Twitter is testing a way to provide more context on trends

Twitter is testing a way to provide more context on its trends by putting the title of a corresponding Moment underneath it, TechRadar has discovered.

On Friday, we noticed the trend for Ben Simmons had a short description below it: "No. 1 draft pick Ben Simmons fractures his foot." Typically, the number of tweets about a trend or the handles of people talking about it are underneath the term, so this short description stood out.

When asked about the blurb, a Twitter spokesperson confirmed a description test is underway.

"We're beginning to experiment with using Moments content to provide more context on trends," the spokesperson said. "When a Moment is found to be relevant to a trend, we may use the title of the Moment in the trend's description. As always, what's trending will continue to be determined entirely by algorithm. More details about trends in our help center, and our Moments guidelines are here. "

Twitter's trends are determined entirely by algorithm, though there are aspects of personalization based on where you live and who you follow. Twitter's Moments, meanwhile, are curated by a team of humans.

When I clicked on the Ben Simmons trend, I was taken to the Moment created for the news he had broken his foot. The Moment title matched the trend description:

The trend description appeared both on twitter.com as well as in the Twitter iOS app. Both descriptions were for the same trend.

To be clear, in this test a trend description will only appear if there is a corresponding Moment, and the description will be the title of the Moment. If you click the trend, you'll be taken to the Moment.

The test is small right now and it's unclear if Twitter will ever make this a full-fledged feature. It's a smart move as it provides context to what can seem like random words or phrases if you don't know what a trend is referring to.

Twitter is seemingly continuing to try new ways to keep users engaged with the service. It recently stopped counting media attachments and quoted tweets against users' 140-character count, and other such improvements are likely on the way before long.

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Twitch announces Twitch Prime, Loyalty Badges and video uploads

 Twitch, the video game live-streaming service acquired by Amazon for nearly a billion dollars back in 2014, kicked off its annual TwitchCon conference this afternoon with a keynote. With keynotes generally come a bit of news… and sure enough, here’s what’s new: Twitch Prime: As we scooped right before the Keynote, Twitch officially confirmed Twitch Prime. Included for free… Read More http://ift.tt/2cRF77G

Facebook tests Snapchat Stories clone for Messenger

Facebook is mimicking one of Snapchat's most popular features, Snapchat Stories, in its Messenger chat app. The new feature, called Messenger Day, launched exclusively in Poland today.

Snapchat Stories, for the unfamiliar, is a feature that lets users share photos, videos and drawings in a timeline that disappears after 24 hours. Messenger Day works almost exactly like Snapchat Stories, according to TechCrunch.

Where Messenger Day differs from Snapchat Stories and, for that matter, Instagram Stories, is how it prompts users to use the feature. At the top of the chat list are options to quickly share how you're feeling, what you're doing and more. This makes it easier to share something quickly with all of your friends instead of managing a curated friends list.

"We know that people come to Messenger to share everyday moments with friends and family," said a Facebook spokesperson speaking with TechCrunch. "In Poland we are running a small test of new ways for people to share those updates visually."

It's unclear whether Messenger Day will be available in other countries, though success in Poland may mean the feature could be released more widely.

This isn't the first time Facebook has copied Snapchat. The social network's photo sharing app, Instagram, aped Snapchat Stories by releasing Instagram Stories in August.

A smart strategy

According to TechCrunch, Facebook may have introduced Messenger Day to get users hooked on its Messenger app in hopes of preventing them from leaving to use Snapchat Stories. Facebook also has another chat app with 1 billion active users: WhatsApp. In order to keep people using its apps, Facebook has to bring popular features from competing platforms into its own.

It's also smart of Facebook to put a story feature in Messenger because its chat app is more intimate than its social network. By having Messenger Day inside a chat app, users don't have to worry about sharing the highest quality photos or videos on their Facebook wall.

Over the years, the social network has evolved into a place where users only share curated highlights about their lives instead of casually sharing thoughts and activities, something Snapchat excels at.

