Just as you don't have to be first to be the best, a product doesn't have to be the first of its kind to be the winner in a category. The Echo Show, the first smart display from Amazon, was a valiant effort to set the tone for this particular kind of assistant-with-a-screen. But from what I've experienced with the brand new Lenovo Smart Display over the course of a week and a half, Google is now the one setting a precedent for what devices like this should aspire to be. Unlike the Echo, which is made directly by Amazon, Google's first smart display is made by Lenovo. While the Chinese tech company has a reputation for quality, it's really the Google Assistant that makes this device worth buying.

One-quarter of all American households now have an Amazon Echo powered by Alexa. But the surge in popularity of these virtual assistants comes with new questions about convenience, and privacy -- especially as the company looks to make the smart speaker more "human." Alexa has captured 70 percent of the voice market share in the United States, according to Alpine AI, with customers turning to the device for anything from playlists to recipes to finding their phone. It's become a major source of revenue for Amazon, in particular because it generates larger spending from Amazon Prime members, according to a new report by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners. NBC News obtained exclusive access to Amazon's Seattle headquarters and an interview with the executive in charge of Alexa, Toni Reid, to learn a little more about the future of this pint-sized device.

After more than a year of rumors and vague comments from Samsung leadership, the Galaxy Home, Samsung's Bixby-powered smart speaker, is finally official. Samsung briefly showed off the device at today's Galaxy Note 9 launch event in Brooklyn, but the company left us with more questions than answers. We don't know when it'll launch; how much it'll cost; what music services, if any, it supports besides Spotify; and, perhaps most importantly, what Bixby will be capable of when the Galaxy Home goes on sale. Like Apple did with the HomePod, Samsung is touting the Galaxy Home first and foremost as an excellent listening speaker, with multidirectional tweeters and a full subwoofer as well as some neat audio-optimization tricks. Spotify is Samsung's new streaming-music partner, which means you'll be able to control Spotify music playback with Bixby.

Amazon is giving more automakers access to the tools needed to integrate Alexa into their vehicles' infotainment systems. The company released its Alexa Auto software development kit today, making the tools accessible to all developers via GitHub. Integrating Alexa into vehicles gives users easier access to the assistant's skills while they drive, and they can take advantage of functions like weather reports, notifications, smart home controls, media streaming and the many third-party skills accessible through Alexa. Some other functions supported by Alexa Auto -- including navigation, calling and local search -- will be particularly useful for drivers. A number of automakers have begun or have announced plans to integrate Alexa into certain models.

Samsung is wading into the smart-speaker market with an entirely new product called the Galaxy Home. The speaker has a large, rounded body and sits on a tripod -- a very different design from competing speakers offered by Amazon.com, Samsung announced a partnership with Spotify, which is the default music player for the Galaxy Home. The speaker will be able to pick up streams from a Galaxy phone and hand it off to the speaker. The company didn't say much about the Galaxy Home apart from acknowledging its existence, and promising more details will come at its developers conference in November.

Samsung has finally unveiled its own smart speaker in a bid to take on Amazon, Apple, and Google. At the firm's Unpacked event in Brooklyn, New York today, Samsung teased a look at its Galaxy Home speaker, equipped with the Bixby voice assistant. But, Samsung remained tight-lipped on most of the details. The firm hasn't yet revealed how much it will cost or when it will officially launch, but promised more information is to come at the developer conference in November. At the firm's Unpacked event in Brooklyn, New York today, Samsung teased a look at its sleek Galaxy Home speaker, equipped with the Bixby voice assistant.

Samsung's Bixby digital assistant is taking the next step in its challenge of Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, and Apple's Siri, and will soon be available in a high-end speaker with an integrated smart home hub. At the launch of its Galaxy Note 9 smartphone today in New York, Samsung said a Bixby speaker, called Galaxy Home, is on the way. The speaker will feature an integrated SmartThings hub, which will enable it to control the vast array of smart home devices in the SmartThings ecosystem. That should make it much more powerful than the Amazon Echo Plus, which is equipped with a ZigBee radio, but doesn't support the equally popular Z-Wave platform. We knew a smart speaker was coming from Samsung sometime this year, but not much else.

Samsung has been developing a speaker based on its own digital assistant, Bixby, for a while. During its Galaxy Note 9 event in New York City, the company finally revealed the Galaxy Home smart speaker, a clear rival to Apple's HomePod, the Google Home and Amazon's Echo line. The device, which features the rumored tripod design with a round body, is powered by Harman's AKG audio and was engineered to "make music sound amazing." Of course, since this is a smart speaker after all, you'll be able to use your voice to control it. Samsung says there are eight microphones built-in for far-field voice recognition, which will make it possible for it to hear your commands from long distances within your home or office.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man on a dating app will pursue a date with a single word: "hey." And according to a new study, that may be the best strategy for attracting a partner who is out of your league. Elizabeth Bruch and Mark Newman at the University of Michigan, US, studied the messaging patterns of 94,478 men and 92,457 women on a free online dating website. The users were located in New York, Boston, Chicago and Seattle, all were seeking heterosexual relationships, and their genders were self-identified. They found that women receive more messages than men, and most of the messages sent on the service go to only a small fraction of users.

SEATTLE, July 31, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- DefinedCrowd Corp., a smart data company for AI, announced the closing of a $11.8M Series A funding round today. Led by New-York/Zurich based Evolution Equity Partners, the round brought in Kibo Ventures, Mastercard and EDP (Energias de Portugal) as new investors, and secured additional capital from current investors Sony, Portugal Ventures, Amazon Alexa Fund, and Busy Angels. "DefinedCrowd's SaaS platform has very quickly positioned the company as an innovative leader to solve AI/ML's global most pressing problem, the need for continuous access to highly accurate data. Evolution Equity Partners is honored to lead this growth-targeted Series A round that comes at an inflection point for DefinedCrowd to manage its triple digit revenue growth trajectory and customer on-boarding globally," says Dennis Smith, Founder and Managing Partner at Evolution Equity Partners and the newest member of DefinedCrowd's Board of Directors. The capital secured in this Series A round will be used to develop DefinedCrowd's product offerings, expand the team, and rapidly increase market-share globally.