Alexa, Amazon's voice assistant technology, is branching out from its first home, the Echo series of devices, and finally starting to show up in third-party products. So far, we've seen a watch and an intercom, but GE may have the brightest idea yet: an LED lamp. GE, which announced the new "C by GE" desktop lamp on Wednesday, says the illuminator is just the first in a series of connected products to come. Looking a little like a silver Amazon Echo with a glowing ring attached to it, the C lamp integrates the Alexa voice service and backs it up with a microphone array and speakers. It is the first Alexa-connected lamp that does not need another third-party hub to work or control other smart-home devices that work with the ever-growing list of Alexa Skills.

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.

If the hype is to be believed, Amazon will be targeting Australia from Sept. 2017 with extreme prejudice. "We are going to destroy the retail environment in Australia," an Amazon staff member is reported to have said, according to the Australian Financial Review. As further indication of its intentions, there were numerous reports Wednesday the company has local trademarks pending across a variety of products, including its home assistant Amazon Echo. While Australians can already shop on Amazon, spending about A$500 to A$700 million according to research published in August by Citi, international shipping rates and wait times can be a deterrent. The rumoured launch of local distribution centres could make all the difference though, and while Amazon has been coy on offering any details, it could also launch its Prime subscription that guarantees free two-day shipping as well as access to its streaming service, Prime Video.

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.

NoHold, a Milpitas, California-based artificial intelligence (AI) company that pioneered chatbots in the 1990s, has launched a "quickstart" platform targeted towards small to medium size businesses (SMBs) and individuals interested in creating virtual assistants quickly, easily, and cheaply. The Sicura Quickstart platform allows SMBs and individuals to create a virtual assistant automatically by uploading word documents, tables, PDFs, and images. No programming or advanced technical skills are required to get "Albert" up and running, however documents do need to be properly formatted, which NoHold founder Diego Ventura said is fairly easy to do. Windows 10 Creators Update: What's on tap for Spring 2017 for business users Facebook's Workplace: How one company is making it work for them Amazon Go: Here are the takeaways business tech execs need to know IBM Watson AI: These firms are fighting cybercrime using cognitive computing Windows 10 Creators Update: What's on tap for Spring 2017 for business users Facebook's Workplace: How one company is making it work for them "Companies that create products very often create a manual to go with those products. If we can create a virtual assistant as a byproduct of creating that manual, then we help a lot of people because that's a process that's already established," Ventura told ZDNet.

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...