Ted Dunning (Chief Application Architect at MapR) and Ellen Friedman have written a new O'Reilly Media book on _"Practical Machine Learning – Innovations in Recommendation" _(released in January 2014). This book examines one of the most interesting, fun, and powerful data science applications in the big data universe: recommendation systems. For me, this was one of the most interesting applications of data mining that immediately captured my imagination after I embarked on the journey to data science (drifting away from my astrophysics roots) about a dozen years ago. It is also one of the most common use cases that are taught in data science MOOCs and other analytics training courses. I believe that the love affair with recommender systems can be partly attributed to two things.

Tinder has announced that it has begun testing it's first ever video feature for its dating app. Called Loops, the new feature lets users upload two-second video loops that gives them another shot at making a better impression to potential Tinder matches. "That's right, you get two seconds of looping video to show more personality, which is the best way to get more right swipes," Tinder said on its blog. "You can be flirty, you can be fun, but no matter what, be you. And be quick about it, because everyone who's anyone will be showing off their moves."

On this week's If Then, Slate's April Glaser and Will Oremus discuss the outrage at the largest TV-station owner in the country--Sinclair Broadcasting--after the media conglomerate forced its local-news anchors to read a script that echoes Trumpian talking points. They also unpack Trump's beef about Jeff Bezos owning what he calls the #AmazonWashingtonPost. Meanwhile, music streaming site Spotify went public this week in a totally new kind of way. The hosts take a look at its unorthodox move and what it means for the company's future.

Apple has poached Google's AI chief, John Giannandrea, to run its machine learning and AI operations, in the clearest sign yet that the iPhone creator is attempting to fix the problems that saw its early lead in the field crumble. Scottish-born Giannandrea, who joined Google in 2010 after his startup, Metaweb, was acquired, has led the search firm's push to become market leader in AI and machine learning. Under his command, Google Brain, the company's main AI research team, has rebuilt the technology that underpins some of Google's landmark products, including search, translation and voice recognition. He also led Google into its position today, where it battles with Amazon for technological supremacy in the field of voice controlled assistants. That role was once held by Apple, whose Siri technology introduced the feature to many, but which failed to capitalise on the lead.

If you own an Amazon Fire 7 or Fire 8 HD (2017) tablet, then you're in luck because your device just gained a new feature. If your device is connected to power and/or the screen is in use, you can use the device for smart home voice control thanks to Alexa. The software update that will enable the hands-free Alexa feature is currently rolling out to devices. If you have a PIN or password set on the device, you must unlock it to enable all Alexa hands-free features. You can also opt to disable all of these features (or control whether it works while the device is password locked) in the Alexa settings menu.

You'd think Nest's Secure alarm system would have worked with Google Assistant out of the box, but no -- you've had to arm it the old-fashioned way. Nest has quietly introduced Google Assistant support that allows voice control over Secure from a supporting device. You can arm the system whether you're home or away, check its status, or cancel it within seconds of making a mistake. Not surprisingly, there are limits. You can't disarm the system with voice commands, and you can't arm it if it's set to require a passcode.

USA TODAY's Jefferson Graham explains how you can tell Google, Facebook and Amazon to stop following you around the web. It's not just Facebook and Google that have loads of our personal data. The company isn't only the most popular Internet retailer in the country but it also dishes up content (via Amazon Prime Video, Audible and the Kindle library); runs a successful cloud platform for businesses (Amazon Web Services); sells devices like tablets, Kindle e-readers, set-top boxes and streaming sticks; and lets you access a personal assistant via Alexa-powered speakers and screens. It took the Cambridge Analytica scandal – the unauthorized access of Facebook user data from about 50 million accounts -- to shine a bright spotlight on how much personal data we're (over)sharing, and what's being done with it. You may have downloaded your Facebook and Google data.

Google's former head of artificial intelligence John Giannandrea is joining Apple in an effort to improve the firm's voice assistant. Mr Giannandrea, a machine learning expert who joined Google in 2010, will report directly to CEO Tim Cook, it has emerged. The Scottish born specialist announced that he would be stepping down from his role at the search engine earlier this week. It is hoped his expertise can be used to make Siri smarter, as the pioneering software continues to lag behind newcomers from rivals Google and Amazon. Google's former head of artificial intelligence John Giannandrea (pictured) is joining Apple in an effort to improve the firm's voice assistant.

How do you interact with your customers? Given the predominance of mobile devices and messaging apps, many experts believe the next era of customer interaction will belong to "the conversational layer" -- both text- and voice-driven -- that will use chat, messaging, or natural language interfaces to interact with people, brands, services, and bots. In this webinar, Babson College's Bala Iyer, author of the MIT SMR article "Do You Have a Conversational Interface?," Using industry examples and findings from his research, he offers strategies for capitalizing on conversational interfaces to capture customer loyalty.

Microsoft today said it has developed a new way for its most popular AI-powered bots to speak and analyze human voices at the same time, a skill engineers believe leads to more naturalistic conversations. The bots are empowered to predict what a person will say next, when to pause, and when it's appropriate to interrupt someone. Major virtual assistants have gained more expressive, human-like voices and are being trained to understand human emotion through voice analysis. But despite heavy investment by tech giants, exchanges between virtual assistants and people today can still be rather rudimentary, requiring the use of a wake word to carry out each command and falling short of the casual speech patterns that define human interaction. The new way to talk debuts with Microsoft's Xiaoice in China and Rinna in Japan.