The situation for Android TV looked grim 15 month ago. Google had just released a new version of its Chromecast streaming dongle, which relies on a phone, tablet, or laptop to control what's playing on the TV. At the time, Mario Queiroz, Google's vice president of product management, suggested that this mode of viewing was key to the future of television. Meanwhile, Android TV, Google's other operating system for televisions and set-top boxes, seemed lost. Google apps and features that had shipped on other platforms were no-shows on Android TV, and the company didn't even bother announcing the retail launch of Xiaomi's Mi Box, last year's only new Android TV streaming box.

E-mail may have been the Internet's first "killer app," but keeping up with it has become sheer murder. The volume of e-mail defies comprehension: by one count, 32 billion messages a day were sent in 2010, a figure that does not include the roughly 90 percent of e-mails that are spam. A growing number of products and research efforts aim to ensure that e-mail overload doesn't cancel out the productivity-enhancing benefits of IT. Google's Gmail "Priority Inbox" is an early effort in this direction. The feature adds a special icon to messages it judges to be important, allowing users to tend to them first.

In Silicon Valley, Nikolas Janin rises for his 40-minute commute to work just like everyone else. The shop manager and fleet technician at Google gets dressed and heads out to his Lexus RX 450h for the trip on California's clotted freeways. That's when his chauffeur – the car – takes over. One of Google's self-driving vehicles, Mr. Janin's ride is equipped with sophisticated artificial intelligence technology that allows him to sit as a passenger in the driver's seat. Its first real job, expected later this year, will be as a telemedicine robot, allowing a specialist thousands of miles away to visit patients' hospital rooms via a video screen mounted as its "head." When the physician is ready to visit another patient, he taps the new location on a computer map: Ava finds its own way to the next room, including using the elevator. In Pullman, Wash., researchers at Washington State University are fitting "smart" homes with sensors that automatically adjust the lighting needed in rooms and monitor and interpret all the movements and actions of its occupants, down to how many hours they sleep and minutes they exercise.

'In god we trust, everyone else please bring data' Analytics can perhaps be taken to be the basis of building the foundation of a society based on reason and logic, not just feelings or gut. It not only helps in finding patterns through an iterative process but also in making predictions on never before seen data. Marketing has a great deal to benefit from this field which is still in its budding phase. The main trigger of such frenzy over data science and analytics can be owed [1] to not only modern cheaper sources of data storage but also to high processing power of systems, ease of internet connectivity and enhanced security features. There are numerous models and algorithms [2] for implementation of machine learning, however the coverage of the article is around the future possibilities of analytics applications, especially with a marketing perspective.

The Consumer Electronics Show kicks off every year in Las Vegas, and sets the tone for innovation for the year ahead. The conference earlier this month was no exception, with artificial intelligence (AI) starring the headlines as the technology to transform 2017. With the AI market expected to grow to $5.05 billion by 2020, there is a massive opportunity for the food and beverage industries to harness its capabilities, improve offerings, optimise operations and deliver a better customer experience. One promising product to debut at CES 2017 is Hello Egg, the AI-powered'home-cooking sidekick' on a mission to empower millennials to eat more healthily. Developed by US-based RnD64, this voice-controlled, egg-shaped home assistant rivals competitors Google Home and Amazon Echo, integrating AI to address any and all kitchen needs.

"Alexa, why are you winning the smart home market?" It seems every appliance that's any appliance is adding Alexa support at CES 2017, giving Amazon a commanding lead in the race to become the de facto smart home standard. As someone who lives in Australia, where Amazon Echo hasn't launched, though, I'm left wondering when we'll get to join Alexa's gang. In the battle to become the brand that's synonymous with the smart home experience, building a global footprint will become important very soon. In a global market, selling to two of 200 countries won't keep you in the driver's seat for long.

This weapon will be powerful, versatile and indestructible. It will feel no pain. It will have only one purpose: to return to the present and prevent the future. This weapon will be called the Terminator. I love Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, and everything that makes computers smarter.

It's your nighttime routine: You drop your phone onto the nightstand charging pad, and it asks about your day. You tell it, talking to the virtual personal assistant just like you'd talk to a friend. Your phone's artificial intelligence knows you almost as well as you know yourself (maybe even better). So when it suggests ways to get through tomorrow's calendar, you trust its advice. AI is practically everywhere, and getting smarter all the time.

Microsoft's next step in its quiet but highly visible infiltration of Android is the lock screen. The latest piece of beta software from Redmond allows users to access Cortana with a single swipe from the opening screen. It's quick and easy to use, it integrates into the Android environment on a smartphone and it increases the potential of users joining Microsoft's cloud. As I've previously noted on Forbes, the battle over the dominant mobile operating system and the alternative option has been decided. Google's flavor of Android has walked away with the volume prize, while Apple's iOS picks up the second place in the market share.

These days it seems like you can't open a newspaper (ok, web browser) without coming across an article on artificial intelligence. Well publicized breakthroughs like Google AlphaGo's unprecedented victories over human Go champions have heralded the promise of a new golden age for AI. Add to that the personification of personal assistants in Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa coupled with Salesforce's "resurrection" of Albert Einstein and the rampant proliferation of AI-related startups - and the AI buzz becomes more of a cacophonous clamor. To put it mildly, this is confusing for businesses, who are trying to determine what is real and what is mere snake oil. Will AI achieve its transformational promise, or will it join the trash heap of over-hyped technologies?