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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

voice control

TinyChef Buys Zelish, Adds App and Shoppable Recipe Capability To Voice Cooking Platform

Last month, voice cooking platform startup TinyChef (formerly known as KloveChef) acquired Zelish, a meal-planning app that was part of the BSH/Techstars Future Home Accelerator.

The deal, the terms of which were not disclosed, gives TinyChef an app and shoppable recipes to go with their voice-based cooking platform. TinyChef also said they are in the process of raising a $750,000 Series A round.

I asked TinyChef CEO Bahubali Shete to tell us more about the reasoning behind the deal and give us an update on the combined business. You can see our interview below:

Can you tell us why you felt like acquiring a shoppable recipe startup made sense for you?

Zelish isn’t just a shoppable recipe platform. Yes, this is one of their offerings, but their primary offering is to help people plan, shop and cook. Shop Recipes is a mere subset of the core offering that was essential as people were locked up at home and wanted to replicate exotic chef-made dishes, which also helped them bring in spreading awareness & getting a good chunk of revenue.

We conducted thorough research studies in North America of both smart speaker users and non-users. It was evident that people would continue to use their smartphones as personal device and smart speakers would be more like a family devices.

We recognized that some parts of the kitchen journey like discovery, planning and shopping, were easier to do on a handheld smart device.

In summary, while consumers like handsfree cooking with voice assistants, they still want to use smartphones; hence having a companion app that gives the freedom of choosing the device at different parts of the journey is critical to winning the consumers. Zelish had built the entire journey and it made a lot of sense to get on onboard a product that has been tried, tested and much loved by both users and tech editors. Secondly, a shoppable recipe platform with a web plugin is a perfect way to tie up with food influencers with recipe websites/Youtube channels.

How do you see incorporating Zelish’s shoppable recipe and other technology into the TinyChef voice-guided cooking platform/consumer experience?

We feel that Zelish’s offerings can be integrated with ours pretty seamlessly. We are enhancing Zelish’s app experience by empowering users to pick a dish they want to cook on the app and send it to their smart speakers for a hands-free cook-along experience.

The other offering by Zelish is shoppable recipes. Tinychef has a complimentary feature that allowed users to add ingredients to the shopping list. This is a precursor of the shoppable recipes feature. We are now working to integrate Zelish’s shoppable recipes feature into the voice platform. 

Can you give an update on current users and other metrics for TinyChef?

TinyChef has 1.4 million unique users on the platform and 120 thousand monthly active users. There are roughly 70,000 meals cooked per month using our cook-along experience. Traffic is currently heavily weighted from India, with approximately 80% coming from India and 20% from North America. The size of our recipe repository is 200,000 with 20,000 of those being actively used by our our users.

How has TinyChef grown in terms of usage? How has the company grown in the past year in terms of employees?

Tinychef’s user base has doubled in the last 8 months. Our users are using hands-free cooking mode way more than ever witnessed before. We have done some pilots with Amazon for voice shopping in India with great success.  

We have increased from 9 members to 15 employees over the past year.

Do you have any stats on Zelish?

Zelish has had approximately 130,000 overall downloads. 40% of the downloads are monthly active users.

How did you fund the acquisition? Can you give deal amount?

While we won’t be able to disclose the finer details of the acquisition, we are in the process of raising some additional funds.

We have been able to expedite a couple of our tech offerings by joining hands with Zelish. This acquisition expedited our development plans by almost a year so now we are doubling down to constantly adding more features to both our app & the skill. We now are looking to add more features & fueling our user growth plans. The same would also be supported by user growth plans both in North America and India. The funds would be our fuel to this hockey stick growth in both continents.

How many employees are coming over to TinyChef?

6 employees of Zelish will be joining the TinyChef team.

Sensory Unveils New Voice Assistant for Kitchen Appliances that Processes Commands at the Edge

Sensory, a company that creates artificial intelligence for edge computing, announced today the release of a specialized version of its TrulyNatural speech recognition platform for home appliances.

The technology can be used by appliance manufacturers to add voice control functionality to their devices. According to Sensory’s press announcement, the company’s speech processing is all done on the edge, meaning on the device itself, instead of in the cloud. In addition to not requiring the addition of a WiFi component, Sensory says this edge processing means its technology “enables a safe, secure, consistent, reliable and easy to implement experience for the end-user, free of requiring any extra apps or WIFI to be setup or operational.”

You can see Sensory’s technology in action in a microwave in the company’s promotional video.

Sensory's TrulyNatural

This makes Sensory’s voice recognition different from the Amazon voice controlled smart oven, which requires a paired Echo device in order to execute voice commands.

