This also marks the first year the Masters app is available on wearables like the Apple Watch. As the sport of golf has struggled in recent years to keep growing the game's popularity among young people, many have seen new technology (such as GoPro cameras on the course) as one potential salve. At the same time, some of the most prominent figures in golf have implied they don't want to see the game change to expand to new audiences. Presidential candidate Donald Trump, who owns 18 courses, is of that camp; Tom Watson is not.

During the dot-com boom, online clothing sales were predicted to grow to 40% -50% of total sales. Although online sales of some other kinds of merchandise, such as books, have reached 50% of the market in the past 15 years, the percentage of online clothing sales hovers around 20%. The difficulty in finding the correct size and fit is one of the primary reasons that consumers are reluctant to buy clothes online. And their concern is not groundless; sizing varies among clothing manufacturers, and it is difficult to ascertain fit from online images. Consequently, 30%-40% of online clothing purchases are returned.

We curated some use cases of companies that have integrated cognitive into their solutions. If you want to know more about any these use cases and receive tips from these companies, check out their webinars. VineSleuth's Wine4.Me In-Store Wine Advisor takes the guesswork out of buying wine by empowering shoppers and increasing sales. Shoppers tell the application what they want in a wine (flavor profile, food pairing, price requirements and more) and Watson returns a custom curated, unbiased wine list and suggests food pairings for each shopper. How it works: VineSleuth uses Natural Language Classifier and Speech to text APIs to allow consumers to easily ask a question into the application, either through voice or text.

Advances in cognitive computing herald a disruptive new era in business intelligence and customer engagement, opening the door to a more intuitive computing experience. A recent survey of top CEOs showed that half of those questioned believe it will revolutionise their business. But what does it all mean and how can today's businesses stay ahead of the curve? IBM Watson is at the forefront of the cognitive revolution and is already in use today. We spoke to Duncan Anderson, European CTO for Watson at IBM to find out more about the machine learning revolution and how businesses of all sizes can harness it's power.

Lucasfilm screencapWho knew Han was so self-conscious? One of IBM Watson's many talents is analyzing personality traits by looking at written text. The supercomputer assesses traits based on the popular Big Five test, which rates subjects for extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience. It can also identify different tones such as fear, joy, confidence, and openness. These skills have been used to do everything from assist customer service agents in analyzing how their phone calls went to providing dating tips. We tested out Watson last week on the "Harry Potter" universe and were wowed by its conclusions.

Shares of International Business Machines (IBM) are up 3.50, or 2.4%, at 151.91, after Morgan Stanley's Katy Huberty this morning reiterated an Overweight rating on the shares, and jacked her price target to 168 from 140, while she now thinks the most bullish scenario for the company could see the stock soar to 195. A lot of that depends on sentiment turning among skeptical investors, she notes: That upside scenario to 195 is predicated on the prospect that "investors begin to recognize IBM's competitive lead in Strategic Imperatives, particularly Watson." The main contention Huberty makes is that Watson, the company's artificial intelligence service, is going to double the number of customers it has this year, and that "after aggressive hiring and an estimated 5B in data acquisitions over just the past two quarters, IBM is beginning to show a path toward revenue monetization in Watson." Huberty doesn't project any financials for Watson, but she has been keeping a list of the customers that have signed up for the service, names such as Japan's SoftBank (9984JP) and Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), which give her confidence the company can make real money off of many sectors of the economy such as healthcare: From a top-down perspective, we see Watson as similar (though even more disruptive) to ERP which initially helped address human inefficiencies in business much like Watson. ERP has grown into a 150B market including software, hardware, and services and we see that as a conservative estimate for cognitive computing with IBM Watson the likely share leader.

Solutions architects are the experts on our team at understanding and implementing Watson technology. They have developed this expertise by providing technical support to our partners through multiple mediums. Through their work, they have a deep understanding and point of view about the Watson APIs, but also the cognitive landscape at large. I interviewed solutions architect, Chris Ackerson on his thoughts on Watson and cognitive computing, as well as his specific tips and resources. Where do you see the Watson APIs growing in 2016 and beyond?

For the last five years, IBM has strived to reinvent itself as a cloud computing and cognitive platform company to support its large enterprise clients as they shift their operations online, including many in travel and transportation. With most large companies today evolving into digital companies, cloud computing is a booming marketplace for the big four industry providers: IBM, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon. Google, for example, stated that cloud could overtake advertising revenue in five years. Travel companies like Etihad and Lufthansa are helping drive IBM's cloud sales. The UAE carrier signed a 700 million IT deal with IBM last October, while Germany's national airline invested 1.25 billion in Big Blue in November 2014 to integrate cloud computing. Cognitive, on the other hand, is IBM's wild child savant compared to its older cloud sibling.

Angela also leaves behind her beloved companion, Eric Dunbar of Vinton and his children, Erica, Jonathan, Patrick and Kristen.She will be remembered as a beloved mother, sister, daughter, partner, and friend to countless others.Funeral services will be at 3 p.m. on Wednesday, March 30, 2016, conducted from Conner-Bowman Funeral Home with Pastor Rick Poland officiating.Arrangements by Conner-Bowman Funeral Home, 62 Va.

In two previous posts, I covered the emerging industry of cloud-based machine learning solutions. First, I covered Microsoft's Azure Machine Learning and IBM's Watson Analytics. Microsoft's Azure ML provides a graphical drag-and-drop interface for connecting preprogrammed components of a data science pipeline together. The service is similar to KNIME and seemed targeted for users who knew just enough to know what to do, but not so much that they would want to code up fresh algorithms. One value added for Microsoft's product is a smooth integration for companies which already have their data stored in Microsoft's Azure compute cloud.