Don't miss this deal: The Amazon Echo is $50 off on Monday only (Photo: Amazon) 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. Amazon hasn't even announced when Prime Day 2017 will take place, but we're already seeing big deals on top products - like the Amazon Echo. The flagship Amazon Alexa device is on sale for $129.99 today only. This $50 discount is the lowest price they've ever offered outside of the invite-only pre-launch sale.

Today, Amazon and Best Buy are offering the cheapest price yet on the Amazon Echo at $50 off. The popular smart speaker is available right now for $130 instead of the usual sticker price of $180. The price of the Echo has been fluctuating a bit in recent months with sales going as low as $140 to $150. In May, Amazon and Best Buy did a discounted "two pack" where you could get two Echo units for $280. Today's deal beats that sale by $20 if you were to buy two, and it's the best price we've seen since the Echo's launch. The Echo is a great little device for smart home fans.

You can make video calls through Echo Show. NEW YORK--Alexa can show you stuff as well as tell. You and Amazon's cloud-based personal assistant have been on a first name basis ever since the debut of the company's popular voice-driven Echo speaker. Now that Amazon will begin shipping Echo Show this week, the first Echo with a built-in screen, I can not only envision how you and Alexa might spend more time together, but how Alexa might bring you closer to family and friends. Chief reason: merely by asking, Alexa can initiate video calls, including a special type of "drop in" call reserved for loved ones, of which I'll have more to say below. I've been testing Echo Show for just shy of a week and expect it to be a hit, as much for its potential as for where it will be on launch day.

It's the first time Alexa, the virtual assistant powering Amazon's Echo devices, doesn't depend solely on verbal input. I can't glance at my nightstand without Alexa feeding me news headlines, recommending music videos, or encouraging me to try its other features. As such, it's possible to place a video call, audio call, or send an audio message just by asking Alexa. Amazon is positioning the Show as more than just a Skype machine by making it compatible with smart home products like baby monitors and security cameras.

Siri may have ushered in the era of the digital assistant, but Amazon's Echo (with Alexa) really took that concept and put it in our homes. The Echo wasn't an immediate, breakout hit -- but having Alexa around to ask questions, manage smart-home devices, play music and much more has turned out to be a pretty great thing. It's a concept Google and Apple are now chasing (to varying degrees), but Amazon isn't standing still. The $230 Echo Show is the first Echo with a touchscreen, and since it was announced, we've been wondering how much a display will really add to the Alexa experience. It depends on what you want to do with it and where you put the Echo Show in your home.

Every morning, as I survey the landscape of jeans and blue gingham shirts in my dresser, I ask Alexa about the weather. One day last week, as my virtual assistant chirped out of Amazon's new Echo Show smart speaker, I noticed the voice sounded muffled. I walked into the kitchen and found the Show's 7-inch screen facing the wall. I asked Anna, my fiancée, if she'd moved it. "Yeah," she said, between yoga poses on our living room floor.

Amazon hasn't even announced when Prime Day 2017 will take place, but we're already seeing big deals on top products - like the Amazon Echo. The flagship Amazon Alexa device is on sale for $129.99 today only. This $50 discount is the lowest price they've ever offered outside of the invite-only pre-launch sale. So if you've been thinking of bringing Alexa into your home, this 28% discount is absolutely the best reason to take the plunge. Talking to Alexa is extremely intuitive, and she understands most basic questions and commands.

The introduction of new voice-driven digital assistants has captured the imagination of consumers and businesses alike. As more developers build capabilities for these devices, consumers will increase usage, providing the springboard for integration with digital banking solutions such as voice-driven payments. It is becoming clear that the next battle in the tech world will be around voice-driven digital assistants, such as the Apple Siri, Amazon Alexa, Microsoft Cortana, Google Assistant/Now and Samsung Bixby/Viv. While the attention has moved from smartphone assistants to home hubs, the real excitement will begin as the underlying AI (artificial intelligence) and machine learning begins to deliver detailed, contextual, and highly personalized responses that will make a consumer's life easier. Digital assistants will be at the heart of a user's daily activities, whether in an increasingly smart home (using home hub devices like the Amazon Echo and Dot, Google Home, Apple HomePod), a connected car, at work or walking down the street.

We're almost halfway into 2017 (I know, can you believe it's end of June already?) Rapid improvements in key underlying technologies -- voice recognition and natural language processing – are making these "smart" assistants more capable of letting us use our various devices just by talking to them. The promise of these assistants, ranging from Apple's Siri and Google's Assistant to the newcomer, Samsung's Bixby, is that someday we will each have our own personal, always-listening AI which can respond to any wish and command, like Tony Stark's Jarvis in the movie Iron Man. It's a future vision of computing pulled directly from the pages of science fiction. This is heady stuff, but there are reasons to believe that voice may not become the next computing platform, at least not for a while.

In the past few years, there has been a lot of buzz surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) in the news. From Google's self-driving cars to Apple's Siri to Netflix's movie recommendation engine to smart buildings to Nest thermostats, the list goes on of applications utilizing ML to automatically derive value from numerous input sources. But how do these use cases apply to more conservative, industrial industries like energy and utilities that are often seen as technology laggards?