Amazon is a company that has gone from being an innovative online book retailer, to one of the largest ecommerce retailers in the world, and is now the largest cloud computing provider and a major player in IoT.In addition to their core ecommerce website, Amazon has a line of internet connected ebook readers, personal tablets, a smartphone, a smart TV device, and now their latest, an intellig Their new product is the Echo. It's a small, relatively discreet IoT connected speaker that works in much the same way as Apple's Siri, Microsoft's Cortana, and Google's Now services. Are there enough compelling features with the Echo to make it a breakthrough device in IoT mass adoption? More importantly, are there risks with having an always on, always listening, IoT device in the home? Although IoT devices around the world have now exceeded 5 billion, there are still billions of consumers that haven't seen the value, or even recognized the potential of a more connected home.

Technology conventions such as IFA often serve as a window into the near future, with the concepts on the show floor offering a glimpse of what gadgets are in the pipeline. The ubiquity of virtual assistants, drones and virtual reality were all first flagged at shows like IFA, so it's far from a guessing game. And a striking trend has been appearing in every corner of the convention centre this year – robots. Robotics have been becoming increasingly prevalent in the tech world for some time now, partly driven by the rise of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Once inanimate devices have been coming to life and learning as they do.

Alexa's Flash Briefings can help start your day by telling you about the latest headlines from various news sources and podcasts. Now, the voice assistant can also tell you what's going on about your favorite musicians. Amazon has launched "Today in Music" to provide you updates about the newest music news, releases, events and music-related Prime and Unlimited features, as well as to dole out music trivia and to hear exclusive commentary from artists. Everything will be curated by "the experts at Amazon Music," who'll also squeeze in tidbits about the playlists or stations they've just launched. To switch the skill on, just add it as a Flash Briefing through the Alexa app or get it from the page Amazon has published for it.

Apple's Eddy Cue has been in charge of Siri since software chief Scott Forestall left the company in 2012. Now, the executive has handed Siri over to Craig Federighi -- and it might be a bigger deal than your usual shuffling of responsibilities. See, while Cue heads Apple Music, Pay, iCloud and iTunes, Federighi is in charge of developing iOS and MacOS. As Reuters noted, handing the voice assistant over to the operating system chief could mean that Apple is looking to integrate it more deeply into both platforms. The tech titan has been giving Siri deeper access to both iOS and MacOS for a while anyway: the voice assistant made its way to Macs with Sierra, you can use it to control third-party apps like Uber and it will soon be able to add events to your calendar if you sign up for them on Safari.

Labor Day is on Monday, but there are already many deals on electronics that shoppers can check out now. Best Buy and Amazon have sales on products from Apple, including iPads, to Amazon Echo devices. There are plenty of deals to look out for. For those who don't plan to wait for the iPhone 8, Best Buy is offering up to $300 off the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus. The promo works when signing up for a 24-month installment plan with Sprint.

The first half of the year saw companies flock to CES in Las Vegas and MWC in Barcelona to show off the devices they hope you'll want to buy for the rest of the year. As we approach the holiday season, tech companies are clamoring for your attention once again, launching gadget after gadget that fight each other for a spot on your shopping list. At IFA 2017, a dizzying array of wearables, laptops, smartphones and headsets were unveiled at various press conferences before the show floor even opened. Samsung launched three new wearables while Sony improved its popular wireless headphones, updated its Xperia phones, unveiled its Google Assistant speaker and even pushed out a teeny tiny new RX0 GoPro-like camera. Then there's Lenovo, which officially unveiled its Explorer mixed reality headset, refreshed its mainstream laptops and made a speaker accessory for its tablets to turn into makeshift Amazon Echo Shows.

Artificial intelligence is the single most-hyped trend of 2017. If you're lived through big data and digital transformation, you may be skeptical that something else will come around next year, too. AI is really a bigger deal than what has come before and it's hard to believe that it will be just another fad. Amazon Echo has established a foothold in over 10 million U.S. households (and is catching up to Siri's 41.4 million users.) Do you really think that next year all of those users are going to put their Echos in storage?

When you're looking for a smart home speaker, you might think you're stuck with those made by Amazon, Apple or Google in order to use the specific intelligent assistants from the respective companies. Now, however, you can pick up a speaker that works with Alexa or Google Assistant, in addition to the one that already supports Microsoft's Cortana. The Samsung-owned Harman International just announced three new JBL Link speakers at IFA, each a voice activated speaker with Google Assistant built in. The company also revealed the Harman Kardon Allure, an Alexa-enabled smart speaker with 360-degree sound. The Link speakers come in two portable sizes as well as a larger design, can be linked together for multi-room listening and also have Chromecast built in.

Citi Ventures, Salesforce, Tencent Holdings, and NVIDIA GPU Ventures were frequently spotted in the deals we investigated, while VC firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and private equity firm Warburg Pincus were common co-investors. The unicorn startup (valued at $1.2B) welcomed Roche Venture Fund -- the CVC arm of the healthcare company Roche -- into its ownership in its $175M Series C, which is the company's largest raise to date. At the heart of the platform is "Neuralytics" -- the company's big data, predictive analytics, and artificial intelligence engine -- which leverages sales interaction data from across the company's global network to make predictive and prescriptive recommendations (with the aim of shortening sales cycles and improving internal sales processes). In the startup's $100M Series C in Q3'15, IT firm Rackspace Hosting participated alongside CVC capitalG (formerly Google Capital) and follow-on investors Accel Partners and Warburg Pincus.

Unlike Google, Facebook, and Amazon, Apple appears to be sitting out the massive data suck revolution. Marco Arment, bless him, has the ability to distill popular sentiment down to it's essence and post it in a way that makes every sensationalist site on the web attention-link it with self-serving abandon. Unfortunately, his point often gets lost in the pile-on that follows. This time, his point is about Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and whether companies unfettered by concerns over privacy and security have a lead Apple will find tough to follow. Today, Amazon, Facebook, and Google are placing large bets on advanced AI, ubiquitous assistants, and voice interfaces, hoping that these will become the next thing that our devices are for.