IBM Watson has talked tennis with Serena Williams and music with Bob Dylan. Now it wants to talk to you -- via online ads. The Weather Company, acquired by IBM in January, will begin bringing Watson-enhanced interactive advertisements to The Weather Channel and Weather Underground apps on Android and iOS and to weather.com and wunderground.com The ads, powered by Watson's artificial intelligence, will prompt consumers to ask questions such as "What would be good to cook for dinner?" or "Is this medicine safe for my child?" The first companies with Watson-enabled ads will be Campbell Soup, GSK Consumer Healthcare and Unilever.

In the wake of the resignation of Tony Faddell, the founder of smart thermostat maker Nest, the future is looking cloudy not only for the smart thermostat maker, but the broader smart home business as well. Nest, after all, was supposed to be the trailblazer that led us to the smart home revolution. When Google put down 3.2 billion to buy it in 2014, it appeared to make sense -- Google was already running much of our online lives, and this would give the company a way to run our offline lives as well. The charismatic Fadell seemed to be the right pioneer, given his product experience at Apple, which he could apply to Google's more open computing vision. But Nest proved to be a less-than-ideal poster child.

Updated 6/6/16: Added a section for useful sports commands. You pick up your phone and say "OK Google"... and then what? The microphone icon is pulsing. What do you say to your phone? What can you say to it?

In 1958, the Monotones asked, "Who Wrote the Book of Love?". If we fast forward 58 years to the present day, would the'Algorithm of Love' be a more accurate title? It is certainly a valid question; such is the popularity of the modern online dating website. Users can forego the inevitable awkwardness of blind or speed dating altogether, having found out every last detail about their date before they ever have to meet them in person. Most dating websites utilise some form of collaborative filtering or a'Netflix style' recommendation algorithm that matches people with their potential partners based on shared interests and hobbies or mutual likes and dislikes.

Online dating can be a beautiful, efficient 21st-century way to find IRL love. But it can also be a cesspool of gross messages, photos of men holding giant dead fish and seemingly endless and awkward small talk. When you're a woman trying to use the internet to date, the struggle is often very, very real. If you've ever given online dating a try, you know that whether you're browsing profiles, "super liking" someone or sending that first (or second... or third...) message, a whole lot of questions (and frustrations) come up. Luckily, a whole lot of funny women get the struggles of writing an "about me" tagline and swiping left and right online -- and they've kindly shared their thoughts on the subject on Twitter.

Your Xbox One is about to talk back to you, but in a good way -- or at least a slightly better one. Let's clarify, especially for those who bought the Xbox One without Kinect, Microsoft's optional motion-control sensor that's also a microphone into which people can bark voice commands to make things happen. Today's Xbox One is a language desert, a place where you can issue just a few dozen two- or three-word phrases as shorthand for functions you'd otherwise perform by tapping buttons on a gamepad or traditional remote. Tomorrow's Xbox One--which is to say literally this week's Xbox One if you're in the Xbox Preview program, where the feature is due imminently--will let you do that using Cortana. As in Windows Cortana, the semantic voice recognition feature bundled with Windows 10 and named after the fictional artificial intelligence integral to Microsoft's Halo video game franchise.

Smartphones are great devices, but not for everything. There are often times when having a device on you is the last thing you need, particularly if you are not using the screen. Amazon, Google and Apple are all betting that screen-less, intelligent, voice interaction will play a large role in the future of the internet at least in the home (if not the office, the car etc.). This article looks at some of the trends and recent announcements that suggest that voice control interfaces linked to artificial intelligence (AI) platforms is the future of the internet. There were two major milestones in the technology calendar this week.

"In sum: Alexa is kinda my new best friend," writes Rebecca, an author and blogger on Mommyproof. As a mother of young children, it's not hard to see why: Rebecca details the joys of virtual assistant Amazon Echo, which functions as a kind of combined kitchen helper, child entertainer and DJ. "Is it weird that Alexa feels like my trusty little friend during that six pm witching hour, gently guiding me through dinnertime?" Rebecca's not alone: Other parent bloggers have touted the device's family-friendly uses when it comes to child care and household tasks. Many of these "mommy blog" posts are sponsored by Amazon in an ad campaign explicitly geared toward families with young children. In one recent television spot for the device, a young father excitedly purchases an Echo and watches as Alexa slowly becomes an integral part of the household.

Natural language digital assistants were a priority on major developer conferences this year. Facebook F8, Google I/O and Microsoft Build, all delved on how natural language communication through voice or text input is becoming the primary way humans engage with machines. Now that Apple's WWDC is just around the corner, the news sites are buzzing with rumours, insider information and speculation of what new announcements Apple may have at it's annual developer conference. Brian Roemmele, who has been tracking Apple's developments in AI right from the start, put up a blog post on Medium explaining how Steve Jobs pushed for natural language communication capabilities in his last days at Apple. The post clarifies Apple's involvement in the changing human computer interaction scenario.

As Microsoft begins rolling out some of its Anniversary Update features to Windows 10 users, it's also doing so with the Xbox One: adding Cortana, and enhancing how game clips can be captured, edited, and shared. Just as Microsoft is pushing PC features to its game console, so too are improvements on their way to the beta Xbox app for Windows 10, including 60 fps recording of Windows games from the Game bar, and the ability to share quick clips to Twitter. Meanwhile, Microsoft has begun fusing the Windows Store and the Xbox Store to provide a single experience across both platforms. Microsoft isn't releasing the new updates to everyone; that should occur later this summer. Instead, only those who have signed up for the Xbox Preview program will receive the Xbox One updates this week, and Windows Insiders should see the updates to the beta Xbox app in the coming weeks, Microsoft said.