Being Android enthusiasts, we don't spend much time playing around with Siri, but we may all get to make use of the virtual assistant's successor. According to The Washington Post, Vivi Labs, which was co-founded by Siri creators Dag Kittlaus, Adam Cheyer and Chris Brigham, is preparing to showcase its next generation AI assistant on Monday. The project has been more than three years in the making, and unlike some other assistant platforms, it is planned as an open project that will work across multiple platforms. Although according to the report, Google and Facebook have already tried to acquire the company, so things might change in the future. What's particularly interesting about Vivi Labs' vision is that the company is looking to bypass the traditional way that consumers access information, opting for direct integration with services rather than simply offering up suggestions.

Next week at Disrupt NY 2016, Dag Kittlaus, a former Apple employee and one of the co-founders of Siri, will take the stage to discuss the future of artificial intelligence. Kittlaus' appearance, however, will be notable for another reason: the world will finally get a glimpse at a new and potentially revolutionary AI system that Kittlaus and his team at Viv Labs have been working over the past few years. The forthcoming AI system is called Viv and it is already touted as being more advanced than Siri or any other intelligent assistant out on the market. Whereas a service like Siri can handle simple queries like What's the weather like in Miami or What year was Michael Jordan born in?, Viv can process and answer multi-layered questions. As a quick example, Kittlaus a few weeks ago explained that Viv can handle a more complex query like, "Find me a flight to Dallas with a seat that Shaq could fit in" or "What's the weather near the Super Bowl?" DON'T MISS: What people don't get about the Apple Watch So while Siri can only handle requests it's specifically programmed to understand and process, Viv's technological breakthrough is that has apparently managed to remove this limiting factor.

Next week at Disrupt NY 2016, Dag Kittlaus, a former Apple employee and one of the co-founders of Siri, will take the stage to discuss the future of artificial intelligence. Kittlaus' appearance, however, will be notable for another reason: the world will finally get a glimpse at a new and potentially revolutionary AI system that Kittlaus and his team at Viv Labs have been working over the past few years. The forthcoming AI system is called Viv and it is already touted as being more advanced than Siri or any other intelligent assistant out on the market. Whereas a service like Siri can handle simple queries like What's the weather like in Miami or What year was Michael Jordan born in?, Viv can process and answer multi-layered questions. As a quick example, Kittlaus a few weeks ago explained that Viv can handle a more complex query like, "Find me a flight to Dallas with a seat that Shaq could fit in" or "What's the weather near the Super Bowl?" DON'T MISS: What people don't get about the Apple Watch So while Siri can only handle requests it's specifically programmed to understand and process, Viv's technological breakthrough is that has apparently managed to remove this limiting factor.

Amazon has hired Xerox PARC employee and artificial intelligence (AI) researcher Ashwin Ram to head up AI R&D for Alexa, the e-commerce behemoth's virtual assistant. Ram first tweeted about his appointment on Tuesday, and a spokesperson for Amazon has now confirmed the hire but declined to offer any further comment. The veteran computer science researcher worked at PARC for the last five years, most recently holding the role of Area Manager & Chief Innovation Officer, Interactive Intelligence & Augmented Social Cognition, according to LinkedIn, where he worked on apps and technology related to health and well-being. Excited to join @Amazon to lead AI r&d team for Alexa, the conversational agent that powers @AmazonEcho. Ram is also an adjunct professor for the College of Computing at Georgia Tech, where he ran the Cognitive Computing Lab for 8 years up until 2011. It was in that role that he led research in AI and cognitive science.

Siri may be able to find restaurants and make witty remarks, but she's got nothing on'Viv.' The creators behind Apple's virtual assistant have now developed a next-generation AI that's said to be capable of much more than Siri and current competitors. The team will be unveiling Viv publicly for the first time at a'major industry conference' this coming Monday, according to The Washington Post. The creators behind Apple's virtual assistant have now developed a next-generation AI called Viv, that's said to be capable of much more than Siri and current competitors. The team will be unveiling Viv publicly for the first time at a'major industry conference' this coming Monday Viv analyses the nouns in a sentence when a person speaks into a smartphone. For example, if someone told Siri that they are on their way to their brother's house and need to pick up cheap wine to go with lasagne, they would probably get no response, or at best would see one useful place marked on a map.

Microsoft has revealed that Windows 10 has now been installed on more than 300 million devices. Its latest Windows operating system designed to work on laptops, desktops, smartphones, Xbox One consoles and more. The adoption speed has likely been ramped up by Microsoft's move to make Windows 10 available as a free upgrade through July 29. Microsoft announced on May 5, 2016 that its latest Windows operating system designed to work on laptops, desktops, smartphones, Xbox One consoles and more is powering 300 million devices around the world. Cortana, the personal digital assistant in Windows 10, has helped answer over 6 billion questions since launch.

Securifi announced today that its latest connected-home, mesh-network router, the Almond 3 is now available for pre-order at a 30 discount from its final retail price of 150 (your can pre-order at Amazon). First shown at CES 2016 in January, the company expects to ship the router sometime in June. Wi-Fi router, the Almond 3 is outfitted with a ZigBee radio and will be able to function as a connected-home hub. If your smart lighting, door locks, motion sensors, and other devices operate on some other protocol, Securifi offers a 20 Z-Wave USB dongle; the company expects to offer a Bluetooth dongle sometime in Q4. What's more, the new router can also operate in conjunction with Amazon's Alexa digital voice assistant (you'll also need to have an Amazon Echo, Dot, or Tap). Effective today, this last feature has also been added to two of Securifi's earlier routers, the Almond and the Almond 2015.

The creators of Siri have been hard at work on its successor, and after four years of development, Viv is now ready for its first public demonstration. But the AI-powered digital assistant has already been catching the eye of Google and Facebook. On Monday, the team behind Viv, which includes Dag Kittlaus and Adam Cheyer, who were the co-creators of Siri, will give the first public demonstration of the technology they dub "the global brain." Viv is a smarter version of Siri, according to its creators, and will allow users to carry out a huge range of actions by just using voice and without having to tap on a screen or type a request. The work on Viv began in 2003 and was what its creators envisioned Siri would be.

This is the best deal we've seen on this product, beating the previous low from last spring by about 3. The Logitech Type is the runner-up keyboard case pick in our guide on the best accessories for your iPhone, iPad, and more. Dan Frakes said, "Its folio-style design provides an impressive amount of protection, yet it's thinner than most all-over-protection competitors. It has very good keys in a good layout, and it provides a nice array of dedicated iOS-special-function keys. And when you don't need to use the keyboard, a seam in the top cover lets you fold the iPad over the keyboard to hold it tablet-style." This refurbished deal through Best Buy comes in at 250, a full 50 under the best price we've seen on a new model of this phone, and 100 under the current street price.

I am working with a team of students from Imperial University on a project, one of the things they want to implement is a Recommendation engine for their new Cortana Intelligence Service. We had a interesting call today about some of their initial ideas and suggestions and I introduced them to the Azure Machine Learning Recommendations API. The recommendation engine is actually utilised by Microsoft Channel 9 online learning resource. So when you watch a video on channel 9 the recommendations are coming from a model built by this service. The model has been learning Channel 9 usage data back dated to July of 2014.