Microsoft is finally ready to open its assistant up to developers. 

The Cortana Skills Kit, which allows developers to integrate their services with the assistant, is now in public preview, Microsoft announced. The news comes just days after Harman Kardon unveiled the Invoke, its Cortana-powered speaker.

Microsoft first teased the Cortana Skills Kit when it announced the speaker late last year, but hadn’t made it widely available to developers. 

Just like Alexa Skills for Amazon’s Echo, the Cortana Skills Kit lets developers build integrations so users can interact with their services via Cortana commands. Cortana Skills will be available on Cortana across all its platforms — desktop, mobile apps, Xbox — as well as the upcoming Invoke speaker. Read more…

More about Tech, Microsoft, Cortana, Microsoft Build, and Apps And Software

Facebook users may see more posts nudging them to contact lawmakers.

A recent update to the social network lets Page owners create individual posts that include a button for Facebook users to contact their local representatives. 

The feature is available as an icon on the post to Page owners within certain categories, including non-profits and media organizations. Props to Ziad Ramley for noticing this:

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Rob & Big star Rob Dyrdek was absolutely crushed upon learning his former body guard, friend and co-star, Rob Christopher “Big Black” Boykin had died.

On Tuesday, Dyrdek addressed his loss on his Twitter account by sharing some touching personal memories of Boykin, 45, who People confirmed died earlier this morning after suffering a heart attack.

The skateboarder and TV star began by declaring, “My heart is broken,” and shared a photograph of he and Boykin enjoying some quality time on a large swing.

More about Entertainment, Twitter, Conversations, Celebrities, and Death

Smartwatches may not be as hot as they used to be, but that doesn’t mean wrist-worn wearables are dead altogether.

Far from it, actually. Take the Emma Watch, a wrist wearable created by Microsoft Research Innovation Director Haiyan Zhang that’s designed to help reduce the hand tremors people diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease suffer from.

With the Emma Watch, Zhang was able to help graphic designer Emma Lawton, who has Parkinson’s, write and sketch again. 

It’s this mission to use technology to empower the human condition that is at the heart of everything Microsoft does, CEO Satya Nadella said at this year’s Build developers conference. Read more…

More about Microsoft, Emma, Parkinson S Disease, Parkinson S, and Emma Watch

Sometimes the world throws a thing at its inhabitants that requires everyone to blink a few times to reset their brains around their new collective reality.

Approaching 6 p.m. on Tuesday, we got one of those moments.

President Donald Trump fired FBI Director James Comey around that time, amid an FBI investigation into the Trump campaign’s potential connections to the Russian government. It’s a moment in which the United States’s separation of powers and the integrity of its institutions will be tested, and enough weird shit happened in the next hours that you’d be forgiven for believing we lived in a simulation that was struggling to work out a glitch. We listed some of those odd things, below.  Read more…

More about Russia, Donald Trump, White House, Fbi, and Investigation

If Björk sings in the forest and no one’s there to Instagram it, well, everything’s going great. 

The legendary musician outlined a pretty simple tweak she’d like see in human behavior to Pitchfork and suggested occasionally taking a breather to check out some trees and “do shit” instead of scrolling through Facebook. 

“Maybe there are a lot of kids now who don’t know how to walk in a forest and do basic outdoorsy things. You can be on Facebook for a long time, and then you get a feeling in your body like you’ve had three hamburgers. You know it’s trash,” she says. “I always advise my friends: just go for a walk for an hour and come back and see how you feel then. I think we’re meant to be outdoors.” Read more…

More about Celebrities, Smartphones, Social Media, Climate Change, and Bjork

Speed is of the essence in our modern age of fast-swipe online dating. So much so that the process of swiping, matching, and chatting can feel like a race to to that great (or not so great, depending) finish line we call a date

But a brand new dating app wants people to take things slow — real slow, in fact — using the ancient art of conversation to seduce matches. It’s pretty groundbreaking stuff for those getting by with the odd “DTF?” message on Tinder. 

Appetence, which is free to download on iOS from the iTunes store and claims to be the world’s first “slow dating” app, forces users to talk to each other before they can see each other’s profile pictures

How so? Upon downloading the app, users are asked to select a bunch of their interests and tastes relating to music, gastronomy, movies, TV, books, and even pets. The app’s “slow matchmaking” algorithm then shows you compatible profiles based on your interests and search settings

Unlike Tinder, Bumble, and basically every other dating app out there, the app won’t just show you photos of your match. Read more…

More about Tech, Watercooler, Lifestyle, Dating, and Dating App

Reading Yelp reviews is always helpful for finding out other opinions about businesses, discovering the best item on a menu, or for just having a laugh at all the ridiculous things people complain about.

Aziz Ansari and Jimmy Fallon perform a dramatic reading of Yelp reviews and their replies, and things get heated fast. Jimmy plays everyone from an unsatisfied deli customer to an angry homeowner in need of a repair, and Ansari claps back with rants so dramatic and charged, his responses alone deserve an Emmy. Oh, and there’s a tangent about the word “boning” that’s just so..Aziz. 

Watch the two give the performance of their lives on The Tonight Show.  Read more…

More about Watercooler, Viral Videos, Yelp, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, and Jimmy Fallon

Apple wants to come into your bedroom to keep an eye on you while you sleep … but not in a creepy way, of course.

The company just acquired sleep tracker Beddit, according to a CNBC report. The news organization spotted a change on Beddit’s online privacy portal, dated May 8, that alerted the company’s customers of Apple’s acquisition and that their personal data will now be gathered in accordance with the Apple Privacy Policy. Beddit also appears to have removed a page about its Apple Watch app from its site.  

The terms of the deal or any details on why Apple wants Beddit’s tech weren’t disclosed — Apple reps did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the acquisition. But it’s not hard to guess why a sleep tracking company would be an appealing addition to Apple’s offerings — the acquisition adds new branch of functionality to the increasingly health-focused Apple Watch.  Read more…

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