One of the oldest video calling apps is still one of the best, but both people need to be using Skype for calls to be free. Otherwise, you need to pay to call a landline or mobile number. Some people still use their phones to talk, not just text and surf. If you're one, you can also cut costs when dialing. So long as you're on Wi-Fi -- whether it's your existing wireless network at home or a free Wi-Fi hotspot -- you can take advantage of apps that let you make free "VoIP" calls (Voice over Internet Protocol) on your smartphone or tablet.

This is the third story in our continuing series covering the basics of AI. While it isn't necessary to read the first article, which covers neural networks, doing so may add to your understanding of the topics covered in this one. If you'd like to know how computers "see," visit the second article to learn about computer vision and image processing. When computers process text or audio from humans, they're just looking at data. You can whisper "I love you" or drop an F-bomb, the machines just see 1's and 0's.

Digital transformation is bringing the world closer and is highly responsible for driving all activities within an enterprise. It is bringing agility into businesses and reducing the overall cost of some kind of ownership also. If we closely look into this phase of transformation, cloud technologies are the highest adopted technology stream in the digital enterprises. The very reason for this being is, clouds empower teams to provision new application servers and infrastructure whenever required on the go. Furthermore, with the latest cloud platforms coming up, any digital business can now easily make things work for their IT infrastructure in minutes rather than months.

Language is a uniquely human capability and the manifestation of our intelligence. But through AI -- specifically natural language processing (NLP) -- we are providing machines with language capabilities, opening up a new realm of possibilities for how we'll work with them. Today you can walk into a darkened living room and ask Alexa to turn the smart lights up to a pleasant 75% brightness. Or, you can summon information about weather conditions on the other side of the world. The progress the industry has made was on display in Google's recent demo of Duplex, in which an AI agent called businesses and booked appointments.

Amazon has been working to make its voice assistant more Alexa more useful to users, and this latest feature will certainly help with that. The company is adding the hours, phone numbers and addresses of over a million businesses to Alexa's database. Now, according to Bloomberg, users can simply ask Alexa to tell them the phone number or hours of a store, rather than having to look them up on their phones or computers. As long as your address is entered into the Amazon Alexa app, the skill will provide localized data. This data results from a partnership with Yext, Inc., which stores information about 1.2 million business.

Amazon's Echo lineup, like some smart speakers, uses proximity detection to decide which device is best-suited to responding to your voice commands. It's a clever way to prevent multiple devices from waking up at the same time. There's just one problem: support in non-Amazon devices has been inconsistent at best, creating a mess if you have third-party gear that doesn't use the feature. Thankfully, that shouldn't be an issue from here on out. Amazon has moved its Echo Spatial Perception technology to the cloud, ensuring that all devices can use it.

It seems like voice interfaces are going to be a big part of the future of computing; popping up in phones, smart speakers, and even household appliances. But how useful is this technology for people who don't communicate using speech? Are we creating a system that locks out certain users? These were the questions that inspired software developer Abhishek Singh to create a mod that lets Amazon's Alexa assistant understand some simple sign language commands. In a video, Singh demonstrates how the system works. An Amazon Echo is connected to a laptop, with a webcam (and some back-end machine learning software) decoding Singh's gestures in text and speech.

Sean Rad, a founder of the dating app Tinder, has purchased a home in L.A.'s Hollywood Hills for $26.5 million, according to a person with knowledge of the deal. The seller was real-estate mogul Kurt Rappaport, the founder of Westside Estate Agency. Mr. Rappaport purchased the property for around $5 million in 2014 from Mitzi Shore, founder of the iconic Comedy Store in Los Angeles who died in April. He completely remodeled it, according to a person familiar with the property, finishing work in 2017. It has a 60-foot pool, a game room, a large outdoor dining area, a bar with a Comedy Store theme, a gym and a wine cellar.

Everywhere you look, artificial intelligence is dominating the headlines. In financial services, it has been heralded as a way to make major advancements in cybersecurity and compliance, but in actuality, it's capable of much more. Conversational AI--using virtual assistants and smart bots to engage in intelligent conversations with customers--is poised to be one of the most impactful areas in the financial services industry. In a highly regulated industry built on core legacy banking systems, strategically leveraging the latest technology can be a challenge. However, the banks that adopt conversational AI will gain a competitive advantage by unlocking the ability to solve their most strategic problems.

Farewell, Kuri, we hardly knew you. Kuri the rolling, talking, video-capturing robot -- who made its debut at the 2017 Consumer Electronics Show -- has been terminated. Mayfield Robotics, the Redwood City, California manufacturer, has announced it ceasing production of Kuri robots and will pause its operations to "evaluate the company's path forward." Marketed as a home companion, priced at $700, Kuri was an app-driven robot that could take videos with its high-def camera, play music and dance. USA TODAY's Jefferson Graham, who met up with Kuri a year ago, described the robot as "an Amazon Echo with wheels and eyes" that "can do all the things Alexa or Google Home can do now -- answer trivia questions, play music, run your smart home and a little more. Using the built-in 1080p camera, Kuri can also take, for instance, cat videos while you're away and play them for you."