Sky has finally rolled out voice search, letting people control their TV just by talking to it. Until now, the feature had only been hinted at by a strange, mysterious button on the side of the remote. Now, when that's pressed, people will be able to ask their TV for whatever they want to watch. That doesn't simply mean asking for the name of films and TV shows, though the Sky Q box will handle those. They can also ask for something like the "Liverpool game", categories like "films featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone", or even asking for ratings, such as "Tom Hanks movies rated five stars".

Similar to the voice search features on Rokus, Amazon Fire TV streamers et al, Sky Qers can search through live TV and all on-demand content simply by speaking the names of actors, shows, films and directors into the Touch Remote's microphone. You can also search by genre, age rating, average reviews and other descriptors, as well as compound these for more specific searches -- Sky gives examples such as "Tom Hank's movies rated five stars" and "films with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone." It gets a little bit smarter than that, too. Phrases such as "live cricket on this weekend," "what's on Sky Atlantic tonight" and "Liverpool game" should turn up the search results you're after, so there's some contextual leeway. Sky has even thrown a bunch of easter eggs, letting you to track down classics by reciting popular lines.

Wherever you fall along these lines, you want to make sure that your taxes are accurately being prepared to ensure that you experience no issues with the IRS. H&R Block has introduced a new partnership with IBM Watson to bring its customers a new and improved tax preparation experience. Watson is an artificial intelligence technology that continuously learns from the data fed into its system. As more customers' tax information is processed by Watson, it will apply the knowledge it has retained in order to give tax preparers the best advice for their customers. The technology is so in-depth because it was given a large amount of data about tax laws and codes, allowing it to gain deeper insight into the varied situations that affect an individual's tax return.

IBM and PlayFab are teaming up to deliver better insights about gamers based on analysis from IBM's Watson artificial intelligence platform. Seattle-based PlayFab provides backend services for connected games on mobile devices and PCs. It provides things game developers need to run their games -- like player data storage, player relationship management, tournaments, in-game commerce, and leaderboards. IBM will take that data, crunch it, and come up with insights that help developers run their games better. It's a new way for IBM to participate in what market researcher Newzoo says is a $91 billion market.

As part of IBM's annual InterConnect conference in Las Vegas, the company is announcing a new machine learning course in partnership with workspace and education provider Galvanize to familiarize students with IBM's suite of Watson APIs. These APIs simplify the process of building tools that rely on language, speech and vision analysis. Going by the admittedly clunky name IBM Cognitive Course, the class will spend four weeks teaching the basics of machine learning and Watson's capabilities. Students will be able to take the class directly within IBM's Bluemix cloud platform. "Not everyone knows what to do with a Watson API," says Bryson Koehler, CTO of IBM Watson & IBM Cloud.

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We met Tanmay while he was giving a keynote speech to our tech associates (yes, he gives keynote speeches around the world). Please enjoy Tanmay's article on 5 machine learning services powered by Watson. Computers have never been good at understanding non-mathematical language, but a branch of artificial intelligence aims to change that. Machine learning (ML), a subset of artificial intelligence, aims to enable computers to understand natural language and allow them to reason for themselves. Leading this initiative are services like IBM's Watson, an open platform accessible to developers around the world. In today's world, everyone is using machine learning technologies on a daily basis, whether they realize it or not.

Solutions integrate patient-level data from EHRs to assess risks and other factors. At HIMSS17 in Orlando, IBM Watson Health unveiled a series of value-based cloud solutions aimed at helping providers, health plans, and employers better manage their healthcare costs and quality. The solutions integrate patient-level data from EHRs and other sources to create a better picture of patient populations, risk factors, and other red flags at the individual, group, and population level in order to improve patient outcomes under the new value-based payment models. "Healthcare organizations are operating in a complex and fluctuating business environment, one in which the insights they need to succeed can be hidden amidst an avalanche of disparate and siloed data," says Deborah DiSanzo, General Manager of IBM Watson Health. The new applications, available later this year, will include: Provider Performance Manager, Engagement Manager, Bundled Payments Forecasting and Management, and Custom analytics.

It happened recently as I was looking at demonstrations of two very interesting new technology-based companies that help automate due diligence processes. They are both classic examples of the type of technological innovation that's happening at lightning speed in the legal industry today. They are addressing an enormous pain point in the industry: the mind-numbing burden of manually reviewing thousands of contracts as part of a due diligence mandate. It's the kind of work that has provided a good living for generations of young law firm associates, but it is not efficient and, being human-based, not always very accurate. These two new companies are using technology to make that review more efficient and accurate, by analyzing, summarizing, and extracting structured data from big masses of unstructured and wildly inconsistent documents. To the extent the technology works, it's because it imposes some kind of order on the non-standard work of human lawyers.

Matt Coatney is a technology executive, business advisor, entrepreneur, author, and speaker. His focus is on bringing advanced artificial intelligence and analytic technologies to market. He has co-founded three companies, advised several others, and contributed to the early success of two different tech startups. Matt has also launched data analytics products designed for the fields of life sciences, healthcare, government, finance, and law. Currently Matt is the VP of Services for Exaptive; he previously was the IT strategy lead for global law firm WilmerHale, and was in charge of technology and operations for a legal search product at LexisNexis.