Users who don't want to pay the 180 for the Amazon Echo smart-speaker can now test the system's features in their web browser with Echoism, according to Mashable. Amazon's 9.25-inch cylindrical Echo speaker uses voice interaction, where users ask Alexa questions or request music. Browser testing of these features is just one way Amazon is trying to get Alexa into cars, homes and phones. Popular Science reported Amazon's release of two seperate toolkit packages: Alexa Voice Service and Alexa Skills Kit. These will allow companies to add new functionality and integrate Alexa into various devices including smart yard products and robotic vacuums.

One of the biggest reveals to come out of Google I/O two weeks ago was Google Home, a voice-activated virtual assistant meant to rival the likes of Amazon's Echo. The device was met with a great deal of fanfare, but a new report from The Information might be enough to put a little damper on the excitement. According to the report, Google Home is basically just a "dressed-up version" of the company's video streaming Chromecast device. It uses the same ARM-based microprocessor as well as the same Wi-Fi chip, a source tells The Information. In other words, it's a Chromecast with a microphone and speaker glued on.

Some would-be users might chafe at the thought of a machine keeping tabs on them. Hackers have been able to break into some Internet-connected devices in the past, and both Google Home and Amazon Echo have drawn criticism for collecting huge amounts of data about their users. Intelligent machines are playing an increasingly central role in people's lives, and users will have to decide whether the advantages of "always-on" technology outweigh the potential drawbacks. Asus is selling Zenbo for 599. While that's a lot more than, say, the Amazon Echo, it's cheaper than many other home'bots, like the 995 Personal Robot from tech company Robot Base.

I hope you had a great long weekend. The weather in New York was beautiful. I'll cut the small talk, though. I want to tell you about something that's been happening on my iPhone. See, I have this folder called Apple Apps.

Google Home promises a minor revolution as far as around-the-home voice assistants go, but its hardware roots may be more than a little familiar. The Information's source understands that Home ultimately boils down to a Chromecast with a microphone, a speaker and a nice case -- it reportedly has the same processor and WiFi chipset. The simple Linux-based operating system is also supposed to be similar (minus the voice command part, of course), although the same insider claims that a future Home might run on Android.

Apple now has the tech in place to give its digital assistant a big boost thanks to a UK-based company called VocalIQ it bought last year. In fact, it was so impressive that Apple bought VocalIQ before the company could finish and release its smartphone app. After the acquisition, Apple kept most of the VocalIQ team and let them work out of their Cambridge office and integrate the product into Siri. Before Apple bought the company, VocalIQ tested its product against Siri, Google Now, and Cortana, and the results were impressive. Users asked each AI questions using normal language, not the robotic commands you're used to using with digital assistants.

Now that Google Assistant is promising two-way conversations, Google wants to give the artificial intelligence a little more personality. The company has asked both a freelance artist (Emma Coats) and the head of its Doodle team (Ryan Germick) to make Assistant more relatable to its human users through multiple techniques, including a possible "childhood" that you might identify with. You could also see a more Siri-like playfulness, with both ready-made answers for silly questions as well as a little vulnerability.

Now that Google Assistant is promising two-way conversations, Google wants to give the artificial intelligence a little more personality. The company has asked both a freelance artist (Emma Coats) and the head of its Doodle team (Ryan Germick) to make Assistant more relatable to its human users through multiple techniques, including a possible "childhood" that you might identify with. You could also see a more Siri-like playfulness, with both ready-made answers for silly questions as well as a little vulnerability. There's a practical reason for making you feel more at home with Assistant, of course. The easier it is to get along with the AI, the more likely it is that you'll use it -- and that, in turn, could lead to more internet searches.

Apple is set to hold its biggest software event of the year, WWDC, in the middle of June. It'll use the San Francisco event to show off all of the software that's on its way to your Watch, phone and other computers – as well as potentially new Apple devices. The event comes at a big time for Apple. The company is fresh off the back of its first quarter of decline since the iPhone came out, and is feeling the heat from other companies like Google. It will intend to use WWDC as a way of showcasing the software and potentially other products that it hopes will prove its doubters wrong and get the company to grow again.

In 2010, IFTF's Ten-Year Forecast suggested that the future is a high-resolution game: Never before has humanity been able to encounter the future in such detail, to measure the forces of change at such vast scales, and to fill in the details with such fine grain. As we play this game, we find ourselves in ever more layered and nuanced futures that often look distinctly different across geographies, across cultures, and even across the various identities each of us claims. More than a fragmented marketplace or a contentious body politic, this future looks like a massively branching game environment where you can win without ever discovering half of the possible pathways--but you can lose by mistaking a clear line of sight for the whole story. As we try to grasp the future of blockchain and other distributed computing technologies, we have to start here, with this high-resolution gamescape where there is no single blockchain future. Rather, we face an ecosystem of futures as complex as the global superorganism that we are actually becoming.