Facebook Messenger currently has over 1 billion active users, compared to Snapchat's 150 million. Using Messenger's immense reach, Messenger Day could prove to be a popular feature.

• Should you give Facebook the boot?

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Facebook tests Snapchat Stories clone for Messenger

Facebook is mimicking one of Snapchat's most popular features, Snapchat Stories, in its Messenger chat app. The new feature, called Messenger Day, launched exclusively in Poland today.

Snapchat Stories, for the unfamiliar, is a feature that lets users share photos, videos and drawings in a timeline that disappears after 24 hours. Messenger Day works almost exactly like Snapchat Stories, according to TechCrunch.

Where Messenger Day differs from Snapchat Stories and, for that matter, Instagram Stories, is how it prompts users to use the feature. At the top of the chat list are options to quickly share how you're feeling, what you're doing and more. This makes it easier to share something quickly with all of your friends instead of managing a curated friends list.

"We know that people come to Messenger to share everyday moments with friends and family," said a Facebook spokesperson speaking with TechCrunch. "In Poland we are running a small test of new ways for people to share those updates visually."

It's unclear whether Messenger Day will be available in other countries, though success in Poland may mean the feature could be released more widely.

This isn't the first time Facebook has copied Snapchat. The social network's photo sharing app, Instagram, aped Snapchat Stories by releasing Instagram Stories in August.

A smart strategy

According to TechCrunch, Facebook may have introduced Messenger Day to get users hooked on its Messenger app in hopes of preventing them from leaving to use Snapchat Stories. Facebook also has another chat app with 1 billion active users: WhatsApp. In order to keep people using its apps, Facebook has to bring popular features from competing platforms into its own.

It's also smart of Facebook to put a story feature in Messenger because its chat app is more intimate than its social network. By having Messenger Day inside a chat app, users don't have to worry about sharing the highest quality photos or videos on their Facebook wall.

Over the years, the social network has evolved into a place where users only share curated highlights about their lives instead of casually sharing thoughts and activities, something Snapchat excels at.

Facebook Messenger currently has over 1 billion active users, compared to Snapchat's 150 million. Using Messenger's immense reach, Messenger Day could prove to be a popular feature.

• Should you give Facebook the boot?

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Twitch appears to be getting its own version of Amazon Prime, called “Twitch Prime”

 It appears that Twitch-integrated games are not the only thing Amazon has been working on with the live-streaming site it owns. A small number of Twitch users are now reporting seeing a new section called “Twitch Prime” pop up in their profiles. According to a banner ad spotted by one user, Twitch Prime will include perks like “free loot every month,” as well as… Read More http://ift.tt/2djzrmz

Nintendo shows off some highly nerdy features of the NES Mini

 Nintendo has further taken the wraps off the must-have gaming gadget of the holidays — which is to say, the one we’re all buying ourselves as soon as it’s available. An aggressively retro-themed video released today visually demonstrates three of the the NES Mini’s features. Brace yourself, it’s about to get real nerdy in here. Read More http://ift.tt/2dhGQT1

PewDiePie’s’s new game “Tuber Simulator” hits the top of the App Store, crashes

 What happens when the world’s biggest YouTube star Felix “PewDiePie” Kjellberg tells his 48 million YouTube subscribers to download and play his new mobile game? The game promptly shoots up to the top of the App Store, and the servers crash under the load. That’s what happened, at least, following the iOS and Android launch of “PewDiePie’s Tuber… Read More http://ift.tt/2dxkHiS

Mac Week: The 'macOS' of 2016 vs the 'Mac OS' of 1984

September 20, 2016 marked the glorious return of Mac OS – err, sorry, "macOS" – at least by name, and with it a host of new features and capabilities for Apple's various Mac desktops and MacBooks.

This return to a name that Apple hasn't uttered much since 2012 has made us a bit nostalgic here at TechRadar for the "Mac OS" of old. (Because that's what aging tech nerds do.) This has made us wonder what the first Mac OS, then known simply as "System Software," would look like next to the macOS of today.

