Apple has joined the race to put a microphone in every home. The firm today announced that its £319 ($349) 'HomePad' smart speaker is finally set to go on sale on 9th February in the US, UK and Australia - just over a month later than initially planned. The wireless smart speaker uses spatial awareness technology to sense its place in a room and adjust audio output accordingly. The 7in speaker, first unveiled last year but whose release was delayed from December, will also house Apple's virtual assistant Siri, meaning it can be controlled using voice commands and also provide news and weather information when asked. It is fitted with six microphones to records owners' voice commands.

Apple's Siri-equipped HomePod smart speaker will be available starting Feb. 9, the company announced Tuesday. Preorders for the $349 device begin Jan. 26. The HomePod is Apple's entry into the highly competitive smart speaker space, first popularized by the Amazon Echo, later joined by the Google Home. At $349, the HomePod is far pricer than many rival devices -- the cheapest Echo, the Echo Dot, can be had for about $49. But Apple is pitching the device as a high-end home speaker more akin to devices like the Sonos PLAY lineup, although with voice-activated capabilities thanks to Siri integration.

The Apple HomePod was supposed to go on sale last month at the height of the holiday season, but Apple pushed back its release date to early 2018. Now, the tech giant has finally announced a HomePod release date. Apple announced in a press release today that the HomePod will be released Feb. 9. The company also confirmed customers will be able to pre-order the HomePod online starting Jan. 26. The Siri-powered smart speaker is also set to arrive in France and Germany this spring.

Hands up if your resourcing team sends you a timesheet meme each week? The internet is awash with timesheet memes that are regularly downloaded by frazzled HR staff, at their wits end trying to compel employees to do. And it's only one mundane task of many that take up valuable time and contribute to the slow torturous drip that is administration. If only there was a way to legitimately do less of it and concentrate on the good stuff. It's pretty well established, if not universally adopted, that chatbots can enhance customer service experiences.

Rumors have been swirling as of late that Apple is getting ready to release its new Amazon Echo and Google Home rival very soon, and now we have an official launch date for the HomePod. Apple on Tuesday announced that the $349 HomePod will hit store shelves on Feb. 9. The Cupertino tech giant will start taking pre-orders on its website this Friday, Jan. 26, in the US, UK, and Australia. The Siri-backed smart speaker is slated to arrive in France and Germany this spring. Getting to this point has already been a long road for Apple, which unveiled the HomePod in June and planned to start selling it in December, in time for the holidays.

Company's delayed, £319 smart speaker pitched as music-first wireless speaker that can be voice-controlled via Siri Tue 23 Jan 2018 09.44 EST Last modified on Tue 23 Jan 2018 11.13 EST Apple's delayed £319 HomePod smart speaker will finally be available to buy on Friday in the UK, US and Australia. The 17.8cm tall HomePod is pitched as a music-first wireless speaker that can be controlled by voice using Apple's Siri assistant, which can also set timers, reminders, check the weather and control smart home devices. "It brings advanced audio technologies like beam-forming tweeters, a high-excursion woofer and automatic spatial awareness, together with the entire Apple Music catalogue and the latest Siri intelligence, in a simple, beautiful design that is so much fun to use," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide marketing. The HomePod was announced in June to ship before the end of 2017, but Apple was forced to delay shipping in November as the product needed more work. Apple could only watch as Amazon got an over three-year head start with the Echo – while Google's Home is 14 months old – and it now has some catching up to do. Ben Wood, chief of research at CCS Insight, said: "This is a critically important device for Apple given the significant head start Amazon and Google have in this area.

Apple developers debuted their new home device which features Siri and Apple Music at the WWDC Conference in San Francisco, California. The HomePod speaker is photographed in a a showroom during an announcement of new products at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference Monday, June 5, 2017, in San Jose, Calif. Apple's rival to the Amazon Echo and Google Home is finally ready to make its debut. The tech giant announced Tuesday it will launch its $349 HomePod speaker on February 9. Preorders for the device kick off January 26. The wireless speaker is considered Apple's contender in the surging smart speaker market, already dominated by Amazon with its popular line of Echo devices, along with Google Home.

How do we make recommendations in our lives? We do it based on our past experiences. Now imagine, what if we start making instant recommendations based on data in our real lives? First, we'll feel like an intelligent adviser. Second, we will no longer be humans.

Your message has been sent. There was an error emailing this page. Amazon's Echo Spot brings you all the features of its Echo, with a screen for displaying weather forecasts, news updates, sports scores, song lyrics and much more. All you need to do is ask Alexa. It fits comfortably on a nightstand and works well as an alarm clock and bedside calendar as well. Watch videos, call your friends, control your smarthome -- new features are added all the time.

In 2018, you'd be forgiven for assuming that any sensitive app encrypts its connection from your phone to the cloud, so that the stranger two tables away at the coffee shop can't pull your secrets off the local Wi-Fi. That goes double for apps as personal as online dating services. But if you assumed that basic privacy protection for the world's most popular dating app, you'd be mistaken: As one application security company has found, Tinder's mobile apps still lack the standard encryption necessary to keep your photos, swipes, and matches hidden from snoops. On Tuesday, researchers at Tel Aviv-based app security firm Checkmarx demonstrated that Tinder still lacks basic HTTPS encryption for photos. Just by being on the same Wi-Fi network as any user of Tinder's iOS or Android app, the researchers could see any photo the user did, or even inject their own images into his or her photo stream.