Could Apple be about to release the HomePod 2, a smaller version of its Siri smart speaker? That's a question we've been asking ourselves for a while now now – and while Apple's iPhone X launch event on September 12, 2018 didn't reveal what the next HomePod will look like, the HomePod 2 could finally be on the horizon. Nearly a year has passed since then, and the iPhone 11 launch saw no mention of the new Apple HomePod Mini – so, everything is pointing to a 2020 release date. The speculation is that the next version of the HomePod, the Apple HomePod 2, may be a more compact version of the original, with the name Apple HomePod Mini being rumored. According to a Bloomberg report in July 2018, Apple may have been looking to release the HomePod 2 sometime in early 2019, which would make sense based on the release date of the original HomePod – of course, it never actually materialized.

Swiping is no longer the only way to find matches on Tinder. In a choose-your-own-adventure style series set to be rolled out next month, users will be able to match with other dating hopefuls by clicking their way through an interactive narrative. 'Swipe Night,' as Tinder is calling it, will air on October 6 and is designed to match users based on the choices they make during a short ''first-person apocalyptic adventure.' All of the episodes will be'live', so-to-speak, with each being available for viewing only between the hours of 6 pm and midnight during a respective users' local time. The series will consist of short five-minute videos during which users are periodically given seven seconds to choose what happens next.

Making a political donation to a presidential campaign is about to get as easy as -- well, saying it out loud. Starting next month, users of voice-controlled home assistant Amazon Alexa will be able to dictate their donations to a 2020 presidential campaign: "Alexa, I want to make a political contribution," or "Alexa, donate [amount] to [candidate name]." Alexa users can make donations of at least $5 and up to $200 to campaigns, and the feature is currently limited to presidential campaigns. Campaigns can sign up starting Thursday. The latest evolution in campaign technology raises new questions about how such contributions will be screened to make sure they are legal.

In May, the United Nations released a troubling report, arguing that female-sounding voices for AI assistants such as Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa perpetuate gender biases and encourage users to be sexist. Now, Google has come out to explain why it chose to give its Assistant a female-sounding voice -- and the search giant says it has nothing to do with gender biases and everything to do with the available technology. According to Google Assistant product manager Brant Ward, Google initially planned to launch Assistant with a male voice. The problem, he told Business Insider, was that the audio produced by text-to-speech systems was easier to understand if delivered in a higher-pitched, female-sounding voice. "At the time, the guidance was the technology performed better for a female voice," Ward said.

Oracle's digital assistant is now available in Microsoft Teams, the cloud hosting and services provider announced today. Oracle's AI assistant got several other updates today, including the ability to interact via voice commands, enterprise-grade security for voice recordings, and the ability to respond to more complex voice commands. The news was announced today at Oracle's OpenWorld conference in San Francisco. As part of the Microsoft Teams integration, Microsoft Teams and Office 365 users will be able to access Oracle enterprise bots from the Microsoft Teams App Store. "For enterprise customers, what we're enabling [them] to do now is they can easily try to use Microsoft Teams to collaborate with their employees and colleagues and so forth with Microsoft Teams," Oracle VP of AI and digital assistant Suhas Uliyar told VentureBeat in a phone interview.

There's a reason a new product announced by Amazon 12 months ago never got released to the general public. The product has an unbelievably affordable price at $25 and was only offered initially by "invite-only," on a first-come, first-come basis. I did get my invite recently, forked over the big bucks, and tested the unit in my 2012 Hyundai. The tiny unit, which looks like the old iPod Nano, but with an Amazon smile splashed across the front, connects to the 12-volt car socket for power, and your smartphone's Bluetooth to bring the Internet to your car, thus bringing audio through your car stereo without hanging to hassle with wires. Amazon's Echo Auto brings Alexa into the car (Photo: Jefferson Graham) Look who's listening now: Hey, Siri, Google and Alexa – enough with the snooping The good: You can bring Amazon's personal assistant to the car, to play on-demand music, news and podcasts for you, read back your latest e-mail, find the nearest gas station, tell you what's on your calendar and help you locate the nearest Starbucks.

Amazon recently announced that its voice assistant Alexa can now sign business agreements with health providers under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA. "Alexa, I want to make a political contribution." Starting in October, users of Amazon's voice-controlled home assistant, Alexa, will be able to verbally make a political contribution between $5 and $200 to a participating 2020 presidential candidate, the company announced Wednesday. In order to use the new Alexa Political Contributions feature, users must have voice purchasing enabled in their Alexa settings, as well as valid default payment method in their Amazon accounts. "Alexa, donate [amount] to [candidate name]" is another phrase users can say to support a preferred political hopeful.

Google is offering free Home Mini devices to a select group of consumers. Existing Google One subscribers in the United Kingdom can now claim the device using a specific coupon. Users add Home Mini to their cart and a promotional code takes care of the cost – the offer ends October 3. Existing Google One subscribers in the United Kingdom can now claim the device using a specific coupon. Google Home connects speakers, smart plugs, voice-controlled vacuums, smart displays and cameras throughout the house. Its digital ecosystem is designed to enable communication between rooms and family members - even if they are not at home.

It seems like artificial intelligence is taking over the world, leaving many of us non-techies feeling terrified. Yet when you stop to think about it, we all use artificial intelligence (AI) every day. When we Google something, use Siri on our smart phones or ask Alexa a question, we are using AI. Wikipedia states artificial intelligence, sometimes called machine intelligence, is intelligence demonstrated by machines, in contrast to the natural intelligence displayed by humans. Colloquially, the term "artificial intelligence" is often used to describe machines (or computers) that mimic "cognitive" functions that humans associate with the human mind, such as "learning" and "problem solving."

Logistics companies, both old and new, have invested heavily in building an efficient frontline workforce to provide swift and convenient services to their users. Timely delivery is often a critical deciding factor for the ever-impatient customers to choose service A over service B. Hence, operations/logistic team is the key enabler here. The attrition rate in large frontline teams is high, close to 75 percent annually. Yet most companies have aggressive growth targets, necessitating recruitment of high volumes of workers constantly. High-growth companies in this domain like Zomato and Swiggy, grew by more than 50-60 percent by the end of 2018, recruited tens of thousands of delivery boys every month.