Christmas is coming, and Google Assistant is getting into the holiday spirit. Just in time for Santa's arrival, the fun-loving virtual helper has been given an injection of good tidings in the form of a few seasonal responses. Available across all instances of Google Assistant--Allo, Google Home, and the Pixel phones--the new commands will help you find Santa, have a good laugh or just get a dose of cheer. If you ask where Santa is, for example, it will tell you that he's still chilling at the North Pole. Presumably it will provide a more specific location on the night before Christmas to match the Google Santa Tracker that also springs to life that night.

This African grey parrot cannot order you a taxi, or play your holiday playlist or Google Mariah Carey's birthday. What it can do is mimic the sound some devices make before answering your "OK Google" question.

The study "Future of IT: Hype vs. Reality" revealed that while these emerging technologies have potential in the workplace, IT professionals are grappling with budget and security concerns as they evaluate the impact these technologies can offer today versus in the future. The results show that among emerging technologies covered in the survey, IT professionals in Europe, the Middle East and Africa expect IoT devices and AI technology to have the biggest impact in the workplace, and VR to have the least impact. In fact, 79 percent of IT professionals in the region said IoT devices will be useful to their business practices in three to five years and 55 percent said the same for AI. Although most IT professionals don't expect mass adoption to take off in the workplace for VR and 3D printers, some industries have significantly higher adoption rates than the industry average. "Despite recent innovations in VR and 3D printing, the majority of IT professionals across EMEA are struggling to find viable use cases for the technology in their organisations," said John Webb, general manager of Europe at Spiceworks. "As a result, many can't justify the investment as opposed to AI and IoT that offer tangible benefits for the workplace today.

For singles in Southeast Asia, finding love online has been historically frowned upon. While our unmarried peers across the globe have found matches on OkCupid and Match.com for more than a decade, cultural norms and lingering stigmas have kept Asian dating rituals firmly in the past. Yet, the recent emergence of new developer tools, including those that reduce mobile app account details to a phone number, is facilitating more discreet access to dating platforms throughout Singapore, Taiwan and other parts of Southeast Asia. An eager market has responded, and millions of people are finding dates -- and sometimes a lasting partner -- as a result. Paktor is one such popular mobile option for singles throughout the region.

Microsoft is trying to help create machines that can have conversations by releasing a new set of data for free. The data, called the Microsoft Machine Reading Comprehension dataset (MS MARCO) is a bundle of 100,000 English queries along with corresponding answers. It's supposed to help people build artificial intelligence systems that can understand human written language. The company is opening up its dataset in the hope that Microsoft can work with other organizations on making machines better at reading comprehension, said Rangan Majumder, program manager for the Microsoft Partner Group, in a blog post on Friday. The queries in MS MARCO are based on anonymized questions that were submitted to Microsoft's Bing search engine and Cortana virtual assistant.

When Apple pulled the headphone jack off the iPhone 7, it also unveiled a new set of wireless earbuds called AirPods, that it claimed were so great that users wouldn't mind the missing headphone jack. Then the AirPods didn't come out for nearly three months after the iPhone, but now that they're here, they've solved every problem an iPhone 7-using music lover could have, right? Like so many Apple products before them, the AirPods bring with them as big of a problem as they're solving. With no onboard buttons, the AirPods require users to ask Siri to do everything from changing a track to adjusting the volume, and Siri just doesn't have the same abilities in all music apps--an arbitrary restriction set by Apple to steer you toward Apple Music. But let's start with the first question everyone has about the AirPods.

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VR headsets like the Oculus Rift are expected to sell around 300,000 Samsung's sub-£100 ($100) Gear VR headset is expected to do even better Up to 12 million Amazon Echo and Google Home virtual assistants could sell during over the Christmas shopping period, predicts one expert Samsung's sub-£100 ($100) Gear VR headset is expected to do even better Virtual assistants are set to pummel virtual reality headsets in the fight for consumer cash this Christmas, according to new reports. What do you get the pampered pooch who has everything? New... Which emoji is popular in YOUR region? Bristol loves the... Want the ultimate Christmas party sound system? AmpMe app... Would Apple hire YOU? Revealed: 25 bizarre and tricky... What do you get the pampered pooch who has everything?

Technology has changed the very psychology of money and the way we perceive it and artificial intelligence promises to further the ease of doing business for economies across the globe. The great recession left people unsure and with a lower level of trust in banks. The need for secure systems and solid investment plans however, continues to be as great as ever and technology solutions are needed. Technology-backed advisors have now come into the picture and are expected to manage $2 trillion in Assets by 2020. The market is ripe for disruption and FinTech firms are set to take the lead in this change to cater to the changing customer preferences.

According to Gartner's latest report, Worldwide IT spending is forecast to reach $3.5 trillion in 2017, up 2.9 percent from 2016's estimated spending of $3.4 trillion. Additionally, IT services spending is also set to rise 4.8 percent in 2017 to reach $943 billion. All of these figures tell us that many organizations have already allocated billions of dollars to keep up with the emerging trends in enterprise technology. One of our CMS-Connected contributors and a founding partner of Digital Clarity Group, Cathy McKnight, wrote a splendid article about the relationship between artificial intelligence and marketers. She also pointed out that more and more of the technology titans have adopted and leveraged the power of AI to enable their platforms to generate natural language, content optimization, analyze consumer behavior, and ultimately, be ahead of the game by knowing more about their customers' needs than even the customers know themselves.