Siri and Google Assistant still aren’t speaking to Alexa: Last September, Amazon launched its Voice Interoperability Initiative, which aims to let customers “interact with multiple voice agents on a single device.” At the time, 30 companies jumped on board, but noticeably absent were Apple and Google. This week, Amazon said it now has 70 member companies, adding Facebook, Garmin, and Xiaomi to the effort. Still conspicuously absent? Yup, it’s the companies behind Siri and Google Assistant. Interestingly, Amazon, Apple, and Google are all part of Connected Home over IP, which specifically focuses on the application layer of smart device connectivity. Maybe it’s time they started talking to each other. (Amazon) — Kevin Tofel
Uh oh, there’s a new Bluetooth exploit in the wild: Obviously, you know the word Bluetooth, but have you heard of BLURtooth? That’s what the latest exploit is called for the short-range, wireless protocol used on hundreds of millions of devices. Earlier this week, the vulnerability was announced to warn of potential man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks between Bluetooth-capable phones and smart devices. According to the Bluetooth SIG, using Cross-Transport Key Derivation, which is part of the encryption key negotiation process, with Bluetooth 4.0 through 5.0 can enable the exploit. There’s currently no patch available, so if you plan on doing any Bluetooth pairing between devices, consider doing it at home instead of in public. (Bleeping Computer) — Kevin Tofel
Tile will reimburse you for lost items, but you’ll pay for the privilege: Speaking of Bluetooth, Tile announced a new service for its Tile Bluetooth tracking tags called Tile Premium Protect. The company says it will reimburse customers up to $1,000 for a lost item that has a Tile tag on it. Now that’s standing behind your product! However, the service isn’t free. A subscription costs $100 annually and you’ll only get reimbursed if your lost item isn’t found by Tile within seven days of the reported loss. I look at this as added insurance, but I’d only consider paying if I was tracking the location of very expensive items. (Tile) — Kevin Tofel
Iron Ox raises $20M for robotic farming: Yes, yes, I know. The robots are coming for all of our jobs. Indeed, the potential is there to displace farmers with automated greenhouses, which is what Iron Ox’s business is. The company this week added $20 million in funding to expand operations of its robotic produce efforts, bringing total funding to $45 million since its founding in 2015. Robots at Iron Ox currently deliver fresh-grown produce to locations in California, where the company is based. It plans to use the added capital to expand nationally. (Iron Ox) — Kevin Tofel
Robots are also helping make remote science possible: IBM has created a new service and robot called RoboRXN that lets scientists build a chemistry experiment or process on a web browser and then send the experiment to a robotic lab. Having robots handle the dripping of reagents and chemicals into test tubes the hundreds of times it can take to test our new compounds or perform experiments frees up lab assistants to do more important things and can also ensure accuracy. Plus, in a time when labs might be closed off because of the pandemic, having the ability to remotely conduct experiments is pretty helpful. (MIT Technology Review) — Stacey Higginbotham
Alexa, print me a Sudoku: I had never before thought of using voice commands to print something, but I may start. This week, Amazon introduced a new printer skill for Alexa that works across a broad range of printer brands and on second-generation and up Echo devices. Once the skill is enabled, you can ask Alexa to print various pages, such as a Sudoku puzzle, graph paper, your to-do list from the Alexa app, and more. (Alexa Skills Kit Blog) — Kevin Tofel
New York State is getting its own public IoT network: Engineers at Cornell University are designing a statewide public IoT network just for New York, thanks to a $1.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation. The plan is to implement LPWAN access to IoT devices throughout New York. The idea here is to put the infrastructure in place so that any IoT devices that need connectivity will have a long-range, low-throughput network to access without needing to provision cellular SIM cards or eSIMs. (Cornell Chronicle) — Kevin Tofel
Bose takes on Echo Frames with new audio sunglasses: I wasn’t too enthused by Amazon’s $249 Echo Frames, but I realize other people may want glasses for music and a voice assistant. That’s exactly what Bose debuted this week with its new Tempo, Tenor, and Soprano frames, which retail for the exact same price. These look much sportier than Amazon’s product, however, and the batteries last longer, too. Bose says you can expect up to 8 hours of use for your music playback combined with voice commands to either Siri or Google Assistant. (Bose) — Kevin Tofel
Wi-SUN? Really? One of the surprising things I learned at the Silicon Labs’ Works With event was that the chip company expects the 8-year-old Wi-SUN standard to become popular. Matt Johnson, the SVP and general manager of Silicon Labs’ IoT business, said the technology — pioneered for utilities and smart grid use cases — was a focus for Silicon Labs. Wi-SUN is a long-range (roughly 4 kilometers), low bandwidth radio technology that was designed for use in smart grids. For a while, companies promoting the technology also said it could gain ground in smart city deployments. Silicon Labs makes the case that new deployments for utility networks are looking for Wi-SUN because it’s an open standard. The Wi-SUN Alliance says there are almost 100 million Wi-SUN devices out there (in comparison there are roughly 158 million LoRa devices and somewhere north of 100 million NB-IoT devices) so I guess there’s a chance. — Stacey Higginbotham
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