From the Mac hardware needed to run them to the innovative, new features they touted as must haves, let's look at the macOS of 2016 versus the Mac OS of 1984.

Hot hardware

Since Apple doesn't release its software to other hardware makers, figuring out the exact hardware requirements for each version of Apple's operating system (OS) is a tad difficult (read: really hard). So, let's look at the original, 1984 Macintosh – today known commonly as the Macintosh 128K – to get an idea of what it took to run the firm's first crack at Mac OS.

The first-ever Mac OS (shown below) was comprised of 216 kilobytes (KB) of data (!), just over half of the original Macintosh's 400KB disk drive capacity (!!). In fact, the limited storage and memory saw users swapping floppy disks to access new content with the core OS runtime sitting on the 128KB of RAM (!!!).

And, powering the whole Mac OS platform, from handling data requests to pushing the monochrome, 512 x 342-pixel graphics, was an 8MHz Motorola 68000 processor. Yes, the same chip used to power the Sega Genesis.

Flash forward to today, and macOS Sierra requires a little more oomph to get your Mac going – just a smidge. The latest successor to what Mac OS started 32 years ago requires 2GB of RAM and at least 8.8GB of storage to run.

Let's put that into perspective. In terms of storage space, the size of macOS Sierra in gigabytes (GB) could fit roughly over 42,720 instances of Mac OS System 1 inside of it. If RAM behaved this way, you could fit thousands of instances of System 1 in the memory required by Sierra alone.

From founding Finder to a feature frenzy

The first Mac OS brought forth features and concepts in computing that the users of today's macOS have long taken for granted. For instance, System 1 introduced Finder, one of the first visual representations of a computer's stored files and programs since the DOS age.

Keep in mind, too, that the first version of Finder didn't even have a directory-based file system. All files were stored in the same root folder, regardless of how users organized them visually using the graphical interface.

In fact, it wasn't until the fifth version of Mac OS, or System 5, that Macs could run more than one application simultaneously – through a tool known then as "MultiFinder". At the time, it was all but a breakthrough.

Today, macOS Sierra not only represents files within tabs of a single Finder window – something likely not even a thought back in 1984 – but also summons forth those files with your voice, using Siri.

The latest Finder even automatically backs up your entire desktop and Documents folder to a remote server, iCloud Drive. It can even optimize your disk space based on how often and when you last accessed a collection of files, with your choice of either trashing them or sending them to iCloud Drive.

And, obviously, running more than one app at once hasn't required a specific tool devised to handle such multitasking for decades.

Where the Mac OS of yesteryear introduced woefully basic but absolutely fundamental concepts for computing (e.g. what if Sierra shipped without the Calculator app?), the macOS of today has more features than you can even remember to use, like Apple Watch proximity login.

While we look back and chuckle a bit at what Mac OS was compared to what it is today, the roots of Apple's more than 30-year-old breakthrough into visual computing are more than visible – they're integral to how we work on Macs. Just look at your Finder.

This article is part of TechRadar's Mac Week. This year marks not only the 10th anniversary of Apple's MacBook, but the triumphant return of macOS. So, TechRadar looks to celebrate with a week's worth of original features delving back into the Mac's past, predicting the Mac's future and exploring the Mac as it is today.

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Facebook “Messenger Day” is the chat app’s new Snapchat Stories clone

 Facebook is stealing the Stories format and invading countries where Snapchat isn’t popular yet. Today in Poland it launched “Messenger Day”, which lets people share illustrated filter-enhanced photos and videos that disappear in 24 hours, just like on Snapchat. By using the international popularity of Messenger to spread the Stories format, Facebook could boost retention… Read More

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Amazon shows its first games integrated with Twitch

 Amazon Games Studios this week showed off the first games that will be integrated with live-streaming site Twitch, which Amazon acquired for over $1 billion in 2014.  The new games will run on Lumberyard, the game engine powered by Amazon Web Services, that debuted earlier this year. These integrations will allow gamers to stream their broadcasts in real-time, overlaid with live stats,… Read More http://ift.tt/2dKliRp

The Grand Tour might not be an Amazon Prime exclusive after all

Coming to screens on November 18, The Grand Tour is one of Amazon Prime's most hotly anticipated exclusive shows.

