Shortcuts is definitely one of the biggest -- not only will it use notifications to suggest actions you can take, such as returning a missed FaceTime call or turning on Do Not Disturb before a meeting on your calendar, but you can also use the brand new Shortcuts app to create your own customized Siri-based triggers for third-party apps. For built-in iOS apps, shortcuts are suggestions that try to make your life a little easier; third-party apps also can monitor your activity and suggest actions based on repeated behavior, but not all of them will. Did you miss a phone call? Siri will suggest calling that person back; a simple tap on the shortcut brings up the option to FaceTime or place a phone call. Do you have a meeting you need to call into on your calendar?

Amazon could be planning to seriously beef up its line of Alexa-enabled devices. The internet giant is mulling the launch of eight new devices that can be controlled just by using your voice and its digital assistant technology, Alexa. It could release a microwave, amplifier, receiver, subwoofer and an in-car gadget, CNBC reported, citing sources close to the situation. Smart speakers are becoming a fixture in our households. That's according to Adobe, which found in a poll of US consumers that nearly half could own one by the end of the year Amazon could reveal these new devices at an event by the end of this year, an internal document indicated, CNBC said.

Models that attempt to extract insight from this firehose of information must face the torrential covariate shift that is endemic to the Twitter platform. While regularly-retrained algorithms can maintain performance in the face of this shift, fixed model features that fail to represent new trends and tokens can quickly become stale, resulting in performance degradation. To mitigate this problem we employ learned features, or embedding models, that can efficiently represent the most relevant aspects of a data distribution. Sharing these embedding models across teams can also reduce redundancy and multiplicatively increase cross-team modeling productivity. In this paper, we detail the commoditized tools, algorithms and pipelines that we have developed and are developing at Twitter to regularly generate high quality, up-to-date embeddings and share them broadly across the company.

If you have an Apple Watch and aren't determined to buy Series 4, your upgrade is here. Apple has released watchOS 5 right on schedule, promising big updates to fitness and Siri as well as a few apps that were arguably overdue. You now have automatic workout detection, competition with friends, advanced run tracking and expanded workouts that include hiking and yoga. Siri, meanwhile, no longer needs to wait for "hey Siri" when you raise your wrist, and the Siri watch face both provides more info (including Siri Shortcuts) and third-party app support. Other prominent updates include a native podcast app, a Walkie Talkie app (above) for back-and-forth voice chats and interactive notifications.

Having a smart assistant in your home can be all sorts of useful. But when you need to set an alarm, add something to your shopping list, turn on your smart lights, and find out the weather, the process can get somewhat tedious when you have to use a wake word with every question. You can really start to feel like an evil stepsister. Thankfully, Amazon added the ability to hold a continuous conversation with your smart assistant, a feature called "Follow-Up Mode." And Google recently did the same with the Google Assistant's Continued Conversations.

This week, Getty Images announced a new partnership with Amazon that will allow the online retail giant to use images from Getty's vast image catalog on its Echo devices with a screen. While Alexa was previously able to deliver verbal answers to questions, such as "Who won the Best Actress Oscar this year," now the device will be able to show a picture to accompany the answer. The Echo Show certainly set the standard for smart assistant speakers with displays, but now Google is hot on Amazon's heels. The rumor is that Google will unveil its own Google Assistant-powered smart screen this holiday season. It's understandable, then, that Amazon is feeling the pressure to up its game when it comes to the Echo Show and smaller Echo Spot.

"I'm sorry, I didn't quite get that." Anyone who has ever tried to have a deeper conversation with a virtual assistant like Siri knows how frustrating it can be. That's despite the fact that AI systems like it are increasingly pushing into our lives, with new success stories on an almost daily basis. Not only do AIs now help radiologists detect tumours, they can act as cat repellent and even detect signals of potential alien technology from space. But when it comes to fundamental human abilities, like having a good chat, AI falls short.

That's a conclusion many shoppers will reach when spotting the JBL Link 300, the mid-range of JBL's Google Assistant-powered Link smart speaker lineup. Its $250 price tag makes for a reasonable port of entry for anyone looking to build a voice-activated, multi-room audio and home-control system on a miserly budget. And since this speaker also supports Google's Chromecast audio technology, the Link 300--and any of its bigger or smaller siblings--can be paired with any other speaker that supports Chromecast. Delivering JBL's signature "California studio monitor" sound--a warm, realistically fleshed out soundstage and presence with soul and the stamina to crank--the Link 300 outperformed the vaunted Sonos One in many of my listening tests. Side Effects), to the rich soloing sonorities of Yo-Yo Ma (Six Evolutions--Bach: Cello Suites) and the elegantly spare acoustic jazz sessions (think Sarah Vaughan, Hank Garland, Bobby Timmons, and Melody Gardot) that are stock-in-trade on TSF Jazz--Paris, my favorite compare/contrast streaming channel. The JBL Link 300 has a much larger footprint its rival smart speaker, the Sonos One, but that extra girth results in bigger bass response.

D-Link's Full HD Pan & Tilt Wi-Fi Camera (model DCS-8525LH) is the latest addition to the home networking company's growing stable of security cams. As we've come to expect from D-Link, this camera has a strong set of features, but is unfortunately hampered by an often overwhelming app experience. Design-wise, the DCS-8525LH is a clone of the DCS-5030L pan-and-tilt camera we evaluated a couple of years ago. And like that model, this one's bulky body and conspicuous antenna won't blend easily into your home unless your design scheme takes its cues from cold retro-future technology. For the most part, the specs also mirror that earlier pan-and-tilt model--a 114-degree field of view, 16-feet of night vision, 340 degrees of pan and 120 degrees of tilt, motion an audio detection--though the resolution takes a leap forward, maxing out at 1080p. It also adds integration with Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, and IFTTT.

When Apple unveiled its new slate of iPhones on Sept. 12, executives gushed over the device's new second-generation "neural processor," a custom chip meant just for AI. But Apple didn't boast about how much the new chip was going to improve Siri--Apple's virtual assistant that got eight seconds of the 2 hour presentation--or boost battery life, as the company often claims its machine learning is used for. The real killer app for AI on the iPhone is photography. The Cupertino-based company has been slowly transitioning its cameras from devices that take a picture, into devices that capture data for AI to make into an image. It's called computational photography, and it isn't unique to Apple--researchers have been thinking about the camera as a way to capture data for AI for years.