It's been a busy couple of days for the worlds' of digital marketing, social media and tech! Taking the week by storm, we've seen the succession of Britain from the European Union, Apple and Facebook unveils and more. Did we miss something in this week's news? Comment below and share your own thoughts!

Amazon says that around 10,000 registered developers are working on Alexa projects, meaning you'll soon have even more choice. It's also invested in 16 startups to help them build wearables, smart home devices and other products via the Alexa Fund. The company has also redesigned the skills section of the Alexa app, letting you browse by categories like "Lifestyle" and "Smart Home." It revealed a pair of new skills from Lyft and Honeywell that will let you order a car and turn down the thermostat, I assume. Some of the most popular are Jeopardy, Daily Affirmation, Magic 8 Ball, Fitbit, and The Bartender, a skill we all can use in these trying times.

It's an in-wall smart-home controller that you can install yourself. It takes the place of an in-wall light switch, connects to your Wi-Fi network, and can control smart lighting, thermostats, door locks, and other devices via Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, or ZigBee. With today's firmware update, you'll also be able to use its 4.3-inch touchscreen to call an Uber, monitor your step count as tracked by your Fitbit fitness tracker, and trigger IFTTT recipes. Wink has also activated the Relay's onboard mic and speaker, so you can use multiple Relays as an intercom system. "This is a good example of a product that's getting better over time," said Wink CTO Nathan Smith.

If you ask, Alexa can tell you a joke and Siri will recite a haiku. Jibo will do that, and more: the new home robot can sense when you're feeling down and try to make you smile. Cynthia Breazeal, a social robotics expert at MIT, designed the 749 bot to exhibit something approaching empathy. It isn't the first--Pepper, a humanoid robot from Softbank, does the same thing and arrives in the US later this year. But Pepper started in customer service and was adapted to home use. The oversized head is a bit too big for its body, like a puppy.

Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) is years behind Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and others in AI, full stop. Recently, rumors about a Siri software development kit have sparked a debate about Apple's plans to compete in machine learning. This comes after a series of announcements and product launches from various major technology companies about new language-driven devices and services, e.g. the Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) Echo or Google Home. Seeking Alpha contributor Mark Hibben has speculated about Apple's capability of closing that gap, which he believes is not very large. In this article, I will give a number of reasons why I believe he is wrong and why Apple is structurally not able to catch up anytime soon.

We know you, dear readers, have been tracking the megatrend of artificial intelligence. There are many issues in this trend that should inform your day-to-day decision-making (we examine AI issues as part of our CAMBRIC construct to help put the trend in the context of other major thrusts in the tech world). Most AI solutions today are fielded by the big players in IT. For example, Apple's Siri or the capabilities they embedded directly in iOS9, or Google's many savvy search solutions or Amazon's very smart recommendations. Amazon's Echo is also, like Siri, connecting to a very smart cloud capability that takes advantage of AI.

Tado debuted a small improvement to its smart A/C control device, offering customers the option to use Amazon's Alexa digital assistant to control Tado-connected air conditioners. To use it, all you'll need do is add the Alexa Tado skill in your Amazon account.

Here's a task for you: Type "I want to get started with machine learning" into your favourite search engine. I get back a whole list of options from Coursera, Azure, Amazon, kdnuggets, reddit,… and I could continue on and on. So where should one get started? In this post, I want share the experiences of UK Technical Evangelist and ML Expert Amy Nicholson. Amy will share her experience of using the Cortana Intelligence Gallery in conjunction with the Azure ML Studio, and how that combination helped her break down the otherwise high barriers into popular ML techniques and start building her own ML models as well as her knowledge about this space. Amy is a graduate from The University of Sheffield in the UK, where she studied Computer Science.

Editor's Note: This article is part of a special report on the Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2016 produced by the World Economic Forum. The list, compiled by the Forum's Meta-Council on Emerging Technologies, highlights technological advances its members, including Scientific American Editor in Chief Mariette DiChristina, believe have the power to improve lives, transform industries and safeguard the planet. It also provides an opportunity to debate any human, societal, economic or environmental risks and concerns that the technologies may pose prior to widespread adoption. One of the advantages that CEOs and celebrities have over most people is that they don't need to spend much time handling the uninteresting, time-consuming aspects of daily life: scheduling appointments, making travel plans, searching for the information they want. They have personal assistants, or PAs, who handle such things.

Microsoft envisions Cortana doing much more than reminding us to pick up toilet paper on the way home from work. Back in 2014, we Windows Phone fans could barely contain ourselves as we eagerly awaited Cortana's arrival on Windows Phone 8.1. At the time, like many writers, I had a vision of what Cortana would mean for Microsoft and mobile computing. So, well, I wrote about it. Alas, time has moved on, and that initial fervor that fueled the "Cortana conversations" of many Windows phone fans has transitioned through other topics. The Lumia 950 and 950 XL had their time in the limelight. HoloLens enters and re-enters the conversation. Windows 10 updates are a consistent topic, further fueled by Gabe Aul's passing of the torch to Dona Sarkar as the new face for the Insider Program.