The aim of smart home products and home automation is to make your life simpler. With connected products in your home, you don’t need to worry about mundane tasks like turning off all the lights before bed or venturing outside to be sure you remembered to close the garage door. Commanding all your smart home’s […]
Read More
Alexa is on so much more than just the Amazon Echo. Amazon executive Daniel Rausch stood onstage before a crowd of hundreds at Berlin’s IFA tech show Saturday to share a few big numbers about Alexa. ‘Just this year,’ he said, ‘Alexa has sung Happy Birthday millions of times to customers, and she’s told over […]
Read More
Food tech entrepreneurs and appliance manufacturers have tried to answer the same question for years: How can we use the Internet of Things to make it easier to figure out what’s for dinner? At first, the answer came in the form of adding Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and near-field communication to appliances so you could control them […]
Read More
MyQ garage controllers have been around for a few years now, smartening and automating garage access for their owners. Chamberlain announced the myQ Family Share on Friday, a new and (surprisingly) free feature that allows you to grant access to three people for remote, app-enabled control and monitoring of your garage controllers, gates and lights. This […]
Read More
The German company AEG has created three induction cooktops that will let home cooks use temperature sensors and automation to prepare their meals. AEG, which is part of the Electrolux brand, will display the SenseCook cooktops (also called hobs) this week at the IFA consumer electronics trade show in Berlin. The cooktops use different methods […]
Read More
The Amazon Echo and the Nest Learning Thermostat are two of the biggest hit products of the smart home. They’ve also worked together for years. You can ask Alexa, the voice assistant built into the Echo smart speaker, to change the temperature on your Nest thermostat. After Google I/O, this important smart home connection […]
Read More
Ready to score a sweet discount on the Amazon Echo smart speaker this Black Friday? Alexa, hold your horses. Sure, Amazon will offer its flagship Alexa speaker for $69 next week — but QVC already has that deal beat, with an offer that’ll net you two Echo speakers for $100. That means you’re essentially getting […]
Read More
More than 5,500 exposed smart TVs, Chromecast streamers and Google Home devices have been commandeered in the name of YouTube mega-star PewDiePie. Hacker Giraffe, the same pseudonymous person who forced thousands of exposed printers last year to churn out pages saying ‘Subscribe to PewDiePie,’ has his set sight on smart devices to promote the […]
Read More
Google introduced a countertop display called the Home Hub at an event in October. The Home Hub is powered by Google Assistant, the company’s digital helper. A month earlier, Amazon unveiled roughly 70 new products and features at a similar presentation. Almost all of them revolved around its Alexa voice assistant. Apple held not one, but two […]
Read More
Google Assistant is upping its security credentials. Starting today, you can use Google’s digital helper to control your Nest Secure system. Even better, you can talk to your Google Assistant through the Nest Guard that acts as the system’s centerpiece. You’ll be able to arm your system with a voice command. You can also talk […]
Read More