Most retailers should be familiar with Alexa, Amazon's digital assistant that works through the company's Echo wireless speaker. Until recently Alexa could order product based upon a spoken command as long as it was something that you had previously ordered. While this was powerful Amazon has a larger goal in mind. This past week saw Amazon announce that Alexa now has more than 1,400 'skills', applications that Alexa is integrated to. For example, you can order an Uber simply by speaking to Alexa or organize a new playlist of songs from your music library.

Someone at Google really likes sneakers: The company has just bought a French machine learning startup that taught a computer how to recognize 15,000 different types of them. Paris-based Moodstocks builds image and object recognition software using deep learning techniques, and offered an Android app and visual search API that could recognize certain kinds of object. By analyzing video from a smartphone camera, and correlating it with accelerometer readings to determine how the camera is moving around, the software is able to infer information about the three-dimensional shape of objects in the video, facilitating their recognition. In February 2015 the company demonstrated its ability to identify sneakers through its app. Three months later, after training the software using 15,000 photos of shoes from an online retailer's website, Moodstocks claimed to be able to shop online for all the sneakers on sale in a Macy's store. Google has been introducing elements of machine learning into its existing online services, including Google Translate and Inbox, a next-generation interface for Gmail.

Alternatively, you can get the measure of one at Dyson's new "Demo" store in London, which not-so-coincidentally opens its doors today. The first of these interactive spaces debuted in Paris way back in 1999. Over the past couple of years, though, they've come to Tokyo, Jakarta, and now London's shopping-mad Oxford Street. The best way I can describe it is like walking into a fancy infomercial. Products sit on white plinths, illuminated by swish LED spotlights developed by Jake Dyson, son of company frontman James.

I had to comment to balance out the one single negative comment. It's true that there's some problems with the printing but the comment is irrelevant for the book's content. I think that the first volume is a great summary of subjects that junior data scientists must know. Also, I being a great believer in Occam's razor: if you managed to explain (or at least to remind) how does an SVM works in 2 pages instead of 20 pages - then you did a good job. The internet (and the library?) is full of details for further research.

Onstage at the Code Conference this week, Amazon boss Jeff Bezos stressed that Amazon was committing to "intelligent" voice assistant devices in a big way. Bezos said that the company has more than 1,000 people working on the "Alexa and Echo ecosystem," and that what we've seen so far is "just the tip of the iceberg." Google introduced its own Amazon Echo competitor, Google Home, at I/O last month, in addition to its own voice-powered software ecosystem. And in a week and a half, Apple is reportedly going to announce that it's opening up Siri to outside developers (the company is also said to be working on its own Echo-like device). By flicking at the broader "ecosystem" of apps and services that Amazon wants to support through its Echo, Bezos is making explicit what the next stage of the competition for Echo will look like.

Bots have officially taken over, and they're about to make our lives a whole lot easier. In April, Facebook introduced bots for Messenger, but the world's most popular social media platform is not the only company to open a "bot store" with consumer functions, and virtual assistants like Amazon's Alexa are steadily increasing in both popularity and functionality. With Kik, you can chat with Michelangelo and see the climate conditions through Yahoo! With Operator, shopping is as easy as sending a text, and Pana, the online travel agency, turns a simple chat conversation via text into real bookings. In fact, everyone from 1–800-Flowers and the NBA to Taco Bell is jumping on the chatbot bandwagon.

An Amazon warehouse is a flurry of activity. Towering hydraulic arms lift heavy boxes toward the rafters. And an army of stubby orange robots slide along the floor like giant, sentient hockey pucks, piled high with towers of consumer gratification ranging from bestsellers to kitchenware. Those are Kiva robots, once the marvel of warehouses everywhere. Amazon whipped out its wallet and threw down US 775 million to purchase these robot legions in 2012.

If Dr. Chan is actually a doctor in anything, I doubt if it has anything to do with actual trading. Lots of useless screenshots of forex data price charts with single Metatrader indicators on them. The book is not worth reading even if you were paid to read it,. None that I've met or worked with.

Amazon's (NASDAQ:AMZN) artificial intelligence Alexa can now place orders on Amazon, making it even easier for shoppers to use the service with more frequency. Alexa is the digital voice assistant inside the company's Echo Bluetooth speakers. It previously could only re-order items that had already been purchased, but now it can order anything that is available to Amazon Prime members, with some exceptions. Users simply ask Alexa for a product available with Prime, she makes a suggestion, reports the price and a simple "yes" buys it. There are millions of items now available for ordering through Alexa and quite a few that are not, including Amazon Fresh, Amazon Prime Pantry and Amazon Prime Now items.

Now you can talk into your friendly little home AI tower to order toilet paper. And tens of millions of other Amazon Prime qualified products, because no one does synergy quite like the good people at Amazon. The retail-super-mega-giant, which had previously enabled reordering through Alexa, is now adding search/shopping to its AI voice assistant. Users with Amazon Echo, Echo Dot, Tap or Fire TV can shop for new products by saying, say, "Alexa, order a Frisbee," at which point the program will suggest a relevant Prime product and price. Say "yes," and, well, you've probably ordered a product on Amazon at some point, so you know how the rest of this deal goes.