Once, talking to machines was considered madness or science fiction. Then, speech recognition came along and made it commonplace. Now, Israeli robot Kip 1 is another step forward – it can understand the tone of the speaker's voice – and react accordingly.

The password needs to die, and SlickLogin is trying to help kill it. SlickLogin lets you log into a website on your computer by holding your phone within a few inches of it.

Beyond Verbal, an Israeli startup, claims to take computer-based voice recognition one step further by creating software that is able to detect not just the words, but the emotional nuances of a voice to decipher how a person is feeling.

After touchscreens conquered many interfaces in our lives, it seems that voice activation is one of the hottest trends. Israeli startup VocalZoom is working on a microphone that will tackle the biggest obstacle voice recognition technology faces – background noise.