If you make a purchase by clicking one of our links, we may earn a small share of the revenue. Our picks and opinions are independent from any business incentives. Google is quietly playing catch up with the Amazon Echo. Today the search giant announced new smart home partners for Google Home, its competing smart speaker. The list includes products from Best Buy Insignia, LIFX, TP-Link, and Wink.

Toni Reid oversees the product development teams for Echo devices and Alexa customer experience. Reid joined Amazon in 1998 as a recruiter and has worked on several Amazon teams since then, including Amazon Fresh, IMDb, and Amazon Media Group. She earned her bachelor's degree in anthropology from the University of North Texas.

The artificial intelligence assistant Google Home is scheduled to debut in the U.K. on April 6, according to Google's blog post Tuesday. The hands-free assistant and speaker, similar to its rival Amazon Echo, was launched last year in the U.S. in an attempt to make artificial intelligence readily available in homes. Google's new product, Google Wifi, would be released simultaneously, as well. The U.K. can look forward to new features not yet released elsewhere. "We know the U.K. has been patiently waiting for Google Home to arrive and we've been working with our favorite partners to give you the best possible experience," director of Product Partnerships and Planning at Google, Suveer Kothari said in the blog post.

Google announced today that even more smart home devices would now be compatible with Assistant. The Assistant, accessible from the Google Home hub and Android phones, is integral to Google's expansion into the Internet of Things: Today, we're introducing new home automation integrations--in addition to the ones that already exist--that work with the Google Assistant. So you can now connect your Google Assistant to Best Buy Insignia, LIFX, TP-Link and Wink. TNW Conference won best European Event 2016 for our festival vibe. See what's in store for 2017.

Tinder has always lived on your phone. The dating app, which seduced tens of millions of users with its delightfully simple right-swipe, didn't just have a mobile experience, it was a mobile experience. That changes today, with the release of a browser-based applet the company calls Tinder Online. When it arrives in the US later this year (the company is now testing it in countries like Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Indonesia, where users with weak cellular connections will finally be able to use Tinder from a desktop), Tinder Online will look a lot like the mobile version. But the company's designers made some changes to the interaction, starting with the swipe.

Tinder is joining the earliest electronic dating services and adding support for web. The app is designed to virtually introduce users to others in a set radius around them via photos and a short biography. Based on that limited information users swipe right if they're intrigued or left if they're not. If both users swipe right, they're matched and can begin a conversation. Tinder originated as an app, but soon it will be available in web browsers on any device.

Whether you're a company implementing or thinking of implementing a chatbot/VA strategy, or an industry veteran, you can't miss this unique event showcasing the experiences of those who've been-there-and-done-that. You'll hear directly from Nationwide Financial, Airbnb, USAA, Anheuser-Busch, Nissan and more! Gain insight into their build, partner or buy decisions, their real-life implementation stories, using bots/VAs to generate customer insights, and the unexpected hurdles they had to overcome. Unlike other bot/VA events, you won't hear speakers "preaching to the choir." You'll hear many unique perspectives from end-users and industry veterans alike.

Vivint Sky and Wink Hub owners who want to use voice commands to control their lighting, thermostats, and other subsystems will soon no longer be limited to deploying Amazon Echos--both companies announced today that their systems will soon be compatible with Google Assistant, too. Both companies already work with Amazon's voice assistant, Alexa, but neither wants to be limited to a single platform. "Obviously there's more than one option for homeowners who want to have voice services in the house," said Vivint Smart Home Chief Technology Office Jeremy Warren. "We want to make sure we're providing a great user experience for our customers regardless of which platform they adopt." Google announced 11 other new partnerships as well, ranging from Logitech Harmony, to August smart locks, to the Anova sous-vide cooker.

Samsung's Unpacked 2017 event in New York City is set to kick off tomorrow and it's no mystery at this point that the big unveil will be Samsung's "next Galaxy," the Galaxy S8 and potentially the Galaxy S8 Plus. So much has leaked about the device(s) that much may be already known about Samsung's next flagship Android handset that is poised to take on the iPhone for smartphone domination. We've heard about display sizes, with the Galaxy S8 standard device measuring in at 5.7-inches (or maybe 5.8) and the Galaxy S8 offering gargantuan phablet proportions at 6.2-inches. However, those displays also come with very minimal bezel, as Samsung reportedly is going to take a page from Dell with something called an "Infinity Display" that will surely keep the two new Galaxy's footprints down significantly, similar to what LG delivered with the wonderfully-designed G6. Regardless, even with all these design updates -- and Samsung's new Bixby AI virtual assistant that claims to learn the human, rather than requiring the human to learn it – there's still one more unconfirmed major advancement I expect with Samsung's new pocket super computers and it lies under the hood.

Kids these days are a lot more old-fashioned than you'd think. A new survey of 3,500 college students done by Abodo, the apartment hunting app, found some surprising results. These kids aren't nearly as modern in their approach to meeting people as you might think. Of those surveyed, only four percent said they preferred to meet people using dating apps. Some 80 percent of college students said they still liked to meet through mutual friends or because of shared interests.