Additionally, Sensory says it’s edge-based approach means that appliances using its voice recognition technology are more secure and private because commands do not leave the device, nor are they ever stored. Privacy became a bigger concern for voice assistants this year, as we learned that both Amazon and Google have actual human contractors listening in on some of our conversations with these devices to better train their respective AIs. So the idea of having a “smart” device that doesn’t collect user data could be a key differentiator and selling point in the appliance market.

Sensory’s technology will be on display in the Midea microwave at the upcoming CES. TrulyNatural currently supports U.S. English, with more languages coming in the next year.

Drop Wades Into Kitchen Appliance Voice Control with Siri Integration

Kitchen tech company, Drop, announced today that it will be launching its first foray into voice control of kitchen appliances via its new Siri integration.

Voice control is a particularly interesting interface in the kitchen, where sticky fingers and loads of wet ingredients aren’t great for touching devices like iPads and smart screens. Being able to “talk” to your oven or your sink while knead-deep in dough, promises to make cooking more efficient.

To that end, Drop, which up to now has offered guided cooking recipes and remote control of select appliances via phones and tablets, has started the process of adding voice control. Interestingly, the first voice integration isn’t with the omnipresent Alexa, or even Google Assistant, it’s with Apple’s Siri. A Drop corporate blog post explained the decision, saying that the company had previously worked with and had good experiences with Apple and that Siri’s voice command recognition was superior to either Google or Alexa’s.

The blog post also explained that user and data privacy was a priority for Drop, with the company even invoking GDPR:

Also, unusually among big tech companies, Apple has maintained a firm standpoint on user privacy. Whereas assessing and analyzing user data from the cloud allows other companies (most notably Google and Facebook) to improve their AI capabilities, it does so at the expense of user privacy. With Apple, all processing of Siri shortcuts is implemented directly on the device, rather than by sending sound-bytes from our homes out to the cloud.

Security is something which has been, and will always be, of utmost importance to us at Drop. An example of this was achieving GDPR compliancy well ahead of schedule, going to great lengths to restrict data collection and access internally. We also have a rigid approach to building infrastructure and implementing and enforcing security measures.

In addition to rolling out on just one platform, at first Drop’s voice control will only make you coffee, and that coffee has to be made with Bosch Coffee Machines equipped with Home Connect technology. As you can see from the video below, once set up, you can just have to say “Hey Siri, make me an espresso” and it automatically fires up the Bosch coffee maker. Drop said it will be adding voice controls to more recipes that will work with more appliances.

Drop Test Lab: Making an espresso with Drop Recipes and the Bosch Coffee Machine

While it probably won’t go mainstream this year, voice control is becoming more central to the kitchen experience. GE Appliances and Electrolux expanded their Google Assistant capabilities last summer, LG’s Thinq appliances work with both Alexa and Google Assistant, Drop rival, Innit is working with Google, and Amazon built its own Alexa-powered microwave. Drop’s adoption of Siri is a nice feather in the cap for Apple’s assistant, and further evidence that voice control will soon become ubiquitous in our appliances and apps and throughout our homes.

Weekly Spoon: Kitchen Projection Interfaces, Amazon Drone Patent & Innit Nabs Arçelik

This is the post version of our weekly newsletter. If you’d like to get the weekly Spoon in your inbox, you can subscribe here.

If you go to lots of trade shows like me, you know it takes time for innovation to make its way from the show floor into our living rooms.

We’ve all seen this with technologies like virtual reality and 3D food printing; only after years of development and iteration cycles do we get to the point where a product is ready for prime time.

And then there are technologies like projection interfaces that – up until now at least – seem like they’re stuck in development stasis. The idea of a projectable, anywhere surface interface has been discussed for close to a decade in the research and academic community and started showing up on trade show floors about five years ago. Despite this, the concept never seemed to go beyond an occasional product demo.

So last year I started to wonder why exactly the technology hadn’t reached consumers yet. After all, with the likes of Whirlpool, IKEA, and Bosch showing off jaw-dropping demos, it only made sense this technology would find its way to market at some point.

While there’s no clear answer, I narrowed it down to a couple of factors. First, the reality is the technology still needed some refinement to make it both consumer-ready and affordable. Second, appliance vendors often wait for big-tech to take the first leap, and from what I could tell none of the big-tech 5 (Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon) seemed particularly active with projection interfaces.

But now, it looks like one big company is committing to bringing a projection interface to market. BSH Appliances showed off a new product concept called PAI at IFA in Berlin this past week. PAI is a movable projector interface that is designed to go on a countertop in a kitchen.

