Line Corp. is the most popular app in Japan--and #TalkingTech pays a visit to find out why it's so popular. TOKYO -- Imagine a world where everyone you know is on the same social network, sending direct messages to one another, sharing photos and making free phone calls. And it's not called Facebook. In Japan, Thailand, Taiwan and Indonesia, that social network/messenger app is probably Line, an app that's available in the United States and most other countries, but dominant in Asia, where over two-thirds of its audience is based. At 214 million monthly active users, Line is dwarfed in size by the Facebook social network and the Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp chat applications, which each have over 1 billion users.

Last month, IKEA launched its own line of low-cost smart lighting, called TRÅDFRI, and up until now, users have had to rely on a remote control or a proprietary app to use the product. Today, the Swedish retailer announced that their IKEA Home Smart products will respond to voice commands from Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant starting this summer. Additionally, the product line will integrate with Apple's HomeKit. "With IKEA Home Smart we challenge everything that is complicated and expensive with the connected home. Making our products work with others on the market takes us one step closer to meet people's needs, making it easier to interact with your smart home products," said IKEA Home Smart's business leader Björn Block.

Everything from a new accessibility toolkit for smart cities, to an AI assistant, to a patrol car prototype were part of Microsoft's presentations at Smart Cities NYC '17. First on the agenda was Microsoft's announcement about its Smart Cities for All Toolkit to help city officials and urban planners design cities with inclusive features to assist people with disabilities. The toolkit was developed by G3ict and World Enabled as part of the Smart Cities for All initiative to give city leaders a strategic guide to benefit all citizens, including the approximately 1.2 billion people in the world with disabilities. The toolkit is the first step toward what Microsoft plans to be a long road to help cities become more inclusive. It's comprised of four new tools to address priority challenges and alleviate the top barriers for disabled individuals in smart cities. "The toolkit is meant to be guidance for city leaders to think about how to make the business of becoming a smart city accessible to everyone. They don't know where to start," said Kathryn Wilson, director of cities solutions worldwide public sector for Microsoft.

Mark is a senior Salesforce consultant and developer at Cetrix Cloud Services. He headed the IT team at Cetrix for six years, with administration and development of Salesforce as its main responsibility. He also has 18 years of IT experience in software engineering and system integration behind him. He enjoys helping startups and non-profit organizations select and deploy the right technology for their specific needs.

From picking our favorite restaurants to predicting weather and correcting global food shortages, artificial intelligence is already augmenting everyday life. Firmly rooted in the realm of science fiction, artificial intelligence (AI) has often felt external – something happening out there. In reality, AI is a huge part of our everyday lives. We just don't recognize it. Bank alerts of suspected fraudulent charges, smartphone notifications to exercise, Siri or Cortana's ability to recognize voices – are all examples of AI. "Artificial intelligence is basically where machines make sense, learn, interface with the external world, without human beings having to specifically program it," said Nidhi Chappell, director of machine learning at Intel. AI improves lives in many other areas too.

Founded in 2011, MindMeld helps businesses to build conversational interfaces with cloud-based services. MindMeld had previously raised $15.4 million in venture capital financing from IDG Ventures, GV, Greylock Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners and Intel Capital, among others. "With MindMeld, we will enhance our Collaboration suite, adding new conversational interfaces to our collaboration products starting with Cisco Spark," Cisco's head of corporate development, Rob Salvagno, said in a blog post. Cisco says that the MindMeld team will form the company's Cognitive Collaboration team, a move that immediately evokes the aesthetic of IBM Watson's cognitive computing group.

We've been hearing a lot about how Google Home and Amazon Echo can control our smart appliances and devices, but for many of us, they're still out of reach. Spending a couple hundred dollars on smart light bulbs or thousands on a new oven aren't exactly impulse buys, especially if we're just buying them to try out voice control. Thanks to IKEA, just about anyone can install smart lighting in their homes and manage them with Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, and Siri. The Swedish furniture company announced in a press release that you will soon be able to control its affordable line of smart lights with the smart speakers and assistants you already have. IKEA's bulbs offer a no-frills approach to smart lighting.

Google gave us a look at the future of its products and services today at its annual I/O developer conference in Mountain View, California. There were a number of key announcements that will help shape the future of Android and other major platforms, including a new application called Google Lens, changes to Google Home, and some Google Photos additions. The mobile giant also presented a couple of features we should expect to see in the upcoming Android O update, but stopped short of showing any new hardware. Here are the biggest announcements from the opening day keynote. Android O still doesn't have a name, but we at least know a few of the features it will launch with. The next version of Android will get Picture-to-Picture, an automatic multi-window feature that will let you continue to watch videos or read an article while you browse through the OS.

The list of products, services, and apps that Alexa can communicate with gets larger every day. A link has been sent to your friend's email address. A link has been posted to your Facebook feed. The list of products, services, and apps that Alexa can communicate with gets larger every day.

The following post highlights how Venture Scanner categorizes the Artificial Intelligence (AI) startup landscape, and presents our Innovation Quadrant showing how those categories compare to one another. The data for this post is through April 2017. The above sector map organizes the sector into 13 categories and shows a sampling of companies in each category. Our Innovation Quadrant provides a snapshot of the average funding and average age for the different AI categories and how they compare with one another. Heavyweights: These categories are comprised of companies that have reached maturity with significant financing.