Reuniting ex-Top Gear hosts Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May for more car-based shenanigans the show has a ready-made audience behind it, making it an incredibly valuable addition to the Amazon Prime exclusive line up.

However, according to a recent report from Business Insider, it might not be an Amazon Prime exclusive forever. Sources have apparently revealed that there's a secret arrangement in place between Amazon and the ex-Top Gear team that will enable Amazon to sell the rights of the show to TV networks and broadcasters.

Car boot sale

As a result of this deal, Amazon is reportedly working with talent agency IMG to license second window rights to The Grand Tour.

This is surprising news since it wasn't so long ago that Amazon's Jay Marine quashed rumors that the company may sub-license the show to an apparently very keen ITV, saying that Amazon had "no interest" in such a deal.

Even if Amazon is working with IMG, there's actually no guarantee that The Grand Tour will ever appear outside of Prime. This is because as part of this reported deal Amazon has the right to choose when, and even if, it wants to make the show available to regular channels after it's aired to Prime customers.

It could be possible that Amazon is working with IMG to only sell The Grand Tour to networks in countries where the Amazon Prime video service isn't currently available as the show does have significant global appeal.

If this was the case, it would mean that Amazon would be able to get The Grand Tour to the widest possible audience, without undercutting the value of the Prime Video subscription for customers in the few countries where the service is currently available.

Regardless, Amazon Prime customers can look forward to tuning into the show when it first airs on Amazon Prime in November.

• Best Amazon Prime Instant Video TV shows: 25 essential shows on Amazon Prime

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Downloads: Download of the day: Ashampoo Photo Commander FREE

Download of the day: Ashampoo Photo Commander FREE

If you have a collection of photos gathering dust on your PC, or on an external hard drive tucked away in a drawer, you need Ashampoo Photo Commander FREE.

This powerful image management tool makes it incredibly easy to organize your snaps, make enhancements and corrections, and share them online or in print.

Why you need it

Digital cameras give your photos impenetrable filenames, and it's all too easy for them to end up in a jumbled mess on your hard drive. With Ashampoo Photo Commander FREE you can view them all with customizable previews and accelerated browsing, rename them and add tags in just a few clicks.

Ashampoo Photo Commander FREE also includes a suite of great Quick Fix tools, including a superb one-click optimizer that adjusts color and contrast, removes noise and eliminates JPG compression artefacts instantly. You can also take your pick from a menu of creative effects (including some stylish Instagram-style filters), flip or rotate your images, remove scratches (ideal for scanned prints), and resize them. You can apply these changes to a single photo, or to several in a batch.

Once your pictures look great, you can export them as PDFs, create HTML photo albums, make collages ready for printing to canvas via a service like PhotoBox, burn them to disc, or make slideshows without the need for separate presentation software.

Key features

• Easy photo management and tagging
• Batch editing
• One-click optimization
• Online and offline photo sharing

Works on

Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, 10

Price

• Ashampoo Photo Commander FREE – Free
• Ashampoo Photo Commander – US$59.99 (about £45, AU$80)

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Game of Thrones: Enhanced Edition is an iPad book you might actually buy

This year marks the 20th anniversary of George R.R Martin's much-loved fantasy series, A Song of Ice and Fire. To celebrate, Apple is releasing a special enhanced edition of the first book in the series, A Game of Thrones, exclusively on iBooks.

This interactive digital edition of the book will apparently offer entirely new ways for readers to experience the Game of Thrones universe, bringing it to life "in new and enriching ways" through a host of secondary materials.

