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...]
Can you run an OpenHAB or Home Assistant smart home in the cloud?
Typically, people who use either the OpenHAB or Home Assistant open source smart home platforms tend to run the software on their own computer or a low-cost Raspberry Pi. Can you actually run these on cloud platforms such as AWS, Google Cloud or … [Read more...]
We need a standards-based solution for smart home device and automation backups
News this week of Comcast shutting down Stringify has surely upset the service's user base. Granted it's a small group of affected users - Stringify had 100,000+ downloads in the Google Play Store compared to more than 5 million IFTTT installs, for … [Read more...]
Smart home complexity is its own security risk
Quick, how many connected devices are in your home? If you have more than 10, then you are courting a level of complexity that will burden you rather than make your life easier, according to a new report from TrendMicro. For anyone with a plethora of … [Read more...]