Will.i.am's tech company i.am revealed to TechCrunch at CES today that it had recently purchased headphone maker Earin. The company didn't disclose how much it paid for Earin and Earin's name might not make it through the acquisition, but Earin's products fit with those of i.am for the most part and the purchase seems to be a more logical move than others recently made by the company. So far, i.am has come out with Buttons, its wireless Bluetooth earphones, and a couple of smartwatches, one of which, the Puls, was dubbed "a wearable nightmare" by Mashable. The Black Eyed Pea also produced a wild, high-end iPhone case back in 2012. However, last year, i.am purchased Wink, a maker of smart home hubs, and is said to be working on a virtual assistant called Omega.

Jennifer Jolly's coolest gadgets from CES you'll actually see in your home this year. Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda showed off the all-new 2018 Camry in January. Japanese automaker Toyota will integrate Amazon's Alexa voice assistant into some of its cars as the auto industry increasingly adopts the tech world's hottest offerings to improve the vehicle experience. The deal reflects a partnership between two of the world's largest companies, each of which can stake a claim to having revolutionized their industries. Toyota, whose efficient manufacturing techniques transformed the auto industry, is turning to Alexa to bolster its voice-recognition capability.

At first blush, the bathroom is the most boring possible spot smart-home technology could be applied, except maybe a closet. But consider a mirror that turns on motion-activated lights when you get up in the middle of the night, or tells you the weather in the morning. Consider setting the shower on to the perfect temperature just by asking, before you climb in. There are even "intelligent" toilets in the works though how intelligent they'll be remains to be seen. At an opening press event for CES Sunday, Kohler debuted a voice-enabled lighted mirror with dual-microphones and Amazon.com

Evolving consumer expectations, the rapid adoption of technology and new competitors entering the markets are placing new demands on today's wealth management firms. These trends are re-shaping the look and feel of the industry, and the change is happening across all aspects of the value chain, from client acquisition to advice to ongoing portfolio monitoring and decision-making. According to Ketan Samani, chief digital officer for APAC at UBS Wealth Management, the industry is just at the start of its digital journey. "Wealth management is taking the lead from the retail banks, which experienced high disruption by start-ups in payments, lending and other products," he said. "It is just waking up to the fact that the robo-advisers will do the same. There is a way to go, but the journey has begun."

Jimena Canales is a faculty member of the Graduate College at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and a research affiliate at MIT. She focuses on 19th and 20th century history of the physical sciences and science in the modern world. Her most recent book is titled The Physicist and the Philosopher: Einstein, Bergson and the Debate That Changed Our Understanding of Time. You can learn more about her here. Resolutions abound at this time of year: The close of 2017 and the start to 2018 presents a symbolic "fresh start."

Artificial intelligence was one of the most hyped up technologies in 2017, and 2018 doesn't look like being any different, with good reason – AI is creeping its way into every aspect of our daily lives, whether it's browsing social media or chatting to a smart speaker in the corner of our living rooms. We've heard a lot about AI increasing its presence on smartphones – recognizing objects in photos, powering digital assistants and so on – but plenty of other gadgets now come with built-in AI. Drones need to have some level of autonomy to stop them from falling out of the sky or ramming straight into a tree, and it's thanks to AI that drones like the DJI Phantom 4 Advanced can pilot themselves as and when needed. The Phantom 4 Advanced, like several other models, is smart enough to pick you out from a crowd and can take a selfie of you without you having to be at the controls. The same kind of intelligent tech enables it to identify a quickly approaching obstacle so it can swerve to avoid it – all thanks to the on-board image processing AI.

Are you ready to talk to your toilet? Those are just a few of the ideas we've seen at CES 2018, the annual consumer technology confab here at the Las Vegas Convention Center and other venues. Sure, there are tech titans here battling to control our computers, TVs and smart homes. But our favorite part is the thousands of other companies that gather to launch something new. While these ideas sometimes catch on, like fitness trackers and wireless ear buds, many go nowhere.

Jennifer Jolly's coolest gadgets from CES you'll actually see in your home this year. A New Year means one thing in the world of gadgets -- a trip to Las Vegas for CES. It's the enormous consumer electronics show packed with nearly 50-football fields worth of shiny new tech toys. Somewhere inside the cavernous convention center crowded with TV's we can't afford, concept cars we'll never drive, and stupid "smart" things we'll never use (Alexa-enabled toilet…really?), there's always a handful of gadgets that really can hit the jackpot of product-perfection. That's what I set out to find early-on here in Las Vegas. Here are my favorites so far.

And although some of jump is a result of continuing tech trends that have been playing out for years – consumer demand for smartphones, for example, is expected to generate a 3 percent uptick in product revenues this year – a substantial portion of the gains were attributed to new data-heavy technologies like the Amazon Alexa and Google Home digital assistants.

Lest you doubt that Google is serious about spreading its AI to every nook and cranny of the consumer electronics universe, consider today's CES 2018 reveal: Google just announced four new "smart displays" from Lenovo, JBL, LG and Sony, plus a bevy of smart speakers and TVs from other partners, almost too numerous to mention. And all these devices come with Google Assistant baked in. This is a shot across the bough of Amazon, whose Alexa digital assistant is appearing in more and more third-party devices, as well. Google also announced that Google Assistant is coming to Android Auto dashboard units, and gave an official name--"Actions"--to all the commands and queries you can voice to Google Assistant. But the big news centers on smart displays, which offer capabilities you won't find in Google's own Google Home, Google Home Mini or Google Home Max smart speakers.