"Siri, where's the best place to grab dinner nearby?" "What's the weather today, Siri?" "Hey, Siri. Who won the game last night?" It has become second nature for me to ask my iPhone questions and expect a chipper, informative response. From grabbing a bite to booking a flight, Siri has become an ...

Magazines are constantly looking at ways to bridge the gap between their paper-based and digital audiences, especially with an ecommerce slant, which has demonstrated its potential in a number of innovative areas, including augmented reality. Now, Condé Nast fashion bibles Vogue and GQ are experimenting with content on the exclusive Amazon Echo Look, which is basically Alexa with a camera (and is only available to purchase by invitation at this stage). From February 19, readers can take a selfie with the Look, send it to the app and get a host of celebrity and fashion content in return, some of which they can buy through the app, with Condé Nast getting a cut of the sale. The content will be updated once a week by Condé Nast and Amazon employees, and while it's not clear how many customers the glossy titles hope to reach through the project, Vogue's digital director Anna-Lisa Yabsley revealed that the experiment was prompted largely because more and more readers are asking for help in choosing products. Plus, Condé Nast has previously identified ecommerce as a key growth area for 2018.

The rise of artificial intelligence (AI), as with a lot of recent technologies, seems to be exponential. Recently, the news was of the NHS looking to introduce AI to assist in more rapid diagnosis of heart conditions. So perhaps the time is right to start thinking how AI could be utilised within UK housing organisations? At the beginning of 2017 I began an open conversation with the housing sector around emerging technologies, including chatbots, sensor-based Internet of Things devices and headless user interfaces (UIs) like Amazon's Alexa or Google at Home. Since then I've been visiting and meeting with a diverse range of organisations who have all started to explore the potential benefits that these sorts of technologies could offer them.

"Alexa, can you order me a pizza from Dominos?" "Alexa, do you know Siri?" These are just some of the questions you might enjoy asking Alexa on your smartphone now that Amazon has brought the voice control feature to the Android version of the app. But before you start geeking out, here's the rundown of the most recent update: Until recently, the Amazon Alexa app could only be used to control settings for the Echo, Dot, and other supported devices. Considering what the AI-powered assistant is actually capable of, this is nothing to get excited about. But now all that has changed as Amazon brings voice control to the Android version of the app, making Alexa a full-fledge digital assistant on Android handsets.

The tech giant announced the HomePod speaker last summer, and originally planned to release it in December. However, Apple aapl then delayed the HomePod's debut, reportedly to modify its software. Now that the HomePod is nearing arrival, it faces stiff competition from competing web-connected speakers like the Amazon amzn Echo, Google goog Home, and Sonos One. The HomePod is the priciest of the speakers at $350. So far, reviewers seem pleased with the HomePod's sound quality, but are underwhelmed by the version of Apple's voice activated Siri digital assistant used in the speaker.

"Hey Siri, why should I buy a HomePod?" If you were to ask that question a few months ago, the answer may have been more clear. When Apple unveiled its $349 Siri-equipped HomePod speaker in June, it was poised to fill a big hole in the smart speaker market. While the Amazon Echo and Google Home were pretty good at answering questions, they wouldn't blow anybody away when it came to audio quality. Apple, then, pitched its smart speaker as a piece of high-end audio gear aimed at music aficionados, with Siri on board as a bonus. But the HomePod, which finally starts shipping this week, was delayed for several months.

The idea that machines can make intelligent decisions has been around since the 1950s when the first learning programme was built. At the time, the machine itself was groundbreaking, improving at the game of checkers the more it played. Since then, the idea of such machines has become more and more prevalent, particularly in pop culture. But over the last few years, the concept has moved from the realm of fiction, such as Iron Man's JARVIS (Just A Rather Very Intelligent System), the highly advanced computer system supporting Tony Stark, to our phones and even our living rooms. We're growing more and more comfortable with AI services, such as Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa, the latter of which Amazon recently announced would make its way to Australia and New Zealand in 2018.

Apple, Google, Amazon and Samsung have all been working hard to create their own standard to control all the connected devices around your home. Mozilla just announced that anybody can now create an open gateway to control the internet of things. The organization also confirmed that it is still working on a set of frameworks and open standards so that we don't end up with an internet of things controlled by big tech companies. Connected devices are great, until you realize that your connected thermostat only works with the Amazon Echo and your connected lightbulbs only work with Siri and the Home app. Accessory makers also don't necessarily want a handful of big tech companies to control the internet of things. Tech giants could end up charging expensive licensing fees to work with their ecosystem.

Finding a car that fits your preferences can be a very time-consuming task and may drive you crazy. On the other hand, with approximately 1.5 million cars on our platform, vehicle descriptions that are constantly changing and users that are still exploring may also drive us as the solution provider crazy. Under these circumstances, matching cars with users' preferences is challenging and by the time you've found a match, your perfect car might be gone. Even if you haven't searched for a car yet, you've probably faced similar problems in other domains like news, consumer products, or entertainment. On Spotify, you don't like to explicitly outline your music tastes before you start enjoying music. You also don't want to search through the whole IMDB to find your next favorite series on Netflix. The sheer number of possibilities creates a burden of choice.

"Today's forecast for San Antonio is..." "The rapper Sisqó was born in Baltimore, Maryland." Sometimes, talking to an artificially intelligent robot is, well, not so intelligent. That's part of a conclusion reached by a team of Stanford University professors who are tracking the technological progress of artificial intelligence. Yohav Shoham is the Stanford computer science professor who conceived of the idea for the index. "AI has made truly amazing strides in the past decade, but computers still can't exhibit the common sense or the general intelligence of even a 5-year-old," said Shoham, who studied at Yale University and in his native Israel at both the Technion Institute and the Weizmann Institute of Science.