Two weeks ago, Amazon held its virtual Alexa Live 2020 event for Alexa voice developers, device makers, and business leaders alike—anyone in the business of leveraging Amazon’s highly popular smart assistant. Alexa boast a develop community of approximately 700,000, many whom look to this event for a roadmap to help guide their efforts in the …
Alexa Live Was Its Biggest Developer Launch, Ever Read More »
Amidst the hoopla and grand expectations for this year’s WWDC, there was big news in the smart home space, which deserves some focus. Held digitally, the one hour and fifty-minute event was a smoothly produced affair, with almost a documentary-style feel to it. The absence of a live audience certainly did not reduce the impact …
Apple’s Smart Home Efforts Get A Much-Needed Boost At WWDC Read More »
Let’s be honest: the print business has been a tough one for the past several years. It was significantly impacted by the introduction of smartphones and mobile devices (like tablets), which rendered many of the old printing use cases—such as printing airline boarding passes, movie tickets, driving directions, etc.—obsolete. Big print companies began to virtually …
HP Launches Enhanced Education Effort And New “Family-Friendly” Printers Read More »
Even though millions of workers have been directed by their companies to work from home, it still shocks me that many of them are again not taking the proper precautions to protect their data. Some of this stems from the fact that many companies, at the onset of COVID-19, did not have substantial work from …
Want To Secure Your Work From Home Setup? Do The Opposite Of These Four Things Read More »
The smart home, in a broad sense, is one of the bigger technological developments of the past five years, providing much convenience for consumers and enhancing productivity. The smart home has experienced explosive growth, spurred in large part by the launch of Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant digital assistants and smart speakers in 2014 and …
With the entire world consumed by COVID-19 news the past few months, it would be entirely understandable if one overlooked essential announcements in the tech space. One of these announcements occurred in late April, when Plume, one of the industry’s rising stars in the intelligent WiFi space, announced a partnership with ADTRAN to improve and secure …
Plume’s Timely Partnership With ADTRAN Paves The Way For A Smart Home 2.0 World Read More »
Sonos, the Santa Barbara, CA-based audio equipment manufacturer, has existed for a while as a Switzerland-like entity, managing various third-party streaming services on its popular multi-room audio solutions. For years, the company’s smart speaker platform has allowed consumers to connect to hundreds of streaming services, ranging from the 800-pound gorillas like Spotify and Apple Music, …
Sonos Jumps Into The Radio Streaming Labyrinth With Its Own Service Read More »
Over the past thirty days, there has been a lot of talk in the media about how COVID-19 has affected technology trends—creating new ones, or altering or hastening those that were already in progress. On the usage model front, there have been two very notable movements: first, the “work from home” phenomenon, spurred by companies …
COVID-19 Accelerates The iPad’s Appeal As A Productivity Device Read More »
If you had told me on March 1st that by early April I’d be on indefinite lockdown in my San Jose home (along with the rest of the country) due to a pandemic, I would have laughed it off as a terrible plot idea for “The Twilight Zone.” Yet here we are. The impact of the …
Home Monitoring Innovation In The Age Of COVID-19 Read More »
Over the past few years, it’s been seemingly impossible to read the news without seeing a headline about a massive data breach, ransomware attack or some other type of security failure. Today, cybercrime could be considered the single greatest threat facing businesses in the modern world. The numbers are staggering. Cybersecurity Ventures forecasted in late 2018 that …
Most consumers define the phrase “smart home” in a relatively simplistic manner: the ability to remotely control appliances, lighting, security and/or electronic devices, generally via a smart app or digital voice assistant product. While this baseline definition is accurate, it doesn’t fully convey the potential of what is quickly becoming known as Smart Home 2.0—when …
Plume Boldly Illuminates The Path To Smart Home 2.0 Read More »
Now that madness of CES is behind us, and the Kansas City Chiefs have emerged victorious in the Super Bowl, it’s high time that I get back to the important work of shedding some light on several “under the radar” companies with disruptive products and technologies who have caught my eye. Because the list is …
Post CES Roundup: Interesting Smart Products And Companies To Keep An Eye On Read More »
Last week I attended CES 2020 in Las Vegas. The annual consumer electronics extravaganza provides an opportunity for companies both big and small to unveil their latest gadgets and solutions. You really can’t talk about consumer electronics these days without talking about Amazon, who took the space by storm over the past decade with its …
Amazon Expands Its Lead With Smart CE Devices At CES 2020 Read More »
At this week’s Consumer Electronics Show, Plume launched Motion Aware—an exciting new addition to its intelligent services platform for modern smart homes. For the past 24 months, the company has wisely positioned itself as a key enabler of Smart Home 2.0, an industry phrase that describes a new wireless era characterized by cloud-based, data-driven services and application …
Plume Asserts Its Smart Home 2.0 Aspirations With Motion Awareness Capability Read More »
2019 was indisputably a crazy year in technology, from the parade of social media company executives jousting with members of Congress, to the entry of big players like Apple and Disney into the streaming business, to the introduction of new smartphone designs with “foldable” displays. As I limber up and prepare to spend four days …
In my final column on great holiday tech gifts for 2019, I will focus on what I believe is the ultimate productivity, entertainment and cord-cutting solution for your home office. This approach may sound a bit contradictory as some consumers may view some of these solutions in a narrow and silo-oriented manner. That said, I …
In last week’s column, I highlighted some great tech gifts for the upcoming holiday season, ranging from a game-changing smart oven, stylish smartphone cases and an innovative “occupancy sensing” home sensor that can enable a whole host of home automation tasks. In this post, I will shed some visibility on another handful of new smart …
More Great Holiday Tech Gifts That Deserve Your Attention Read More »
Last week, Resideo Technologies announced several important smart home solutions and tools designed to augment the capabilities of its vast professional network, at a polished event at Austin’s Moody Theater for nearly a thousand industry professionals and company partners. CEO Mike Nefkens and Chief Innovative Officer Niccolo de Masi spent an hour walking the attendees through the company’s …
I know the holidays are approaching when my home office and living room begins to look a lot like a showroom at Best Buy. Many companies reach out to me this time of year with new smart tech products for the holiday selling season. With Christmas just around the corner, I plan to write several …
Last week, Apple made some significant noise in the market with the announcement of its new AirPods Pro, the successor to its hot-selling standard AirPods. Apple’s announcement of the new AirPods coincided with the long-awaited launch of its Apple TV+ streaming service, which was unveiled with some major Hollywood firepower earlier in the year. Here …
Apple Hits Home Runs With New AirPods Pro And Apple TV+ Service Read More »
