more pressing nowadays is the question: will we, humans, become orphaned in the marriage between music and technology? During the Eurosonic Noorderslag conference we presented this question to a panel of experts: Tjeerd Bomhof (lead singer of Voicst and his solo project Dazzled Kid), Colin Benders (from Kyteman), and Matt McVicar (from the British music and artificial intelligence company Jukedeck). The panel is hosted by our own music and technology expert, CEO of Chordify, Bas de Haas.

Now that smartwatches are actually useful enough for the general populace, setting them up isn't as pedestrian a task as pairing with your phone and calling it a day. On the surface, customizing your new device may not seem like a complicated task, but people often overlook some of the tools that can potentially make wearables more helpful. From recommended settings to the apps worth downloading, here's a walkthrough of what you should look out for when setting up your new wearable. This part you probably already know. Turn on your watch, pair it with your phone and follow the onscreen instructions.

"I have been running during the past six years with full force, and as Sony is going into the next stage, I thought it would be best for me and the company that I pass the baton now," Mr. Hirai, 57 years old, said at a news conference. Mr. Yoshida, 58, inherits a company that is making money in all its major areas, from traditional electronics such as televisions to videogame machines, smartphone game software and movies. That is a shift from the beginning of Mr. Hirai's term when the television business, among others, was churning out losses year after year. Even the movie business, which struggled in recent years, is riding a wave thanks to "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle," which was No. 1 at the U.S. box office for several weeks. The stock has risen 63% over the last year.

HomePod may be a latecomer on the smart loudspeaker scene but Apple's entry onto the dance floor is about to liven up the party. At least for well-heeled Apple diehards who share my passion for all kinds of music. If you fit that description and are willing to fork over $349 plus embrace the subscription-only Apple Music streaming service, HomePod is well worth the wait, an outcome I reached after testing the speaker for just shy of a week. Apple makes no bones that HomePod is a music-first speaker, and it sounds terrific, all the more notable given how small it is. Vocals were pure, bass deep. At the same time, the new speaker can be an exercise in frustration at times, especially when you request something of Siri that Apple's digital assistant can't deliver on HomePod.