In A Game of Thrones: Enhanced Edition, readers will be able to explore the histories of the great houses of Westeros, as well as keep track of the sprawling storylines through interactive character maps, annotations, and useful glossary terms.

Swearing fealty to iBooks

The enhanced editions won't stop at the first book in the series, either, with books two through five planned for release in the coming months. As more of the enhanced editions are released, Apple says the glossary content available will grow alongside the storylines, detailing the evolving character connections.

There's also an appendix section which includes all 92 house sigils in the Game of Thrones universe, giving insight into the symbolism behind each sigil as well as information on the family's region and allegiances.

As a treat for those who are already up to date on the stories, there's also a sneak peek of the upcoming sixth book, Winds of Winter.

A Game of Thrones: Enhanced Edition is available for $8.99 on iBooks, while the rest of the books are available to pre-order for $11.99 each.

• How to download and read books with the iBooks app

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WhatsApp’s privacy U-turn on sharing data with Facebook draws more heat in Europe

 A dramatic privacy about-face by messaging app WhatsApp this summer, in which it revealed an update to its T&Cs would for the first time allow the sharing of its user data with parent company Facebook, is getting the pair into hot water in Europe. Read More

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Avast CEO on why it’s just spent $1.4BN to absorb security rival AVG

 Security firm Avast has today confirmed the completion of a $1.4 billion acquisition of fellow Czech-based antivirus company AVG. The deal will see Avast’s customer base nearly double — swelling from 230 million to more than 400 million in total, 160M of whom are mobile users. Read More http://ift.tt/2dc41ir

WhatsApp’s privacy U-turn on sharing data with Facebook draws more heat in Europe

 A dramatic privacy about-face by messaging app WhatsApp this summer, in which it revealed an update to its T&Cs would for the first time allow the sharing of its user data with parent company Facebook, is getting the pair into hot water in Europe. Read More http://ift.tt/2dctr2G

Google wants to better challenge Microsoft Office with these new features

Google has been beavering away with its online apps, and has just pushed out some fresh tweaks for Google Drive, as well as Docs, Sheets and Slides (which are now part of G Suite, the new name for Google Apps for Work).

The biggest change is to the latter productivity apps which have witnessed the introduction of a new Explore feature – essentially an intelligent assistant to help you better craft your documents in various different ways.

With Google Docs, if you're writing on a certain topic, Explore will surface related content in a side panel which might be online articles pertaining to the subject in question, relevant images and so on – all of which you can simply drag over to use. It'll also automatically highlight any relevant files you have stored in your Google Drive.

With Sheets, click the Explore button (the green one in the bottom-right corner, incidentally) and you'll be able to type in straightforward questions phrased in natural language, with the software then producing an answer.

So for example you can ask 'how many units of laptops did we sell in September?' Or perhaps inquire about sales for multiple months, and Sheets will list the relevant figures.

Shortcuts for various formatting suggestions are also highlighted, which is pretty neat, too.

As for the Slides app, Explore is all about making your presentations look better, and it will help you find relevant images, and offer suggestions of rather nifty-looking layouts for a slide which can be applied with one click.

Clearly, Google doesn't want to be left behind compared to Microsoft's productivity progress of late, and all of these Explore options run along similar lines to what its rival is doing in making its Office 365 suite more intelligent with features like Tap for Word and Outlook, and QuickStarter in PowerPoint.

Driving forward

So what's new with Google Drive? Something called Quick Access, which is powered by machine learning and attempts to predict the files you'll need next. Essentially, the feature monitors how you use Drive, looking for patterns and things like, for example, regular reviews of a forecasting spreadsheet. It'll spot these patterns and then automatically produce that spreadsheet at the relevant time going forward.

Google reckons that Quick Access will reduce the average time it takes to find the right file by some 50%, because you simply won't have to search for files sometimes – they'll be presented right in front of you when needed.

