Speed is of the essence in our modern age of fast-swipe online dating. So much so that the process of swiping, matching, and chatting can feel like a race to to that great (or not so great, depending) finish line we call a date. But a brand new dating app wants people to take things slow -- real slow, in fact -- using the ancient art of conversation to seduce matches. SEE ALSO: Not quite dating but not hooking up either? Appetence, which is free to download on iOS from the iTunes store and claims to be the world's first "slow dating" app, forces users to talk to each other before they can see each other's profile pictures.

Microsoft is finally ready to open its assistant up to developers. The Cortana Skills Kit, which allows developers to integrate their services with the assistant, is now in public preview, Microsoft announced. The news comes just days after Harman Kardon unveiled the Invoke, its Cortana-powered speaker. SEE ALSO: Hey, Siri: How'd you and every other digital assistant get its name? Microsoft first teased the Cortana Skills Kit when it announced the speaker late last year, but hadn't made it widely available to developers.

Google Home owners can now use the smart speaker to issue commands to iDevices smart-home products. This brings online a number smart switches, outlets, and sockets for command and control through the Google Assistant. The company announced yesterday that you'll be able to configure this connection with the company's iDevices Connected app for iPhone and Android. To make this happen, you'll need to enable the iDevices Service inside of the Google Home app, which is also available for both mobile platforms. The iDevices app is the centerpiece of controlling the company's products.

Amazon's Alexa is miles ahead of rivals like Microsoft and Google with its "skills" -- around 10,000 mini-apps that let you use your voice to control your lights or music, order an Uber, learn first aid and more. To help close that gap, Microsoft has finally launched the Cortana Skills Kit in a public preview, allowing developers to build new skills or convert them from Alexa or Microsoft's new Bot Framework. Developers will be able to use the kit to build skills and publish them to a new Cortana channel on its Bot Framework. Right now, the skills will work on Cortana for Windows 10, Android, iOS and the recently announced Cortana-enabled Harman Kardon Invoke speaker. A key piece of Microsoft's Cortana strategy is Echo-like hardware, but it hasn't revealed its own device (yet).

HP and Intel are both working on connected-home devices that run on Microsoft's Cortana platform. Microsoft announced the devices as part of its Build 2017 conference this morning, but didn't provide details about form, function or release window. The gadgets from HP and Intel follow this week's announcement of Invoke (GIF below), the first-ever third-party Cortana device. The connected speaker comes from Harman Kardon and it can "favorite music, manage calendars and activities, set reminders, check traffic, deliver the latest news and much more." The Invoke and other Cortana-run devices will encroach on a hot IoT market currently dominated by Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant.

Microsoft has revealed it is betting big on AI - and says half a billion devices are now running its Windows 10 software. It comes as the firm unveiled new tools intended to democratize artificial intelligence by enabling machine smarts to be built into software from smartphone games to factory floors. Improving programs with artificial intelligence that could tap into services in the internet'cloud' and even take advantage of computing power in nearby machines, was part of a vision unveiled as the US technology titan's annual Build Conference opened. Microsoft says a half billion devices are now running Windows 10, its latest operating system. That's up from 400 million disclosed last September, but far short of a goal of 1 billion by 2018. Microsoft has already acknowledged it won't hit 1 billion in time.

Windows 10 has hit a milestone: 500 million devices have installed it, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced Wednesday in his keynote opening the company's Build 2017 developer conference. Another number, however, is more troubling: Just a fraction of those devices frequently use Cortana, Microsoft's digital spokesperson for its push into artificial intelligence. That stands in sharp contrast to what Microsoft calls the "intelligent cloud," the next phase in the evolution of the "mobile first, cloud first" mantra that Nadella has talked up since he became CEO in 2014. At Build, Microsoft executives will describe how data used to be pushed from "edge" devices like phones or tablets to a cloud server, analyzed, and then sent back to the user. Now, Microsoft's trying to build in those analysis capabilities as close to those data-generating devices as possible.

Two more hardware manufacturers are lining up behind Microsoft's new Cortana-powered appliances: HP and Intel, indicating that Microsoft is turning to its tried-and-true PC partners to usher Cortana into the living room. Microsoft announced support from both companies at its Build conference in Seattle on Wednesday, though what each company will eventually manufacture isn't known. According to Microsoft, the company signed a partnership with HP to build products, and with Intel to provide reference platforms for Cortana-powered devices. Though an alliance with HP is nothing to scoff at, Intel's support should make the most difference. So far, Cortana competitors like Google Home and Amazon's small ecosystem of Alexa-powered Echo devices are made just by the individual companies themselves.

There was huge excitement a few months ago when Google announced the launch of Google Assistant. Much noise was made about its features and ability to chat and assist you with many tasks. It can bring you relevant information, send messages, book events, save reminders, change the lights and… well, the list of features goes on and on. There will undoubtedly be upgrades and improvement to its ever expanding capabilities over the coming year. OK, so now that Google has our attention, what does this and all the other AI platforms available mean to marketers?

It's always good to kick off a big conference with some good news and, for Microsoft, 500 million monthly active devices for Windows 10 is the best kind of news. Microsoft announced the milestone during the keynote address at the company's annual Build Developers Conference in Seattle. In short, the world appears to really like Windows 10, a not-inconsequential accomplishment considering how the Windows crowd felt about its predecessor, Windows 8 (later 8.1) -- an upgrade many PC owners decided to skip. Half a billion users are nearly double the number Microsoft announced at Build 2016. When asked to characterize Windows 10's growth as compared to previous versions of Windows, Microsoft executives said it's hard to compare.