Home hubs, or smart speakers that you can order around with voice commands, are expected to be a top gift this holiday season. But it can be a little hard getting used to having a disembodied voice in your house, and figuring out what to use it for. Focusing on Amazon's Echo (or the smaller Echo Dot) and Google's Home devices, we've put together a few basic tips to help you go beyond the setup menu and get the most from these gadgets: One of the first things you should figure out is where it's best to place them. The ability to set timers makes them useful in the kitchen. Their function as speakers makes them good for the living room.

While natural language processing (NLP) has become commonplace in the consumer space, e.g. Apple Siri, Amazon Echo and Ask Google, it has been the "sounds of silence" in the halls of enterprises around the globe. Among the biggest challenges facing organizations trying to leverage Big Data, is providing answers to users' questions in a natural, effective manner without cumbersome user interfaces or extensive training. Interactive voice assistants and online chatbots have recently simplified this process for consumers, however developers have had a challenging time adapting this approach to enterprise-class tasks due to the complexity and context of the questions, trustworthiness of the source, specificity of the information needed and accuracy of the answer. Today that all changes with Hewlett Packard Enterprise Software's announcement of a new release of its flagship unstructured data analytics engine, HPE IDOL, featuring advanced Natural Language Question Answering for the enterprise.

It can read lips and create new food recipes. It can win at chess, Jeopardy and the game Go. Every major technology company appears to be integrating it into how they organize and operate their business. And it seems like just about every new app in existence claims its software uses some sort of machine learning to make life even better. Artificial intelligence is splashed across headlines like never before.

When creating a new AI-based app, there are many generic problems that are already being solved by other companies, for example face and gesture detection. Unless this is the main business and focus of the company, they will prefer to look for an out-of-the-box AI-as-a-service solution which will save them time, expertise and money. This type of solutions are called AI platforms and give their users many out-of-the-box services, such as computer vision (feature/face and gesture detection), natural language processing (NLP), speech to text, and translations between different language. Many companies including Google and Amazon sell this kind of AI services. During 2017, we will continue to see many improvements in those platforms mainly in the ease of use, accuracy and performance.

What if your security camera could not only see who's at your door, but also identify whether it's a guest you're expecting, alert you when they arrive, and let them in? Or how about a speaker system that automatically plays music as your child wakes up? That's the type of functionality Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (fb) is trying to build into his virtual butler, Jarvis, which he's been developing throughout the year as part of his New Year's resolution. With 2016 coming to a close, Zuckerberg published a lengthy blog post detailing the types of tasks Jarvis can accomplish. He also wrote about the biggest challenges that he faced when developing his artificial intelligence (AI) software, and where he believes AI is heading.

Amazon Echo is a speaker that acts as a personal voice assistant. You can control the Echo with your voice; and tell it to do things like play music, read the news, add items to your to-do lists and tell you the weather. Before you can get to that part though, you'll need to set up your Amazon Echo. We put together a guide for those of you who were lucky enough to snag an Echo this year. With the Alexa app, you can easily set your device, manage your alarms, music, shopping lists and more.

Technology has moved past the stage where remotes made our lives easier. As technology has evolved, our products are getting smarter. While in the past you could press a few buttons on the remote and switch on things, companies are now trying to innovate to the point where instead of starting your app you can just direct your digital assistant to take care of things. Though most of you must have experienced Siri, Galaxy, Google or Cortana--all personal assistants--on your phone or computer device, companies are now trying to integrate these software beyond your laptop or mobile screen. While portable speakers have been the domain of companies such as Bose, Harmon Kardon and Beats, there has been much disruption in the field of late.

Traditional broadcast TV services have stagnated over the past couple of years, while over-the-top services such as Amazon Video, Netflix and the BBC's iPlayer led the way. Sky's Q dragged broadcast TV kicking and screaming into the 21st century with a modern interface, fast box and service that put time and place shifting at the heart of it. It records, it downloads, it supports 4K and can spit video around your house via Q Mini boxes or the Q app on smartphones and tablets using your home network. Sky Q was pretty expensive at launch, but now is available from £20 per month. Bluetooth headphones are almost mainstream.

Large platform companies like Amazon, Apple, Google, Samsung, and Microsoft want to provide the operating system for our lives, and they will fight hard in 2017 to establish their foothold in the emerging technologies we will likely come to rely on in the future. Those with the most complete product offerings have an advantage. Since people like to buy products that play well with the other products they already own, a platform company risks losing customers by not having a product in a hot category. These large companies already have an advantage over smaller companies due to their massive R&D budgets and their ability to hire the best people to build the stuff we want now and to anticipate the technology we'll want in the future. And if a hot product is developed by some ambitious startup, these giants can easily swoop in and acquire both the product and the people who created it.

Hollywood actor Morgan Freeman has provided the voice for an AI assistant created by Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg. Mr Zuckerberg said he asked the actor, who was chosen by the public, after an awards ceremony earlier this month. The Facebook co-founder coded the AI assistant - called Jarvis, after the butler in Iron Man - for his home. If he decides to release it to the public, people would relate differently to a famous voice than more robotic sounding assistants, tech experts said. Mr Zuckerberg asked his Facebook followers to pick the voice after building artificial intelligence to help him around the house.