The first voice you hear on the recording is mine. "Here we are," I say. My tone is cheerful, but a catch in my throat betrays how nervous I am. "Esquire," a second voice on the recording chimes in, and this one word--delivered as a winking parody of lawyerly pomposity--immediately puts me more at ease. The speaker is my dad. We are sitting across from each other in my parents' bedroom, him in a rose-colored armchair and me in a desk chair. It's the same room where, decades ago, he calmly forgave me after I confessed that I'd driven the family station wagon through a garage door. Now it's May 2016, he is 80 years old, and I am holding a digital audio recorder. Sensing that I don't quite know how to proceed, my dad hands me a piece of notepaper marked with a skeletal outline in his handwriting. It consists of just a few broad headings: "Family History." "So … do you want to take one of these cat egories and dive into it?" "I want to dive in," he says confidently. "Well, in the first place, my mother was born in the village of Kehries--K-e-h-r-i-e-s--on the Greek island of Evia …" With that, the session is under way. We are sitting here, doing this, because my father has recently been diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. The disease has metastasized widely throughout his body, including his bones, liver, and brain. It is going to kill him, probably in a matter of months. So now my father is telling the story of his life. This will be the first of more than a dozen sessions, each lasting an hour or more. As my audio recorder runs, he describes how he used to explore caves when he was growing up; how he took a job during college loading ice blocks into railroad boxcars.

Amazon's Alexa has plenty going for it. Developers have trained the virtual assistant with over 10,000 "skills"--apps you talk to instead of tap--to do everything from hailing a Lyft to checking your stock portfolio. At home, Alexa can control the lights, set timers, play your local NPR station, and generally achieve that Jarvis-level assistance that feels so much like the future. Until now, though, Alexa lacked what it needs more than any of those things to secure its success: a fighting chance on smartphones. Alexa already lives on Android and iOS.

There are few things more infuriating than arriving home to a "Sorry we missed you"card after waiting hours for a delivery. A report last year from IMRG estimated that failed deliveries are costing retailers up to £780m, not to mention the frustration and inconvenience for customers who happen to be in the shower or out when the doorbell rings. It's a problem that the co-founder of Ding, John Nussey, was inspired to do something about. He and his wife, Avril O'Neill, have run their own business for 10 years, making product prototypes for other entrepreneurs, and began to develop their own list of ideas: "Simple, everyday things that had been forgotten about," Nussey says. The doorbell was at the top of that list.

Our favorite affordable smart plug is at a new low price right now (Photo: Reviewed.com) 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. Smart home devices can make everyday tasks easier, leaving more time and energy for other more important aspects of your life. But, they also often carry a hefty price tag.

You can't call 911 on Alexa, but there is an app to call a buddy for help. A link has been sent to your friend's email address. A link has been posted to your Facebook feed. You can't call 911 on Alexa, but there is an app to call a buddy for help.

You can't call 911 on Alexa, but there is an app to call a buddy for help. Say "OK Google, call the police," and you get, "I can't make calls yet." But these are early days for home personal assistants. There are some workarounds for help now, and in the coming years, analysts see the assistants as becoming more useful for emergencies than phones ever were. Amazon currently dominates the market it created.

Samsung is rumored to be making its own smart speaker that will be powered by the Bixby smart assistant. However, it looks like the South Korean company has doubts on the marketability of such a device. "Samsung currently does not view Al speakers as marketable, as the global market is already dominated by unbeatable Amazon and the Korean market is too small to make profits," an anonymous source told The Korea Herald. "More importantly, Samsung cannot afford to focus on the uncertain market, as most of its AI specialists -- whose number is much less than that of the US tech giants -- are currently going all out to develop the Bixby version in English." Samsung might simply be taking a "wait-and-see attitude" towards its ambitions for a smart speaker, mobile industry specialist and researcher Kim Jong-ki suggested.

Samsung Electronics said its Bixby voice assistant for smartphones will start speaking English but only in two countries: South Korea and the U.S. The South Korean tech giant said starting Wednesday, users of the Galaxy S8 smartphones can speak in American English to their phones to turn on the flashlight, take a selfie or make the phone search for say, pictures from a summer vacation, and create an album. Samsung did not say why it could not make Bixby in English available to users outside South Korea or the U.S. or when it will become available in other languages in other countries. The service, comparable to Apple's Siri or Google Assistant, was previously available only in Korean. Samsung says its virtual assistant can be activated by saying "Hi Bixby" to the phone or by clicking a button on the side of the S8 phones. The rollout of the Bixby English version was delayed by a couple of months.

The voice assistant is one of a number of Google products that will provide user data to the curation service that the company is launching Wednesday. The voice assistant is one of a number of Google products that will provide user data to the curation service that the company is launching Wednesday. There's a good chance you're hungry for information you didn't even know you wanted, but Google knows -- and the tech giant is going to spoon-feed it to you. Google is following in Facebook's footsteps, with plans to redesign its popular search page on mobile phones so that you'll get something similar to the social media site's News Feed. Only Google's will just be called "feed."

Updated July 19, 2017, to reflect changes based on Windows 10's Creators Update. There's no doubt about it: Windows 10 is studded with data-tracking tidbits and hooks into all sorts of Microsoft's online services. Handing over all that data has some tangible benefits, like Windows 10's OneDrive integration and the Bing-powered brains behind the Cortana digital assistant, but not everyone is thrilled with the idea of an operating system that's constantly looking over their digital shoulder. I'm here to show you how to get your PC and its data out of the cloud and back on silicona firma. This guide will show you how to disable Windows 10's integration, as well as provide tips on what those features actually do.