Google brought their “voice-activated insanity” as a feature of their Google Assistant Fun House at the South by Southwest (SXSW) expo in Austin this year. The limited product exhibit showcased the unique capabilities of their AI assistant platform, such as a sock-folding robot and a system to order beer from your sofa.

With so many affordable IT tools on the market, it's a great time to be a small-business owner. Most of them are basic and won’t require much training, too, so you don’t have to be tech-savvy to use them effectively. All you have to do is find the right one for your particular goals and needs.

Because Amazon Echo sold like hotcakes during the holidays, Alexa became the darling of Christmas 2017, taking over our homes and hearts. With the Android version of the app now enabled with voice control, Alexa can continue to smoothly make its way into our lives via our smartphones.

“Fad” is a dirty word for many small-business owners. Whether it’s what they’re selling or what they’re investing in, business owners need long-term and reliable investments to secure their future. With 2017 in the rearview mirror, we finally know what was a fad and what was a smart investment.

Voice over IP (VoIP) phone systems are over two decades old, and still going strong. That’s because it provides businesses with unparalleled mobility. What’s more, VoIP developers are constantly improving the technology, which means we can expect some exciting new trends for telecommunications in 2018. Here are just a few of them.

Voice-powered AI systems are enjoying a resurgence. With improved bandwidth, both on desktops and on mobile devices, software vendors can easily relay complex voice commands to the cloud to be analyzed by more powerful computing software. Everyone has seen Siri do it on Apple phones, but how many realize that Android has its own AI, Google Now? If you’ve got an Android phone, pick it up and give a few of our favorite voice commands a whirl!

Before you can start playing with Google’s AI, you need to turn on the service.