File photo: Richi Chandra, Director of Product Management, Google Chromecast, speaks about the Google Home Max speaker during a launch event in San Francisco, California, U.S. October 4, 2017. After discovering -- to my furniture's detriment -- that the Apple HomePod and the Sonos One speakers can potentially leave white marks on certain wood surfaces, I decided to see what other smart speakers are capable of causing similar damage. Not wanting to subject my mahogany cabinet to any more abuse, I bought a pine board from Home Depot, along with some mahogany stain and Howard's Feed-N-Wax -- an oil-based finish that was also used on my furniture. As it turns out, the Google Home Max can damage wood just like the Apple HomePod and Sonos One, but there is some good news. Then, I left them on the board, turned off, for a little more than 27 hours.

If you were looking to buy a pair of AirPods, you may be better off waiting a few more months. Bloomberg reported Thursday that Apple is working on a second version of its popular AirPod in-ear headphones. The updated product will include an upgraded wireless chip for faster and more powerful on-board processing; a greater level of water resistance, in case you get caught in a downpour; and the addition of Hey Siri, the entirely voice-based version of Apple's virtual assistant. The news is a good reminder: Second-generation products, particularly by Apple, are almost always vastly superior to the original. Apple's first stab at AirPods has not been a bad one, all things considered.

Visitors walk past a 5G logo during the Mobile World Congress on the third day of the MWC in Barcelona, on March 1, 2017. The new year for smartphones is about to dawn. The South Korean electronics giant is is the headline exhibitor at the Mobile World Congress trade show that commences over the weekend, drawing some 108,000 attendees to the mobile industry's annual signature shindig. The S9 represents Samsung's turn to try and leapfrog Apple's most recent iPhones, as the rivals resume their bottomless battle for smartphone supremacy. Leaks point to a Galaxy phone with, among other features, an improved camera system.

Automation and personalization, although very different in meaning, are very closely connected and go hand in hand with each other. A good question to ask ourselves in this context is – what happens if one interferes with the other? When we talk about the development of businesses, personalization, automation, tools and devices that will take the way we do business to a whole new level, we realize that there is a need to automate personalization more, while customizing automation. This is where automation vs. personalization issue arises. In the context of Artificial Intelligence and Human Resources, automation and personalization are intertwined as well as these two areas.

Alongside news of Google Assistant's forthcoming multilingual support and the addition of more languages this year, Google also announced this morning its smart assistant would soon be gaining two new features: Routines and location-based reminders. Google has been promising Routines were in the works for some time. The feature, which lets Google Assistant users string together multiple commands, was first announced back in October 2017. With Routines, you can create personalized commands and responses – for example, saying "OK Google, I'm home," could turn on the lights, adjust the thermostat, and play some music. It's a feature that rival Alexa announced in September 2017, and launched the following month. Google is playing catch up here, but it's doing it quickly.

Google Assistant had its coming out party at Mobile World Congress 2017 with the announcement that it was expanding beyond Google's own Pixel phones, and now it's ready to take on the world. Google has announced it will be expanding Assistant to nearly two dozen more languages this year as it expands its influence to some "95 percent of all eligible Android phones worldwide." Google Assistant already speaks English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, and Portuguese (Brazil), but its linguist capabilities will be greatly expanded over the next 10 months as Google plans to add support for more than 30 languages. First up will be Danish, Dutch, Hindi, Indonesian, Norwegian, Swedish and Thai, all of which should arrive by summer. Along with the new languages comes support for multilingual speakers.

In advance of the Mobile World Congress, Google has announced some exciting new language features for Assistant. Later this year, Google Assistant will have multilingual features. This means that people who speak different languages over the course of their day can switch seamlessly between languages. Google Assistant will be able to identify the language you are speaking and follow along. The feature will be available first in English, German and French, but support for more languages is planned.

Today's Google Assistant is much, much more capable than the version that first debuted on the original Pixel and Pixel XL. Don't expect that progress to slow anytime soon, either: Google laid out some new plans to improve the Assistant just in time for Mobile World Congress, and they extend far beyond just teaching it more languages. Most importantly, Google confirmed it has been working with smartphone makers on ways to weave Assistant more elegantly into our smartphones. That work is being formalized in the new Assistant Mobile OEM program, and Google's list of accomplishments with its partners is nothing to sneeze at: it helped make Assistant compatible with certain kinds of mobile AI coprocessor and worked to make sure devices can listen for the right wake-words even when their screens are off. It won't be long before you start to see device-specific Google Assistant commands, either -- LG touted a list of 23 new commands for its updated V30, and Google also cited close working relationships with companies like Sony and Xiaomi.

The increase in how technology affects our day to day lives can be seen by everyone. From personal assistant tools like Siri, ordering anything at the touch of a button and yes, even self-checkouts… If you consider the capabilities of your mobile phone compared to your first, you can see how quickly things can change! Get our free ebook on how the Soviet Union became Putin's Russia. According to Oxford University it is believed that "47% of the human workforce will be replaced by 2035" - A staggering number! What job roles will still be around for humans in the future?

It is about time, that HR enters into newer more advanced territories. WebHR has been a "lucky star" to almost do things before the market catches up with it, introducing the latest trends and technologies at a rocket pace. WebHR has a more agile focus and is targeting consumers with precision now, it has a habit of engaging in rapid innovation and upgrades. That includes the use of Bots and AI to simulate a conversation, creating a co-worker or an assistant that deals with your day to day HR related tasks. The revolution has carried WebHR on a wave of new discoveries and now, it not only uses the chat-bots but has ventured into merging HR with AI enabled devices, specially "Amazon Echo" using its virtual assistant Alexa, which acts as your personal HR buddy.