Herding-- one of humanity's most foundational ways of life--is a pillar of survival in West Africa's Sahel. Migratory herders usher cattle between seasonal pastures, since they rarely own land. However, these traditional ways of doing things are becoming increasingly impossible, thanks to a complex mix of climate change, politics and war. In more recent years, various Western players touting tech trends like artificial intelligence and predictive analysis have swooped in with promises to solve the region's myriad problems. But some think there could be a much simpler solution, that puts real data directly into the herders' hands. Recent advances in data collection--both from geosatellites and from herders themselves--have generated an abundance of information on ground cover quantity and quality, water availability, rain forecasts, livestock concentrations, and more.

Peloton has announced the'Guide', its first connected strength product. The Guide is something like a camera with artificial intelligence built in. It plugs into a TV and is then able to watch how people work out, giving them guidance on their form and what workouts they should be doing. To use it, the Guide is plugged into the TV and people can then use their existing equipment and weights. The camera then uses machine learning to track users' movements, ensuring users are completing the exercises and allowing them to watch their own performance, as well as showing which muscle groups have recently been worked and which should be in the future.

Business person Brian Beaumont has overcome challenges brought on by dyslexia. Brian Beaumont was a below average student prior to entering graduate school in the early 1980s. So Beaumont, now 60, asked his professors if he could tape their lectures to make better use of his 60- to 90-minute commute time in and around Los Angeles. "I did not realize at the time I was making an accommodation for my dyslexia," Beaumont says. "I had problems listening and taking notes at the same time. Now, I could sit back and just listen to the lecture. I could focus on the main points the professor was making."

This column is a little cheerful, slightly analytical, both confident and tentative and just a tiny bit angry. At least that's what IBM's Watson thinks. Last week, IBM revealed that its Jeopardy-winning supercomputer has a new capability. It's called Watson Tone Analyzer. You can use it like spell check, except instead of checking your spelling, it checks the "tone" of your writing.