Alexa gets 2M ad-supported songs: The most commonly used smart speaker feature is listening to music, so it only makes sense that Amazon bring its Music service to Echo devices for free. And by free, I mean you won’t pay any fees but you will be … [Read more...]
Life in a Google Home and what it says about the smart home
In mid-December, my family went cold turkey on Alexa in both our kitchen and living room. Alexa still reigns in the bedrooms, but we removed the Echo Show to try out life with a Google Home, as we had been growing increasingly frustrated with Alexa's … [Read more...]
Here’s why smart home hubs seem to be dying a slow, painful death
I’m getting close to admitting defeat. And it hurts. I’ve long been a proponent of smart home hubs with multiple radios, particular those for Zigbee and Z-Wave, but it seems like the hub market is happy to ignore those in favor of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth … [Read more...]
Amazon just pulled an Apple on the smart home
Amazon just solved several challenges associated with the smart home. At its event Thursday in Seattle, the online retailer attacked several pain points associated with the smart home to create a vision for the user experience I associate with Apple. … [Read more...]
How Lennar and Amazon work together to sell the smart home
Lennar plans to become an Amazon experience center that will sell and showcase a variety of smart home devices in Lennar's model homes. This is a deepening of the two firms existing partnership, since Lennar had dumped Apple's HomeKit last summer to … [Read more...]