I’m excited that BSH looks to be serious about bringing PAI to market. While some see voice as the dominant user interface of the future, abysmal usage rates of Alexa skills for commerce have shown us that voice in itself isn’t enough.  Consumers are visual, and most things we do in the kitchen are multimodal. Because of this, I believe the dynamic projection interface could a vibrant area in UI development over the next decade.

BSH Appliances wasn’t the only one to make news at IFA last week. Sharp showed up in Berlin with a fridge that featured a built-in vacuum sealer, prompting Chris Albrecht to wonder what exactly types of features he would want in his next fridge.

Smart kitchen platform startup Innit had a strong showing at IFA, popping up in a number appliance OEM booths, including that of a new partner in Arçelik.  The Turkish appliance conglomerate behind the Beko and Grundig brands showed off an Innit integration to power guided cooking as part of its HomeWhiz smart home platform.

It wasn’t all IFA this week. This week the Spoon scooped yet another Amazon patent in which the Seattle tech giant shows an innovative new method for delivery drones to generate power while in transit by harnessing both wind and kinetic energy.
After the news of a $30 million funding round for Farmer’s Fridge, I’m looking forward to a panel at Smart Kitchen Summit on the future of lunch. We’ll be discussing how new technologies, business models and delivery formats are all colliding to change what we eat every day, including at work.  You can read Chris’s piece on Farmer’s Fridge, a startup we’ve been covering for the past year.

Speaking of Smart Kitchen Summit, we’re less than five weeks away from our flagship show exploring the future of food and cooking. We have an amazing program planned, and not only will we have executives from big appliance brands like Whirlpool, GE and more, but we’ll also have startups from the smart kitchen, food robotics, restaurant tech, retail and more to discuss and showcase how each of these industries are changing to disrupt the consumer meal journey.  Make sure to get your tickets now and use the discount code NEWSLETTER (You can also use this link which has the code already applied).

That’s it for now. Have a great rest of the week.

Mike

P.S. Make sure to tune into this weekend’s episode of the Smart Kitchen Show podcast, where I have a great conversation with the CEO of the startup behind what is arguably the most successful consumer food robot ever made. You won’t want to miss it!

In the 09/06/2018 edition:

Ordermark Raises $9.5 Million for its Online Order Management Tools

By Chris Albrecht on Sep 06, 2018 10:23 am
Ordermark, a startup that helps restaurants unify and organize online orders, today announced that it has closed a $9.5 million Series A led by Nosara Capital. This brings the total amount raised by the company to $12.6 million.

Nima Peanut Sensor Now Available, Gluten Sensor Selling at Select CVS Stores

By Chris Albrecht on Sep 06, 2018 06:00 am
It’s back-to-school time, which means my son is once again eating lunches in a cafeteria. I doubt his school is unique, but it actually has separate tables for kids who bring in peanut butter sandwiches.

With its own Grocery Delivery Service, Walmart Grabs More Data

By Chris Albrecht on Sep 05, 2018 04:00 pm
Walmart is leaving no stone unturned when it comes to getting you your groceries. As of today, that includes testing out its own delivery service (h/t Food Dive). The retailing giant announced a pilot program for its new last-mile delivery service, dubbed Spark Delivery, which will deliver groceries directly to customers’ front door.

For Goodr’s Jasmine Crowe, Blockchain Is a Key Piece to the Food Waste Puzzle

By Catherine Lamb on Sep 05, 2018 02:00 pm
Food waste is generating quite a lot of interest as of late; but one buzzword that might give “food waste” a run for its money is blockchain.

Innit Adds Arçelik To Growing List of Appliance Partners

By Michael Wolf on Sep 05, 2018 12:00 pm
The smart kitchen was everywhere this year at IFA, Europe’s big appliance and tech expo, and one company that seemed to be on everyone’s dance card was Innit.

Farmer’s Fridge Stocks up with $30M

By Chris Albrecht on Sep 05, 2018 10:54 am
Farmer’s Fridge, the company which makes vending machines that dispense healthy meals such as salads and protein bowls, today announced that it has raised a new $30 million round of funding led by Innovation Endeavors. This brings the total amount raised by the company to $40 million.

Seltzer? Sous Vide? Smart Apps? What Cool Things do you Want in a Fridge?

By Chris Albrecht on Sep 05, 2018 07:33 am
For those old enough to remember, there is an episode from season two of The Simpsons where Homer designs a car for the average American. The result, as you can imagine was a hodge-podge monstrosity that featured bubble domes, three horns, shag carpeting and cost $82,000.