The company has also tweaked Calendar with another feature which is driven by machine intelligence: Find a time. This makes suggestions of meeting times and rooms which are available.

The Explore updates for Google's productivity apps are live now, and Quick Access is also out and available to G Suite customers on Android. Find a time is already out on Android, too, and will soon also be on iOS, then later this year it will arrive on the web.

• Google also recently updated Translate to make it almost as good as a human translator

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Google wants to better challenge Microsoft Office with these new features

Google has been beavering away with its online apps, and has just pushed out some fresh tweaks for Google Drive, as well as Docs, Sheets and Slides.

The biggest change is to the latter productivity apps which have witnessed the introduction of a new Explore feature – essentially an intelligent assistant to help you better craft your documents in various different ways.

With Google Docs, if you're writing on a certain topic, Explore will surface related content in a side panel which might be online articles pertaining to the subject in question, relevant images and so on – all of which you can simply drag over to use. It'll also automatically highlight any relevant files you have stored in your Google Drive.

With Sheets, click the Explore button (the green one in the bottom-right corner, incidentally) and you'll be able to type in straightforward questions phrased in natural language, with the software then producing an answer.

So for example you can ask 'how many units of laptops did we sell in September?' Or perhaps inquire about sales for multiple months, and Sheets will list the relevant figures.

Shortcuts for various formatting suggestions are also highlighted, which is pretty neat, too.

As for the Slides app, Explore is all about making your presentations look better, and it will help you find relevant images, and offer suggestions of rather nifty-looking layouts for a slide which can be applied with one click.

Clearly, Google doesn't want to be left behind compared to Microsoft's productivity progress of late, and all of these Explore options run along similar lines to what its rival is doing in making its Office 365 suite more intelligent with features like Tap for Word and Outlook, and QuickStarter in PowerPoint.

Driving forward

So what's new with Google Drive? Something called Quick Access, which is powered by machine learning and attempts to predict the files you'll need next. Essentially, the feature monitors how you use Drive, looking for patterns and things like, for example, regular reviews of a forecasting spreadsheet. It'll spot these patterns and then automatically produce that spreadsheet at the relevant time going forward.

Google reckons that Quick Access will reduce the average time it takes to find the right file by some 50%, because you simply won't have to search for files sometimes – they'll be presented right in front of you when needed.

The company has also tweaked Calendar with another feature which is driven by machine intelligence: Find a time. This makes suggestions of meeting times and rooms which are available.

The Explore updates for Google's productivity apps are live now, and Quick Access is also out and available to G Suite customers on Android. Find a time is already out on Android, too, and will soon also be on iOS, then later this year it will arrive on the web.

• Google also recently updated Translate to make it almost as good as a human translator

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Kodi boxes are now a key target in the UK government's piracy crackdown

Kodi boxes and other devices which can be configured to enable the streaming of pirated content are to become key targets in a UK government intellectual property crime crackdown.

Revealing the extent to which so-called "fully-loaded" Kodi boxes are being used to circumvent copy protection laws, the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) has stated that half of its investigations currently centre around streaming devices using third party piracy software or add-ons.

Set top boxes are of course legal, and the open-source Kodi software in its vanilla configuration is a harmless media centre. But, Kodi can be tweaked to facilitate the illegal streaming of premium content, ranging from current cinema releases to streams of cable TV channels.

'Cross-border infrastructure'

It's an international racket, according to the government's Intellectual Property Office (IPO) annual crime report.

"We are aware that set-top boxes, while perfectly legal in their own right, are frequently adapted by criminals to illegally receive TV channels protected by intellectual property rights," a spokesperson for the IPO told the BBC.

"The government is working with its partners in [the] industry and with police forces across the country to target criminals looking to profit from this activity.

"We are also working closely with our international partners to target the cross-border infrastructure that underpins illegal streaming."

Earlier this week, a Middlesborough retailer became the first in the UK to become embroiled in a legal challenge over the sale of Kodi boxes which "[facilitate] the circumvention" of copyright protection. Paired with this latest report, it's a landmark case which could have long term implications for how Kodi can be used and distributed in the UK.

