The vast product variety and product variation offered by online retailers provide an amazing amount of choice options to individuals, thus posing a big challenge to them finding and choosing interesting products which provide them the most utility. Consequently, consumers have to be satisfied with finding a product that provides them sufficient utility. Beyond that, individuals tend to even defer product choice [Dhar, 1997]. Recommender systems have emerged in the past years as an effective method to help individuals with finding interesting products. As a result, the consumer welfare enhanced by $731 million to $1.03 billion in the year 2000 due to the increased product variety of online bookstores [Brynjolfsson et al., 2003].

That five-inch phone in your pocket, the one you absolutely can't live without, does damn near anything these days. It is the Great Usurper, rendering everything from newspapers to music players to actual human interaction all but obsolete. People embraced smartphones faster than any other gadget in the history of the world, creating a trillion-dollar industry that is expected to reach more than six billion people in the next four years. I hear this question from smartwatch manufacturers and lightbulb companies and headphone makers and so many others in tech. They're all trying to find The Next Big Thing and figure out what the world looks like when smartphones finally go away.

We surround ourselves with technology that is able to help us in our daily lives. The success of autonomous cars, advancements in clinical research and personal digital assistants has shown the incredible potential of technology and how far it has come in recent decades. Despite the progress that many other industries have made, healthcare is likely to be the one market where artificial intelligence can truly have an impact that goes beyond convenience and positively affects human lives. Is the information collected by Fitbits and Apple Watches covered by HIPAA regulations? Find out more about what's covered – and what isn't – when it comes to wearable devices and data so you can avoid the risks.

A knife is brandished on a crowded subway platform. A backpack sits abandoned in a busy airport terminal. Images of sickness and death appear on social media. Security cameras often play a forensic role after a crime is committed, while an online platform can serve as both a megaphone and recorder. The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) hopes to get to a point where a camera not only recognizes the difference between a standard and suspicious action, but can alert law enforcement before something bad happens, and a trend on Twitter can signal a disease outbreak to doctors.

Have one of Martian's voice-powered smartwatches? Cool, because now mVoice models and certain Guess timepieces will work with Amazon's Alexa technology. "We're excited to work with Martian Watches to bring Alexa to mVoice timepieces so customers can easily perform everyday tasks -- like controlling their smart home with ecobee, requesting a ride with Lyft or checking the daily news -- using just their voice," Amazon's director of voice services Aaron Brown said in a statement. Just think, now you can use Alexa on your watch (or via the mVoice app), to order another voice-controlled watch, just by asking. The future is a wild place, y'all.

Not long ago, a startup founder in San Francisco was trying to organise a meeting with someone visiting from Europe, and setting a time required dozens of e-mails back and forth. The European arrived with a bottle of wine for the founder's personal assistant, Clara, as a gesture of thanks for putting up with the scheduling hassle. But the assistant could not accept the gift. Clara is a software service from a startup of the same name that helps schedule meetings via e-mail. It is powered by artificial intelligence (AI), with some human supervision.

Amid a flurry of major news for Amazon's Alexa, the company today shared plans to beef up the Alexa Skills Kit with a library of hundreds of built-in commands within the next few weeks. "Intents" are used to understand the most basic commands from users. Earlier this year, Alexa only had 15 intents and slot types -- for commands like "Stop," "Cancel," or city names. Amazon offered few details about the kinds of intents and slot types coming, though Prasad told Backchannel today that people should expect book, video, and local business slot types. The news was announced by Amazon Echo evangelist David Isbitski in a blog post today and addressed by Alexa vice president Rohit Prasad in an Alexa State of the Union address delivered at the AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas.

Microsoft to turn millions of PCs and tablets into smart'home hubs' to take on Amazon's Echo and Google's Home Google's $130 Home speaker went on sale earlier this month Amazon's Alexa has been a huge hit with 5.1m sold Both can do everything from control lights to answer questions Microsoft plans to take them on with a new Home Hub app for Windows PCs Google's $130 Home speaker went on sale earlier this month Amazon's Alexa has been a huge hit with 5.1m sold The app will turn the millions of Windows PCs, laptops and tablets already in homes into a'home hub' that can do everything from control lights to answer questions. Has YOUR Google account been hacked? Researchers say... Apple goes Red for World AIDS day as firm is revealed to... Britain traded with the Middle East 1,300 years ago: Bitumen... The original human ancestor'Lucy' was a tree climbing... Has YOUR Google account been hacked? Researchers say... Apple goes Red for World AIDS day as firm is revealed to... Britain traded with the Middle East 1,300 years ago: Bitumen...

Samsung is expected to release its first major smartphone since it recalled the Galaxy Note 7 sometime in early 2017. The phone, which will presumably called the Galaxy S8, is rumored to include a brand new design and a smarter digital assistant, among other new additions. Tech pundits and investors will be eyeing this launch closely as Samsung looks to recover lost ground from the Note 7 fiasco. Here's a look at what to expect based on the rumors and reports that have emerged so far. In years past, Samsung has unveiled its new Galaxy smartphones in February or March during Mobile World Congress, an annual tech conference in Barcelona.

Apple Inc. will allow its artificial intelligence teams to publish research papers for the first time, marking a significant change in strategy that could help accelerate the iPhone maker's advances in deep learning. When Apple introduced its Siri virtual assistant in 2011, the company appeared to have a head start over many of its nearest competitors. But it has lost ground since then to the likes of Alphabet Inc.'s Google Assistant and Amazon.com Researchers say among the reasons Apple has failed to keep pace is its unwillingness to allow its AI engineers to publish scientific papers, stymieing its ability to feed off wider advances in the field. So you can sleep an extra five minutes.