A few weeks ago, I bought Amazon's latest gizmo – the Echo. It's a voice-activated, networked device equipped with a seven-piece microphone array, which means that it can pick up one's voice from anywhere in its vicinity with impressive accuracy. It comes in two versions, one a 9.25in-tall cylinder that contains a number of speakers, the other a much smaller cylinder that just has tinny speakers. Since the latter was a third of the price of the former, your cheapskate columnist bought that and hooked it up to his hi-fi system, which means that when he speaks to it the Echo replies in sultry female tones modulated by a high-end analogue amplifier and a pair of very fine speakers. Her name, by the way, is "Alexa". I bought it because it seemed to me that it might be a significant product and I have a policy of never writing about kit that I haven't paid for myself.

An Amazon application to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) emerged Saturday. The original application, which was first revealed in a Business Insider report, requests the FCC for a five-month experimental Special Temporary Authority to operate on selected channels on some mobile bands. This is the first time that news has emerged about Amazon working on mobile technology. Could it be that the company is secretly working on an Amazon Alexa smartphone? It wouldn't be a completely outlandish notion, even if it's true.

Over the past year, the swell of chatbots and virtual assistants has grown larger, and their capabilities have grown more complex. Want a bot to schedule your meetings? Remind you to bring an umbrella if it's going to rain? But while completing practical tasks is the goal of most chatbots and virtual assistants, we don't have conversations simply to get things done. Conversation can also bring connection and joy, and laughter is one of the most fundamental mechanisms for making people feel comfortable and creating positive associations and memories. Tech companies, from giants to small startups, are investing in humor because they view it as an integral part of the human experience--and the key to their bots and assistants slipping smoothly into our lives.

Will skills be as vibrant as apps?

Microsoft's Cortana AI bot is known for dealing with customer service enquiries – but it goes much further than that. The artificial intelligence technology is being applied in a great variety of ways at huge companies such as Volvo. Chris Testa-O'Neill of Microsoft's data science team demonstrated the Cortana Intelligence Suite at SpaceportX in Manchester's Northern Quarter this week. Speaking at the first of a series of regular business intelligence and data meetups organised by Travel Counsellors, he discussed subjects such as machine learning – which the CIS can perform – with a captive audience. We spoke to him afterwards to get the lowdown on what the Big Data and advanced analytics suite can do for firms large and small.

Of course, Google knows what you've searched for. So do Bing, Yahoo!, and every other search engine. And your ISP knows every website you've ever visited. Google also knows your age and gender -- even if you never told them. They make a pretty comprehensive ads profile of you, including a list of your interests (which you can edit) to decide what kinds of ads to show you.

With the rise in self-driving technology, the latest automobiles are grabbing more attention at The Consumer Electronics Show. CES showed off some technology (available now or soon) that can make your life easier and/or better. While CES is an acronym for Consumer Electronics Show, the running joke at this annual Las Vegas event is that CES is turning into the Car Electronics Show. Many of the world's biggest auto makers have become a major part of this highly-publicized conference – which serves as a glimpse into the future of technology -- by dominating much of the North Hall at the Las Vegas Convention Center, as well as surrounding facilities. And it doesn't seem to matter this Sin City event falls on the heels of the North American International Auto Show in Detroit.

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I still have my Chatty Cathy doll, clothes and all. Never will I forget the excitement of waking up one Christmas morning to this delightful new "best" friend. This pull-string "talking" doll manufactured by the Mattel toy company was all the rage during my youth. With a quick Google Search, I learned that she was only in production from 1959 to 1965 and I'm guessing I was five at the time. Let's not go there with the math… Chatty Cathy was cutting edge back then and I find it not unreasonable to compare the soon to be released AI friend that Mattel is calling Aristotle to the 1960's toy sensation.

When Amazon's Echo hit the market, it was basically just a voice-operated speaker. Don't get me wrong--it was an attractive piece of technology and it responded well to voice commands, but a lot of people ended up with an Echo asked Alexa a few basic questions, like: What time is it? Click here for a list of Alexa commands you're not using but should be. Here's the question I get over and over again: What else can Alexa do? The answer is: Much more than just take commands.