Facebook has two of them: WhatsApp and Messenger. They're all messaging apps--smartphone apps that let you chat with friends and family. But they're rapidly morphing into something else, a new kind of super communication tool that does so much more than just shuttle texts between people. So, it should come as no surprise that Google is building a new one of its own. The big difference is that, well, it comes from Google.

"We think of it as building each users its own individual Google," CEO Sundar Pichai said on the Google I/O stage today. He added that 20 percent of Google mobile searches today occur through voice searches. "We've started becoming truly conversational with our users," he said. As an example, Pichai offered up the idea of finding a movie to watch on a Friday night. Assistant will respond with the available titles and theater locations, as you'd expect.

LikeSo lets you choose the words to look out for. LikeSo and Ummo are two new applications that analyze your speech and can help you improve your diction. So we put a movie famous for its speech - Clueless - to the test. NEW YORK--"So, ya know, like, frankly my dear, I totally, just don't give a damn." OK, so that's not quite the way Rhett Butler (Clark Gable) delivered his famous parting words to Scarlett O'Hara (Vivien Leigh) in Gone With The Wind.

"Legislation to enable the future development of the UK's first commercial spaceports." The new law would form part of the Modern Transport Bill. The UK's desire to build a spaceport on British shores isn't new, however. In the summer of 2014, the government revealed eight locations that it was considering for the landmark project. Six of these were in Scotland, leaving Wales and England with one apiece.

That has spurred speculation that Google will release a virtual-reality device to compete with Facebook's new Oculus Rift headset, as well as Samsung's Gear VR. Analysts also believe Google may release an artificial-intelligent gadget to compete with Amazon's Echo, which is a cylinder-like device that includes a virtual assistant named Alexa.

Panoramic Power, a leading provider of device-level energy management solutions, is pleased to announce the release of Device Analyzer, an innovative data-science approach to energy management that generates actionable energy and operational efficiency insights. Using advanced machine learning algorithms, Device Analyzer provides users with greater visibility into the operational state of each of their monitored devices. Device Analyzer learns usage patterns for any device such as lighting, HVAC and production lines and with pre-defined algorithms per device-type, allows users to see the device's operational state in real-time. It understands and monitors device sequencing, detects anomalies and automatically generates operational insights. Device Analyzer shifts the user interaction from a focus only on energy consumption, to an operational one - delivering significant value to improve operations, productivity and facility performance.

How do you get accurate results using machine learning on problem after problem? The difficulty is that each problem is unique, requiring different data sources, features, algorithms, algorithm configurations and on and on. The solution is to use a checklist that guarantees a good result every time. In this post you will discover a checklist that you can use to reliably get good results on your machine learning problems. Machine Learning Checklist Photo by Crispy, some rights reserved. You have no idea what algorithm will work best on a problem before you start.

This project started off as an attempt to run an MNIST classification neural network in the browser with a real time visualization. See this repo for why we changed our mind. Instead, we ran the neural nets in advance and saved snapshots of them through the learning process. This turned out to provide exactly the type of experience we were looking for without having to push the browser so hard. This project was a great way to learn the details of simple feedforward neural networks.

Google will introduce its much-anticipated entry into the voice-activated home device market on Wednesday, according to people who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Named Google Home, the device is a virtual agent that answers simple questions and carries out basic tasks. It is to be announced at Google's annual developers' conference in Silicon Valley. Google Home will come to market in the fall -- a long time away, given the speed of technology, but Google needed to plant a stake in the ground now. The device will compete with Amazon's Echo, which was introduced less than two years ago.

Researchers are using image analysis and artificial intelligence to help determine when the first books of the Old Testament were written, based on what some describe as the ancient equivalent of Post-Its.