Month: April 2017

(credit: Adam Bowie)

Amazon's Alexa has executed a surprise takeover of the smart home industry since the launch of the Echo a few years ago, but now the company is opening up Alexa's technology for other applications. According to a report from Reuters, Amazon is giving developers access to the same tools that make up the foundations of Alexa via a new platform called Amazon Lex. In "preview phase" since 2016, Amazon Lex is now rolling out to all developers and gives them the tool to build "conversational interfaces" using the speech- and text-recognition technology behind Alexa.

This essentially lets developers build new voice- or text-based chatbots into their existing apps, adding an interactive portion that wasn't available before. While Amazon has allowed companies to build Alexa into their products for quite some time—it nearly took over the smart home section of this year's CES—Lex allows developers to quickly build chatbots that give the users the power to control their services with voice or text input.

Example of how Lex could be integrated into a chatbot. (credit: Amazon)

While Amazon Lex isn't technically putting Alexa into other developer's apps, it's furthering Amazon's goal of making Alexa the most widely used voice assistant. Not only will Amazon make money by charging developers depending on how many text and voice requests Lex processes, but those queries will also help build better, more intelligent Alexa and Lex platforms. AI assistants need to process lots of data to become better at answering questions, so all the training that developers put Lex through will give Amazon the data necessary to improve its AI systems.

Enlarge (credit: mgstanton)

Atrial fibrillation is a heart disorder that causes the upper chambers of the heart to spasm instead of beating regularly. While that sounds dangerous, the lack of a regular heartbeat itself isn't dangerous. Instead, a-fib causes lots of indirect problems that can be debilitating or fatal. We're making progress in understanding the disease, as evidenced by two new papers that identify a total of 18 genes that predispose people to a-fib.

That should be exciting news. And it should be especially exciting to me, since I could have easily contributed to that study—as one of its subjects. I have a-fib, which I seem to have inherited from my mother.

Getting a better understanding of a disease can open all sorts of possibilities for better treatments, even ones tailored to your own particular genetics. But that's not really the case with a-fib, and it provides a great example of how science can sometimes run up against limits even as it successfully increases our knowledge.

(credit: Flickr: Rego Korosi )

YouTube TV is now available in a couple of cities across the country, marking Google's first push into the live-TV streaming market. Many cord-cutters' ears perked up when the service was announced; it provides about 40 channels for $35 per month, including all major broadcast networks and a bunch of sports channels. But while the initial reaction was positive, we now have a clearer picture of what YouTube TV offers and the pros and cons of choosing it over another live-TV streaming service.

On mobile devices

The YouTube TV app for iOS and Android is where all the magic happens. It's available for iOS devices running iOS 9.1 and up and Android phones running Android L (5.0) or newer, and you can get it on a Chromecast, Android TV, and any computer with a browser (YouTube recommends Chrome, of course). There are no Roku, Amazon Fire, or Apple TV apps, and according to a YouTube spokesperson, support for Android tablets is coming "soon." For now, the app can't be downloaded on Android tablets at all. For this review, I primarily used the iOS version.

The app itself is thoughtfully laid out. The homepage of the iOS app is a hodgepodge of content, with scrollable carousels filled with different livestreams and suggestions for new shows or sports to watch and record. This is the area that will change if you have more than one person using your YouTube TV membership. One $35-per-month membership allows up to six separate logins (but only three simultaneous streams), so the automated content recommendations will change from user to user based on what they watch. At the bottom of the homepage lies the menu with Library, Home, and Live options, and at the top is a magnifying-glass search button along with your personal Google account avatar.