Microsoft hasn't posted one of its documentary-style Productivity Future videos for a while now -- not since 2015, I believe. But that doesn't mean the company has stopped'envisioning' what might be next for Office and the workplace. In a new Microsoft .Future podcast episode, called How AI will make meetings less painful, Microsoft drops some hints about some of the latest future concepts that ultimately may inspire its coming products and services, including Cortana. The podcast (which is audio only) mentions that Director of Office Envisioning Anton Andrews and team have "re-envisioned everything -- from what you should expect from a dry erase board, to what you might expect from the floor." Andrews said during the podcast that Microsoft sees the floor people stand on as a potential communications tool, but he didn't elaborate on how/when/if the company may provide more on what that means.

This tutorial clearly explains the steps you need to code your first Amazon Alexa skill app. Learn to code with the helpful of our intuitive tutorials Another important component is intent model. Intent is an important aspect of voice, speech coding Companion blog post http://www.siliconvanity.com/2017/07/...

Mapping 1,100 years of metaphoric English language, researchers at UC Berkeley and Lehigh University in Pennsylvania have detected patterns in how English speakers have added figurative word meanings to their vocabulary. Researchers called the original semantic domain the "source domain" and the domain that the metaphorical meaning was extended to, the "target domain." More than 1,400 online participants were recruited to rate semantic domains such as "water" or "mind" according to the degree to which they were related to the external world (light, plants), animate things (humans, animals), or intense emotions (excitement, fear). In comparing their computational predictions against the actual historical record provided by the Metaphor Map of English, researchers found that their models correctly forecast about 75 percent of recorded metaphorical language mappings over the past millennium.

Mapping 1,100 years of metaphoric English language, researchers at UC Berkeley and Lehigh University in Pennsylvania have detected patterns in how English speakers have added figurative word meanings to their vocabulary. Researchers called the original semantic domain the "source domain" and the domain that the metaphorical meaning was extended to, the "target domain." More than 1,400 online participants were recruited to rate semantic domains such as "water" or "mind" according to the degree to which they were related to the external world (light, plants), animate things (humans, animals), or intense emotions (excitement, fear). In comparing their computational predictions against the actual historical record provided by the Metaphor Map of English, researchers found that their models correctly forecast about 75 percent of recorded metaphorical language mappings over the past millennium.

Bringing new meaning to the phrase "killer app," the monster movie "Bedeviled" imagines a malevolent version of Siri coming to life to scare teenagers to death. What ensues is a competently made take on the slasher picture, but never as cutting-edge as the premise promises. Brothers Abel and Burlee Vang wrote and directed "Bedeviled," combining the technophobia of '90s Japanese ghost stories with the "attractive youngsters get murdered" dynamic of '80s scream-fests. The movie also has a sprinkle of Stephen King's "It," in that the villain often appears in clown makeup. Jordan Essoe provides the voice and occasionally the face of Mr. Bedevil, the bow-tie wearing mascot of a voice-activated helper application, providing recommendations based on detailed personal knowledge of the user's preferences.

Find out how to optimize your website to give your customers experiences that will have the biggest ROI for your business. There are two divided sides when it comes to Artificial Intelligence (AI): those excited about its possibilities and those scared by its potential. Love it or hate it, AI already exists in our everyday lives. From asking Siri to perform a Google search to asking Alexa to play your favorite song, AI is being used daily. It has several application uses, both personal and business related. Facebook Messenger chatbots are just one example of how quickly AI is being utilized by companies to streamline customer service and mundane tasks.

As Amazon's gadgets seem to go from strength to strength, I sat down with David Limp, the senior vice president of devices and services at Amazon, to learn about the Alexa's next steps and the company's future plans. However, since one of the big successes of the company's devices division has been the Kindle ebook reader, I began by asking David Limp about that. "We've just got done with another Prime Day, which was a record day. On Kindle, which is coming up on its 10-year anniversary this November, a big milestone for us, it was the best-selling day in the history of Kindle. So, 10 years and you know if you were to listen to the pundits talk, they say nobody's buying readers anymore. But I can assure you lots of people are. And we're really excited that people still love dedicated readers and we're going to continue inventing there."

Almost everyone loves to spend their leisure time to watch movies with their family and friends. We all have the same experience when we sit on our couch to choose a movie that we are going to watch and spend the next two hours but can't even find one after 20 minutes. We definitely need a computer agent to provide movie recommendation to us when we need to choose a movie and save our time. Apparently, a movie recommendation agent has already become an essential part of our life.. According to Data Science Central "Although hard data is difficult to come by, many informed sources estimate that, for the major ecommerce platforms like Amazon and Netflix, that recommenders may be responsible for as much as 10% to 25% of incremental revenue."

Amazon may be adding a new feature to its Echo products that would improve the experience and take on classic speaker systems. The company is reportedly launching multi-room audio, which would allow users with multiple Echo products to play music or any other audio simultaneously in multiple rooms. This would allow users to keep listening as they walk around their homes. Amazon is reportedly launching multi-room audio, which would allow users with multiple Echo products to play music or any other audio simultaneously in multiple rooms. Amazon Echo is a voice-controlled smart speaker that works alongside a smartphone app.

Over the past few years, e-commerce has been slowly and steadily transformed by artificial intelligence (AI). The world has watched Amazon go from bookseller to voice-activated, product-recommending, Internet of Things behemoth over the last 15 years, and -- for many reasons -- e-commerce has been an area of great AI adoption, particularly in marketing. That being said, the retail space (which encompasses a much broader array of businesses beyond just e-commerce) often doesn't get the same degree of limelight when it comes to AI use cases. I've set out to display some real use cases that highlight how and where AI is pushing the boundaries in the retail sector. While the applications below are by no means a complete list, it serves as a nice general overview of the possibilities in this space, along with related startups and technology companies working on those specific applications.