Samsung is not launching the Galaxy S8 this month, but tidbits about the flagship phone's specs and features are already spreading online like wildfire. This week, a new report is claiming that the Galaxy S7 successor's camera will come with Bixby support. Bixby is Samsung's upcoming AI assistant that is rumored to match Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa in more ways than one. The intelligent assistant is rumored to launch with the ability to control all of Samsung's native apps and even conduct mobile payments. Interestingly, there is new information claiming that a Bixby search tool will be integrated into the software that controls the Galaxy S8 camera. This Thursday, SamMobile ran an exclusive story about the S8's standard camera having a visual search and optical character recognition (OCR) tool powered by Bixby.

Did you ever get a pre-recorded telemarketing or spam call, and try calling back, only to get redirected to a premium rate service? There have been several instances of such telecom fraud, costing telecom companies a lot of money. While telecom fraud calls can take several forms, most cases involve fake conferencing services and false answer supervision (FAS). For instance, when a network carrier dials a number with the support of unscrupulous third-party providers, the targeted user might choose from various IVR options to connect with a customer care representative beyond business hours. Eventually, instead of getting a notification stating that the service is unavailable during this time, the call might generate billable minutes. Such instances of telecom fraud calls are only rising.

The scientific discoveries and technological innovations produced by Bell Labs research and engineering have been critical not only to the evolution of global telecommunications but, more widely, they had a considerable impact on the technological base of the global economy and, indeed, on our daily lives. Bell Labs is the source of many significant contributions, of course, in the area of telephony, but also in memory devices, imaging devices, system organization, computers and software technology, as well as acoustics, optics, switching, transmission, and wireless and data communication. New principles, new materials, new devices, and new systems from Bell Telephone Laboratories resulted in new industries, hundreds of new products, and thousands of new jobs. The invention of the transistor in 1947, and subsequent advances in related solid-state device and circuit technology formed the basis of a multibillion dollar global industry and ultimately enabled the digital world. Shannon's seminal paper titled "A Mathematical Theory of Communication," published over 60 years ago, gave birth to Information Theory and has stood as the guiding foundation for communications scientists and engineers in their quest for faster, more efficient, and more robust communications systems ever since.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Intelligent Agents for Telecommunication Applications, IATA'98, held in Paris, France, in July 1998, in conjunction with the 1998 Agents World Conference. The book presents 17 revised full papers carefully selected for inclusion in the volume. The book is divided into topical sections on network architecture, network configuration and planning, network optimization, network management, agent-based architectures for service applications.

People who rely on satnav could be at risk of losing their ability to navigate, an expert has warned. Writing in the journal Nature, former president of the Royal Institute of Navigation Roger McKinlay argues that our reliance on GPS technology is misplaced and could be eroding our innate way-finding abilities. "If we do not cherish them, our natural navigation abilities will deteriorate as we rely ever more on smart devices," he wrote. McKinlay believes huge investment will be needed before navigation systems will be good enough to allow technologies such as autonomous vehicles to take off. In the meantime, he argues, we need better research into systems for navigation while children should be encouraged to learn how to find their way around by more traditional means.

It is vital to the economy that Australia embraces innovation, according to Andrew Penn, with the Telstra CEO saying Australia should mimic the telecommunications company's strategy of combining incubation and collaboration with building human skills and developing new technologies. Speaking at the Charles Todd Oration 2015 in Sydney on Thursday, Penn outlined the three drivers of innovation as being a combination of the move to mobile and consequently the Internet of Things (IoT); the widespread usage of cloud computing; and the rise of machine-to-machine (M2M) learning and artificial intelligence. "The exponential growth in data, driven by a massive shift to mobile and the Internet of Things with the ability to store and access that data in the cloud in real-time and the computing power with advanced algorithms and machine learning -- these factors together are providing the capacity to solve almost limitless problems," the CEO said. Citing a recent Deloitte report, Penn claimed that the digital sector contributed AU$79 billion in 2014 -- or 5.1 percent of the GDP -- making it the largest segment of the Australian economy. He said that the rapidity of technological innovation has had far-reaching implications for traditional business, however.

SoftBank Robotics America (SBRA) announced that its friendly humanoid will spend a week at b8ta, a Palo Alto store designed for trying and buying new tech products. From August 11th to 18th, the store's visitors can interact with Pepper, and programmers are invited to a developer's workshop on August 16th to learn how to create apps for the robot. In hospitals around the world, surgeons are getting help from new robotic assistants. We spoke with Steve Carlin, VP Marketing & Business Development at SBRA, to find out more about the company's plans to officially introduce Pepper to North America later this year. He told ZDNet, "Our first initiative is to incentivize the development community to understand what the platform is, and bring their creativity onto the platform."

Google is building its very own artificial brain using tens of thousands of computers, hoping to improve stuff like voice and image search. And Facebook has followed suit, aiming to solve its big data problems with help from the principles of neuroscience. There's even an open source framework for building software applications based on brains. Although mimicking the structure of the brain was one of the original techniques researchers experimented with when trying to create machine intelligence in the 50s and 60s, the idea -- called neural networking -- eventually fell out of favor. But now it's back with a vengeance, and it might just change the way computer hardware is designed.

LOS ANGELES--Will.i.am sounds congested and subdued, his batteries running low after a high-octane appearance on The Ellen Show earlier that day. He's longing for 2025, when an artificial intelligence will be able to tell him to take it easy. "Will, you sound like you are stuffy," he says in the voice of this fictional AI. "What did you eat recently? Stay away from sweets because they are causing you more mucus. You should get some rest tonight. I'm going to cancel your appointments from 7 pm. I've already bought you some epsom salts from CVS. Go and pick them up."

At CEATEC 2012, we had an opportunity to try the conversation mode at CEATEC, and it worked quite well. The concept is simple: two people speaking different language can communicate on a turn-by-turn basis, and the Docomo app translates each phrase in both visual and audio form in real-time. At any given time, each party can easily see if their phrase had been properly translated as every phrase always appear in both languages (see above). While this app may resemble Google Translate (Android version) on the surface, the Docomo translator user interface is much better tuned for a two-person use, while Google Translate really works OK for a single person. I found the interaction with the Docomo app to be quicker and more natural than with Google Translate.