Category: Smart Home
-
✴︎
The Echo Show arrived this week. Like many, I was excited to put the latest addition to the Echo lineup through its paces. Welcome to my one day review. Why write a review after using a product one day? Doesn’t one need to spend weeks – maybe even months – with a product like the Echo Show to really…
-
Back in the year 2000, the world’s first Internet-connected refrigerator was introduced. Made by LG, the Digital DIOS came with a webcam, an Ethernet port and perhaps most importantly, an LCD touchscreen. The fridge was one of the first examples of an appliance with a digital screen created specifically for the consumer kitchen, but with a $20 thousand…
-
Ever since the first credit-card sized model was released in 2012, the Raspberry Pi line of sub-$100 Linux devices has defied all expectations. Its owners have chained the devices together to construct powerful supercomputers and used single devices to drive home automation and security systems. The Raspberry Pi is also a great way to inexpensively…
-
Will the smart kitchen of the future be stocked with arrays of distributed sensors or could a single suite of sensors, localized on a credit-card sized housing, plug into an outlet to imbue the kitchen with all the intelligence it needs? According to Carnegie Mellon researchers in the Future Interfaces Group, the latter concept is…
-
Entrepreneurs behind the recent raft of smart indoor gardens are following the digital commerce wisdom of those who understand the value of subscription-based businesses. The old, “buy the camera for cheap and we will sell you lots of film” concept has been successful for companies such as Keurig and Nespresso in maintaining multiple revenue streams.…
-
✴︎
Each week I look at the biggest story in smart home and give context to what’s happening in the connected home around the web. This was the most important week for HomeKit since Apple announced it in June 2014. That’s because, on Monday the company announced a host of critical updates to their smart home…
-
✴︎
After months of rumors, Apple finally introduced a wireless streaming speaker called HomePod this week, their first new hardware product since the Apple Watch debuted in 2015. The Siri-enabled wireless speaker also doubles as a HomeKit powered smart home hub, giving Apple a new fixed HomeKit control point beyond Apple TV. The HomePod will ship in…
-
✴︎
Are you ready for WWDC? Apple’s big developer conference is just three days away, and so it’s time to make some predictions. I get together with my old friend Adam Justice from Connectsense to discuss what we can expect this coming Monday from Apple on the smart home front. Topics discussed include: We speculate whether Apple will…
-
✴︎
One of the great mysteries of the smart home world over the past few years has been the relative quiet of Nest, the one-time connected home star that burst onto the scene with the launch of its impressive Nest Learning Thermostat and, two years later, a smoke and carbon monoxide detector by the name of…
-
✴︎
Last night Andy Rubin got on stage with Walt Mossberg at the Code Conference to discuss his new company. The two spent a good chunk of the conversation talking about the Essential Phone, but when they finally got to the Essential Home, they didn’t disappoint. I wrote yesterday about what we already knew about the…
-
✴︎
Anyone who’s followed tech over the past decade knows what a huge role Andy Rubin has played in mobile computing. As one of the principals behind the Sidekick mobile device, co-creator of the Android operating system and the architect of Google’s mobile strategy, it’s not an exaggeration to say Rubin is one of a handful of people…
-
As everyone from Microsoft to Apple rolls out first-generation voice assistants for the home, the reigning voice control champ Amazon has turned its attention to a new area within the smart home AI universe: computer vision. For evidence of this focus, one needs to look no further than two new products introduced by Amazon in the past month.…
Get the spoon in your inbox.
By subscribing you agree to our Privacy Policy and provide consent to receive updates from our company.
Site by House of Giants
© 2026 All Rights Reserved