Alexa is listening to what you say – and might share that with developers – Naked Security Amazon is considering handing transcripts of everything Alexa hears over to third-party developers, according to sources close to the matter cited in a report from The Information. One developer who used to be a product head on Amazon’s Alexa team, Ahmed Bouzid, says that current access only gives developers “70% of what they need to know” to get better at doing customers’ bidding. The Information reports that some teams already have access to full recording data, though it’s not clear which developers get added to that list and why. This would be the first time that full transcripts from Amazon’s voice assistant were shared with third-party developers. Amazon told CBS This Morning that it wouldn’t do this kind of thing without opt-in: We do not share customer-identifiable information to third-party skills [apps] without the customer’s consent.
The Best Invoicing Software: 16 Apps to Get Paid for Your Work Invoicing should be the easiest part. You've already found clients, put in the hours, and done the job. It's time to get paid—and that should be simple. It's so often not. Creating and sending an invoice can be such a hurdle, an inelegant dance of copy and paste. techcrunch On a November, 2015 morning in Bentonville, Arkansas, first responders discovered a corpse floating in a hot tub. The home’s resident, James Andrew Bates, told authorities he’d found the body of Victor Collins dead that morning. He’d gone to bed at 1 AM, while Collins and another friend stayed up drinking. This past December, The Information reported that authorities had subpoenaed Amazon over the case.
How to Sync Your Entire iTunes Library to Spotify's New "My Music" Section « Digiwonk How to Sync Your Entire iTunes Library to Spotify's New "My Music" Section Included in Spotify's new darker, slimmed down redesign is a much needed My Music section, which consolidates all of your starred music, local files, and playlists into a personal collection of songs, albums, and artists, similar to how iTunes organizes your music. This makes me wonder...
Google's AI Learns Betrayal and "Aggressive" Actions Pay Off As the development of artificial intelligence continues at breakneck speed, questions about whether we understand what we are getting ourselves into persist. One fear is that increasingly intelligent robots will take all our jobs. Another fear is that we will create a world where a superintelligence will one day decide that it has no need for humans. This fear is well-explored in popular culture, through books and films like the Terminator series. Another possibility is maybe the one that makes the most sense - since humans are the ones creating them, the machines and machine intelligences are likely to behave just like humans.
The 17 Best Online Form Builder Apps for Every Task - The Ultimate Guide to Forms and Surveys There are only so many ways to build an online form. As a result, most form apps offer the same set of features: a variety of question and field options, a drag-and-drop editor, and basic themes and templates. Most save your results in a spreadsheet-like report and alert you via email when you receive new responses. With all these similarities, how do you choose the right app for your business? Does the right app even matter? For most companies, it does matter, just not in as broad of strokes as you might anticipate.
Google Home now lets you shop for everyday items with your voice - CNET One of the biggest critiques of Google Home at its launch was how much ground it would have to make up to truly compete with Amazon's Alexa speakers. But Google has been moving forward with large strides, first rolling out support for sending Netflix shows and movies to your television and adding support for third-party Actions at the beginning of the year. Now Google is marking yet another item off the list of things Google Home can't do, and adding voice shopping to its repertoire.
The 11 Best Social Media Management Tools in 2017 Managing your brand's social media is a full-time job all by itself. Not only do you have to come up with solid content and strategy, but you need to update every major social network consistently. From Facebook to Twitter, Instagram to LinkedIn, your customers expect your content wherever they log on. Your customers are talking about your brand too; everything from feedback and praise to support requests and complaints are being Tweeted and Liked. These updates can have a real impact on your brand’s credibility and reputation, especially if your team isn’t actively monitoring and responding to them.
Microsoft chatbot Zo is a censored version of Tay Microsoft Having (hopefully) learnt from its previous foray into chatbots, Microsoft is ready to introduce the follow-up to its controversial AI Tay. Tay's successor is called Zo and is only available by invitation on messaging app Kik. When you request access, the software asks for your Kik username and Twitter handle. If you don't already use Kik, you can tick a box to say you use Facebook Messenger or Snapchat. This suggests Zo will likely launch on these other services soon/if the chatbot isn't taken down for causing offence. The 32 Best Google Docs Add-ons in 2017 A word processor requires very little—a blank page, typography tools, and a way to save, print, or share your finished documents. The earliest word processors like Word for DOS and WordPerfect offered little more than that. An update here, a new version there, and 30+ years later, word processors offer an embarrassment of riches with more tools than can fit in Word's tabbed toolbars. Google Docs took a simpler road, with a simple collection of core document formatting features bundled with its world-class collaboration tools.
Understanding user privacy in the age of smart speakers Voice is becoming a primary interface. It’s in many of the technologies we use on a daily basis, like our home appliances, cars, and mobile apps. We can turn off the lights, order takeout, buy our weekly groceries, or listen to our favorite albums, all by using one of the most natural interfaces of all — voice. This is made possible by smart speakers such as Amazon Echo, Alexa, and Google Home. The convenience these devices bring is boundless, but just how safe is it to set these unassuming devices on our bedside tables or in our living rooms so they can listen to our every word? A closer look at smart speakers
22 Handy Slack Hacks Everyone Should Know — ReadThink (by HubSpot) 22 Handy Slack Hacks Everyone Should Know By: Carly Stec A couple months ago, the HubSpot team made the switch to Slack (one of the hottest real-time messaging apps on the market). Initially, it was hard to get used to uttering phrases like “Just Slack me” or “We were Slacking” in passing. But once we got more comfortable with the platform, we started to realize just how powerful it really is. The more we used Slack, the better our discoveries got — GIFs, reminders, files … they were all just a click or two away.