Google tweeted Wednesday that it has opened pre-orders for Daydream View headset and Chromecast Ultra. The devices will be available on pre-orders for the U.S. U.K. and Germany online. The Daydream View headset is priced at 79, while the 4K-capable Ultra is priced at 69. The View is compatible with the Daydream VR platform-capable Google Pixel smartphone. The headset will use VR images generated by Pixel smartphone so users will need the smartphone before they invest in the headset.

IBM's virtual health care assistant powered by Watson, which has memorized most of the world's medical journals and texts, is an example of this. Enterprise is already feeling the impact of AI assistants like IBM's Watson health care tool, but Gartner says these systems will become more "conversational." Powered by machine learning and AI, such systems will learn how to adapt to humans and vice versa. Gartner believes five major focal points will enable the new capabilities and business models of digital business, including information systems, customer experience, analytics and intelligence, the IoT, and business ecosystems.

Speaking to robots, asking the Google Assistant for directions, using Amazon Alexa to lock the front door. Those things reveal the current state of artificial intelligence--a human powered endeavor with some assistance. Soon, it will all seem like the Dark Ages. Tesla has decided to radically improve how A.I. automates our lives. Announced late last night during the Presidential debates, the new Enhanced Autopilot will work in future cars in the Tesla line-up, depending on regulatory approval.

Data science, advanced machine learning and artificial intelligence will be centre stage technologies shaping business in 2017 and beyond. That's according to analyst firm, Gartner, which predicts that enterprise will see "intelligence everywhere" as new software-based systems, which are programmed to learn and adapt, permeate businesses within the next three to five years. As outlined by Gartner vice president and fellow, David Cearley, these intelligent trends will intertwine to form a'digital mesh', blurring physical and digital workspaces. Artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced machine learning (ML) are intelligent machines that can understand, learn and operate autonomously. "Applied AI and ML give rise to a spectrum of intelligent implementations, including physical devices such as robots, autonomous vehicles and apps and services such as virtual personal assistants and smart advisors," Cearley said.

The best television characters have already been immortalized on screen, given reruns and our ability to stream our favorite episodes on demand. Now early research at University of Leeds is attempting to give these characters new life, by building digital recreations that can appear in new episodes or even take over for Siri on your smartphone. The Leeds team is building a nearly-automated pipeline for capturing the digital essence of a TV character. A series of algorithms mutes the laugh track on a TV show, tracks the faces of each character, and analyzes their voices and body language, as well as the way their mouths move as they speak. The machine learning tool also scours the show's script in order to learn dialogue and understand how each character strings together sentences. TV is a natural fit for this kind of research, because there's so much video from which to learn.

Government-funded artificial intelligence programs could soon be organized under a new effort by the General Services Administration. GSA earlier this month created the Data Federation, a site that intends to coordinate the disparate existing data-related efforts at various agencies by sharing standards, case studies and reusable tech tools. On Monday, GSA plans to announce a new community of practice, or subsection dedicated to artificial intelligence, according to Technology Transformation Service data portfolio lead Philip Ashlock. Ashlock was speaking at a Digital Government Institute conference on Thursday. The Data Federation is still in the very early stages, he said--long term, it's working with 18F and the Presidential Innovation Fellows program to develop a "maturity model" to understand how data projects tend to evolve.

Since the final episode of hit sitcom Friends first aired in 2004, many fans have clung to the hope of a reunion. Earlier this year, the show's co-creator Marta Kauffman quashed that idea emphatically: "There will never be a Friends reunion movie," she told E! News. Could she be any clearer? But for those still mourning the gang, there is some sort of hope. A team of researchers at the University of Leeds seeks to immortalize popular characters as digital avatars that you might eventually chat with in the way you talk to Siri, Alexa or a similar virtual assistant. As spotted by Prosthetic Knowledge, the team is building a series of algorithms that can recognize and track individual characters and capture their body language, facial expressions and voice.

Google has made minimal forays into real-world retail shops thus far. There's a good reason for that: the company has long been more focused on software than hardware. That's slowly changing over time, but Google went all-in on its own hardware brand when it announced the new Pixel smartphones, Google Home, Daydream VR headset and Google WiFi router earlier this month. For most consumers, buying hardware sight-unseen is still a tough proposition, so Google is finally making it easier for consumers to check out all its new gadgets -- in New York City, at least. The company's pop-up retail location opened its doors this morning, and while it wasn't exactly an iPhone-level stampede, there were a couple dozen people waiting to get in when it opened.

The Amazon Echo Dot has been upgraded and now sells for 50. We've scoured the web to find you the best deals on good products. All you'll have to do is say the magic word. You can dim your kitchen lights if you're feeling dramatic, set your bedroom temperature to a balmy 70 degrees, switch on your sprinkler system to keep those pesky kids off your lawn, and more with Amazon's digital assistant. If you're looking to branch into the smart home world, grab one of the new 2nd Gen. Echo Dots today.

This post is authored by Sachin Chouksey, Principal Software Engineering Manager, and Darwin Schweitzer, Senior Program Manager, at Microsoft. Building analytics solutions can consume a lot of time. Customers who wish to build intelligent solutions on Microsoft's advanced analytics platform today, for instance, need to navigate through a multitude of options, thanks to the broad array of services available as part of the Cortana Intelligence Suite. This buffet of options could present a learning curve for newer customers who may not be sure where to start, or what the optimal architecture might be, or how to glue different services together. To address the above challenge, we offer Cortana Intelligence Solutions, a set of pre-built solutions that are based on commonly encountered design patterns and which customers can quickly deploy and test.