• Best Kodi / XBMC streaming boxes 2016

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Now CanvasPop wants to turn your Prisma photos into wall art

 Art photo filter app sensation Prisma, which only launched this summer but racked up more than 55 million downloads in a matter of weeks, has sparked a rush of other photo-processing apps all promising to transform your selfies into art fit to hang on the wall. Read More

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Microsoft just made a massive move in AI that will impact Windows users

How serious is Microsoft about AI? Serious enough to form a major new Microsoft AI and Research Group in an effort to drive its products and services like Windows, Office and Cortana forward using artificial intelligence.

As the name suggests, the new division will incorporate Microsoft Research – which has been going for 25 years now – along with the Bing and Cortana product groups, the Ambient Computing and Robotics teams, plus Microsoft's Information Platform Group.

In total, all these groups combined make for over 5,000 computer scientists and engineers who will be part of the new AI and research division, which will be headed up by Harry Shum, who Microsoft refers to as a 'computer vision luminary'.

The key phrase for this new department appears to be 'democratising AI', which simply means making artificial intelligence accessible and available to everyone – and every business – in various different forms to make their lives easier.

This will mean, broadly, bringing new intelligent features to Microsoft's Windows OS and its various apps, as seen recently when the company revealed the likes of Tap for Word and Outlook in Office 365, which will automatically surface content from other files that it thinks might be relevant to the document (or email) you're currently working on.

And another arena we've seen a lot of movement in recently is bots and intelligent agents, and the likes of Skype bots and Cortana (which is becoming an increasingly pushed part of Windows 10, and now serves some 113 million customers according to Microsoft) are obviously a big part of the AI puzzle for Microsoft.

Importance of developers

The company also intends to push forward with making services such as machine analytics and computer vision available to app developers across the globe, to integrate into their products.

The final prong of Microsoft's artificial intelligence strategy is to build the "world's most powerful AI supercomputer with Azure", a cloud-based processing monster, the power of which will be accessible to anyone, the company notes. And beyond that, Microsoft is looking to quantum computing…

Shum, whose new title is executive vice president of the Microsoft AI and Research Group, commented: "Microsoft has been working in artificial intelligence since the beginning of Microsoft Research, and yet we've only begun to scratch the surface of what's possible. Today's move signifies Microsoft's commitment to deploying intelligent technology and democratising AI in a way that changes our lives and the world around us for the better.

"We will significantly expand our efforts to empower people and organisations to achieve more with our tools, our software and services, and our powerful, global-scale cloud computing capabilities."

Hopefully, then, progress across all these fronts will be made more swiftly when the new division is up and running, and firing on all cylinders. Microsoft says that the AI and Research Group is currently hiring on a worldwide basis.

Furthermore, earlier this week, Microsoft became part of an AI alliance of tech giants which aims to help the public understand artificial intelligence better, and to ensure that the technology doesn't ever get out of hand.

• Microsoft also recently said it was nailing speech recognition, so Cortana's future looks bright

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Prowler.io raises $2M to help AI systems make smarter choices

 As we inch closer to a time when we may rely on truly autonomous devices to move us or do things on our behalf, the need for software that’s able to think on its feet (or mid-air) will be essential. Now, an artificial intelligence startup working on this emerging area of machine learning has raised a seed round of funding to try to do just that. Cambridge, UK-based Prowler.io, which… Read More http://ift.tt/2dyGta5

Amazon to spend $2.5M on university competition to build “socialbot”

 If you need an Uber, Amazon Alexa has your back. Unfortunately if what you need is a conversation buddy, the personal assistant isn’t quite up to the task. In an effort to bolster Alexa’s social intelligence, Amazon is putting $2.5 million into a new university competition to design and build “socialbots” for the platform. Engineers will use the Alexa Skills Kit to… Read More

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