Smart, Natural, Google Home

Let the Games Begin!

The last two weeks have seen some announcements in the home automation voice assistant space.  The big news is that Google bowed their 'Google Home' product, an answer to Amazon's Echo.  Apple also is rumored to be working on a home version of Siri with maybe a camera.  And, just for kicks, Amazon released an in-browser version of Alexa more to explore the concept than anything really earth shattering.

For the sake of brevity (a first for me), I'm going to ignore Apple's home assistant for now.  They haven't made any official announcements and the camera thing... well, even the rumors are a little unsure how real that is.  It would be nice for context on who is issuing commands so that I can over ride the MSD's requests, but the privacy issues may be too much for most of us to bear.  Enough on that.  On to Google Home.

Moby Schmoid

Book Review Time

I want to depart from the basic tech commentary for a week and discuss a different aspect of technology and that's art of making a living in the tech space.

I was recently sent this NYT review by my mother (thanks, Mom.  I think).  From that, I bought Disrupted and read it over the course of a month.  It should not have taken me that long because it is not a long book or a difficult read, but I had to put it down a few times.  I'm not really going to review the book as a piece of literature (or not much), but I do want to talk about how HARD IT HIT ME.

Applied Appliances

Big and Manual

Those big home appliances: the washer, the dryer, the refrigerator, the range and the dishwasher.  They seem such natural devices to connect to a home network and then out to the internet.  After all, they are big and stationary and plugged in and perform tasks that take significant time.  Would it not be great if, when connected, they did... what?

And that's the challenge: the use case.  There is not one that is truly compelling for any of these.  The manual nature of the tasks that these appliances help perform force us to be present at them, using them, monitoring them.  There is no robotic arm that will move the laundry from the washer to the drier and then fold your clothes and put them away for you.  The dishes still need to be loaded and then unloaded.  The same with the food in the refrigerator.  All of these things require us to be there and be doing.  The result is that it is just as easy (easier?) to press the buttons on the appliance as it is to reach into a pocket, open an app, wait for it to load and then do exactly. the. same. thing.

Wearable Reality

One Too Many Hands

This week, instead of bagging on the state of home automation technology, I thought I'd step out into the realm of speculation.  Specifically, the future intersection of wearables and augmented reality.

That these two technologies, one emerged and the other emerging, have anything in common may seem either really obvious or not.  On the one hand, augmented reality will require a headset or glasses or contacts or something worn over the eyes (at least in the near future).  And that something will need to be connected, defining it as a 'wearable'.

On the other hand, the end goal of augmented reality is to create a seamless bridge between actual reality and the augmentations.  The headset/glasses/contacts need to disappear from the user's perceptions as much as possible allowing them to get lost in the experience.  The augmented reality that people at Microsoft and elsewhere are talking about is that experience, not the hardware.  Think of it like a Hollywood movie: we are excited for the story, not the projector.  The same holds true with AR: end users need to be focusing on the new capabilities and not how they are created (unless the creation tool limits those capabilities).

But what I really want to discuss is a third way (hand?) of looking at AR which may make it the ultimate wearable.  If we are using AR to define our reality and to share this redefinition with others who are also augmenting theirs, why not define our clothing, our look, our style through AR?

Walking the Open Path

Not an Apology

The a couple of weeks ago I wrote a post bagging on SmartThings.  While I stand by what I wrote there, I want to clear up any misconceptions that I might have created.

I am a SmartThings fan.  It is as a fan that I feel compelled to point out issues when I see them in the hopes that I can remain a fan.  Stability issues and developer complaints are not fun and no one on any side of the community (corporate, developer, end-user) wants them.  On the other hand, these issues are the result of one of the core reasons that I am a fan of SmartThings: openness.