It's usually a pretty big deal when Google releases a new Android app, and that's doubly true this week. Allo is the company's new chat app, which bundles in the brainy Google Assistant for good measure, while Google Travel makes it easy to plan for and make the most of your next trip without putting in a ton of work. Google's own apps lead our latest look at the Play Store's hottest new releases, but they're not alone this week. Also worth a look is the charming Paper Planes, which debuted at I/O this year, while Don't Starve: Pocket Edition brings a popular survival game to Android and Dog Sled Saga turns the grueling activity into a fun arcade game and management simulation. Stickers, games, artificial intelligence--and yes, chat too.

For trend-conscious corporate executives in Japan, a connected world is not a distant future in the making but a reality. A growing number of Japanese companies are waking up to the need to sharpen their business strategies and boost investment as the hunt for the next big thing intensifies. The prospect of an aging Japan and a shrinking domestic market is also giving them the opportunity of pondering how they can help solve social and business issues as the country gravitates toward connecting everything from home appliances to cars and factories to the internet. The government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, for its part, is pinning hopes on the benefits of the so-called internet of things and artificial intelligence, hoping that they will become a growth driver rather than a stumbling block at a time when the world's third-largest economy continues to struggle. "I've wanted to do something that will make an industrial change, now that we have IoT, big data, and AI," said Yosuke Okada, the 27-year-old chief executive officer of startup ABEJA Inc. "Japan has many researchers in the field of AI … but there seems to be little interest in solving the kinds of challenges we face in society by monetizing AI-based businesses," Okada said in a recent interview.

Nasa has announced that it has found evidence of flowing water on Mars. Scientists have long speculated that Recurring Slope Lineae -- or dark patches -- on Mars were made up of briny water but the new findings prove that those patches are caused by liquid water, which it has established by finding hydrated salts. Several hundred camped outside the London store in Covent Garden. The 6s will have new features like a vastly improved camera and a pressure-sensitive "3D Touch" display

Enterprises today rely on data as the foundation of business success, whether the goal is to better understand customers, build new or better products and services, or manage cost and risk. Data is now the prime raw material for creating value; across all industries, it's the norm to hold vast stores of data. An issue that remains unresolved, however, is how well and how efficiently data can be applied. Firms are still wrestling with the challenge of making big data work for them, in use cases ranging from enterprise analytics, customer 360, and product personalization to revenue assurance and fraud detection. All the data in the world has no value unless it's accessible and actionable.

Business and technology management executives wondered what big data meant, when the cloud would disrupt their companies, and how to engage effectively on social channels. In 2016, Hadoop turned 10, the cloud has been around even longer, and social has become a way of business and life. As a refresh to my 2014 blog and report, here are the next 15 emerging technologies Forrester thinks you need to follow closely. We organize this year's list into three groups -- systems of engagement technologies will help you become customer-led, systems of insight technologies will help you become insights-driven, and supporting technologies will help you become fast and connected. You might have noticed a few glaring omissions.

The rise of cloud computing brings with it the promise of infinite computing power. The rise of Big Data brings with it the possibility of ingesting all the world's log files. The combination of the two has sparked widespread interest in data science as truly the "one ring to rule them all." When we speculate about such a future, we tend to use two phrases to describe this new kind of analytics--artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. Most people use them interchangeably. AI develops conceptual models of the world that are underpinned by set theory and natural language.

Shares of Apple (AAPL) were increasing in late-afternoon trading on Thursday as the company agreed to purchase Tuplejump, TechCrunch reports, citing sources. Tuplejump is an India-based company that specializes in machine learning technology, or an artificial intelligence capability that enables computers to recognize patterns in data without being explicitly programmed. Apple is looking to utilize Tuplejump's "FiloDB" program, an opensource project that applies machine learning technology to data as it streams in, according to TechCrunch. Apple has purchased several machine learning companies in the past few years. It acquired the Seattle-based company Turi for 200 million in August, and U.K.-based artificial intelligence company Perceptio in 2015.

LONDON, UK / ACCESSWIRE / September 22, 2016 / Almax Analytics, a software platform delivering actionable insights, announced today they have emerged from stealth (development) with a customer ready product for the Financial Markets. Almax debuted in January 2016 as an Innovative Company to Watch by KPMG Luxembourg and quickly built demand and investor interest, thereby closing the seed round April 2016 to develop this first to market technology. "We are excited to present our product to the market and have worked hard to deliver this technology," says Balazs Klemm, Chief Executive and Founder. "On behalf of the company I need to thank our loyal supporters and the Almax team for their commitment and patience. We look forward to growing the business and already engaged in Series A financing discussions."

Right after the Startup of the Year competition finished, Fei Fei Li, the director of the Artificial Intelligence Lab at Stanford University, took the stage at Innovate! and Celebrate to welcome entrepreneurs, founders, and attendees to the conference with an in-depth discussion of artificial intelligence. And when we say in-depth, that is exactly what we mean. Li started the discussion off by discussing the importance of vision when it comes to general intelligence. Going back more than 500 million years, she explained that there was no bigger evolutionary expansion than the development of one particular body part: the eyes. "The Cambrian explosion was triggered by the evolution of vision. Visual intelligence is a key aspect of general intelligence."

Last week, Publishing Executive hosted a webinar in which we spoke with two experts about how publishers can compete with the kind of sticky user experience that leading platforms like Facebook offer by employing artificial intelligence. We had a lot of great questions throughout the webinar but we weren't able to answer every last one. Boomtrain CEO and co-founder Nick Edwards took a few minutes to answer some of publishers' lingering questions about AI. Check out the Q&A below and click here to watch 7 Steps for Publishers to Get Started With Artificial Intelligence. What is Artificial Intelligence and how does it affect publishers today?