If you make a purchase by clicking one of our links, we may earn a small share of the revenue. However, our picks and opinions are independent from USA TODAY's newsroom and any business incentives. For many people, purchasing an Amazon Echo is the first step in turning your house into a smart home. Once you've set up your Echo and gotten acquainted with Alexa, you might be wondering what's next, and our answer to you would be: expand your arsenal of smart home products! Some of Alexa's coolest capabilities spawn from integrations with other smart gadgets.

Hey Siri, play "All About That Bass." Apologies to Meghan Trainor for my geeky remix of her ode to bottom notes. It sums up how I feel about the first talking speaker from the company that gave us the first talking artificial intelligence, Siri. No matter how much boom-boom Apple packed into the $350 HomePod, it can't make up for poor old Siri, which somehow became even more dopey. Inside this speaker, Siri can't even do all the things it stumbles through on an iPhone, Apple Watch and Mac.

Google could be making Big Brother-style smart home technology to discipline your children so you don't have to. A dystopian patent filed by the company suggests smart homes of the future could monitor naughtier members of the household with cameras, microphones, motion sensors and thermal imaging. The Google Home system could use this real-time information to decide if the person in question is misbehaving and needs telling off. In another patent Google described a device that would give advice to parents for'areas of improvement' such as spending more time with their children at supper. Google could be making Big Brother-style smart home technology to discipline your children so you don't have to.

Microsoft has waxed and waned in the past between a single, unified UI design for its apps and services to more tailored ones that better fit into specific platforms. This shift in design philosophy was expressed profoundly in Skype, which for many years looked like the PC desktop version, then shifted countless times with various changes in design. To be fair, the approach of tailoring something like Cortana for Android is welcome. While Microsoft idealists believe the company should turn Android into a pseudo-Windows Phone with Live tiles, cooler heads have prevailed. Instead, Microsoft's apps for Android embrace Google's design choices to blend in better.

'We made it': Mother describes giving birth in hospital hallway The wireless 7in smart speaker uses spatial awareness technology to sense its place in a room and adjust audio output accordingly.

If you want Google Assistant on a Chromebook, you currently have exactly one option: Google's own $1,700 Pixelbook. It looks like Google's about to unleash its voice helper on any ChromeOS device, however, if code spotted by XDA Developers is implemented. In a recent ChromeOS built, there's a new feature that will let manufacturers enable Google Assistant (by default, it's off). According to another part of the code, OEMs will be able to decide whether it listens for a keywords or is activated simply by a button press. Google Assistant code for ChromeOS has been spotted before, but this is the first time we've seen a reference to a code commit.

As technology becomes indispensable from everyday life, humanity and tech will merge to the point they are indistinguishable, predicts communication and marketing firm PHD. Its research into the forces shaping marketing's future produced Merge: The Closing Gap Between Technology And Us, a documentary and book on how technology and human evolution had progressed since the 1950s and how technological advances over the next 25 to 35 years would reshape society and the marketing industry. The research drew on experts' insights and foresights, including inventor and author Ray Kurzweil, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, futurologist Dr Ian Pearson and Microsoft UK chief envisioning officer Dave Coplin. PHD Malaysia head Eileen Ooi said the year ahead would bring a host of new technologies that would challenge the industry but also present new opportunities for those willing to invest in innovation and take a bold first step. She cited four key trends: chatbots, sentient virtual personal assistants, next wave of wearables, and intelligent data layers that give you additional info when viewing things.

Create your own unique apartment in sandbox.mark.space To take part in the Contest, participants with a registered account on the MARK.SPACE platform, who purchased MRK tokens starting February 9, 2018, must register on the Internet via: sandbox.mark.space To apply through the Unisender form, the participant must provide their login email address and a link from the browser which directs to the virtual apartments hosted on the MARK.SPACE platform. IMPORTANT When registering with sandbox.markspace.io, the participant must enter the same email which is the login in the user's Dashboard on the site ico.markspace.io In the event of winning the Challenge, it is necessary to pass the KYC procedure to receive prizes.

In 2004, while conducting training exercises over the Pacific Ocean, two US Navy pilots reported something extraordinary: a mysterious, blindingly fast flying object that caused the sea to boil, rotated mid-air, and could fly more than 60 miles in under a minute, despite having no visible means of propulsion. The episode was just one of many investigated by a highly secretive Department of Defense program that ran from 2007 to 2012 and was championed by a handful of US Senators. A New York Times report on the program mentioned a clandestine government warehouse in Nevada that may or may not be storing "alien alloys" recovered from similar flying objects. Once upon a time, rumors and revelations like these would have sent the public into a frenzy. They would have joined Roswell and Area 51 in the pantheon of UFO-conspiracy chatter.

TGI Fridays is using artificial intelligence to do everything from power chatbots to personalize service at locations. The chain is particularly focused on how AI can keep app users. From May to November 2017, TGI Fridays used "predictive churn" tech to predict when a user would leave the app after signing in, then target users that were likely to leave soon with offers based on their past orders. TGI Fridays sent push notifications encouraging these users to make another purchase. When a user tapped on a push notification, they would be brought into the TGI Fridays app, where they could edit their order and pay with one tap.