Bear Flag Robotics Raises $3.5 Million for Autonomous Tractor Tech

By Chris Albrecht on Sep 04, 2018 10:00 am
The common refrain from robotics companies is that they help with manual, repetitive tasks. And when you run a farm, there are plenty of manual, repetitive tasks, and Bear Flag Robotics raised $3.5 million seed funding right before the holiday weekend to help agricultural workers out with them.

Amazon Patent Points to In-Flight Recharging For Delivery Drones

By Michael Wolf on Sep 04, 2018 06:54 am
Ever since Jeff Bezos teased the idea of drone deliveries on 60 Minutes in 2013, the tech world has been abuzz with the idea. At the time Bezos said that the reality of drone deliveries wasn’t there yet, but he thought it just might be in 4-5 years.

FoodPlus Sells Surplus Food (in Slovenia) so it Doesn’t go to Waste

By Catherine Lamb on Sep 04, 2018 06:00 am
Based in Slovenia, FoodPlus began in 2015 when co-founder Dalibor Matijevic began searching for a way to cut down on food waste by redistributing surplus food. He developed a B2B platform for companies to buy and sell extra food at a super low cost — creating a new revenue stream and keeping food out of landfills.

Delta Faucet Will Soon Let You Pour Water With Your Voice (Exclusive)

Want to pour yourself a glass of water with your voice? It looks like you soon can with a Delta Faucet.

The Spoon recently discovered a new Alexa skill from Delta Faucet company that will allow you to do such things are pour a glass of water or fill your coffee machine simply by asking Alexa. The skill looks like it will work with forthcoming voice-enabled Delta Faucet product or products enabled by what the faucet maker is calling its “voice module” and the Delta voice web app.

The only problem is if you want to buy the Delta voice module or register for your Delta voice account with the web app, neither of those exist today. In fact, the only clue to Delta’s voice-enabled faucet – at least as of now – is the Alexa skill called Delta. My guess is the company is preparing to launch a new voice-enabled line of faucets in a few weeks at CES or the upcoming Kitchen and Bath Show.

There’s also a good chance these faucets will connect to Wi-Fi. As far as I can tell, Delta doesn’t seem to have any Wi-Fi enabled faucets on the market today (but they do have a Wi-Fi leak detector), so it’s quite possible the mysterious ‘voice module’ is also a ‘Wi-Fi module’.

So far the Delta Alexa skill has one review, which again is strange because Delta hasn’t yet released its voice module or voice web app. Chances are the review, which calls the Delta skill “Easy Peasy”, was written by a Delta employee familiar with the initiative.

I don’t know about you, but I think using my voice to pour water is one of the cooler and more practical uses for Alexa in the home. I could imagine scenarios where my hands are full or simply messy, and using my voice to turn the water on or off with my voice just makes sense. I guess I’ll just have to wait until Delta actually releases the product that works with the skill before I get my hands on one.

Samsung Adds Bixby AI To Family Hub Fridges

When Samsung debuted Bixby, its AI-enabled home assistant on Galaxy S8 phones, we wondered how well it would do as an Amazon Echo or Google Home competitor. After all, carrying your phone from room to room to control your smart home with voice makes about as much sense as….carrying your phone room to room to control your smart home with an app.

But it didn’t take Samsung long to take Bixby out of the phone and put it in some of its existing smart appliances – namely, the mother of all smart appliances, the Samsung Family Hub 2.0.

The Family Hub debuted at CES several years ago, with a giant touchscreen interface on the front and all kinds of interesting kitchen functions, including grocery ordering and to-do lists for family members. But Samsung clearly had plans to use the technology they were building inside these fridges as more than just glorified tablets.

On Sunday, Samsung announced it will include Bixby’s AI functionality inside Family Hub fridges, allowing users to search for recipes and ask Bixby for news and weather – very similar to competitive AI-powered speakers. But the Family Hub also allows for food ordering through partners such as Nomiku (sous vide company making sous vide-ready meal kits) and Grubhub and with the native voice functions paired with the touchscreen, along with possible connectivity to Samsung’s other smart devices in the home, it makes for an interesting voice solution in the kitchen. Samsung recently invested in Nomiku as they launched their RFID meal kits and laid out clear plans to form a cohesive ecosystem in the kitchen.

According to Pulse News in Korea,

“Bixby’s deep learning will enable the fridge to control temperature automatically, call up recipes based on user’s eating habits or recommend favorite music.”

Samsung recently invested in Nomiku as they launched their RFID meal kits and laid out clear plans to form a cohesive ecosystem in the kitchen. From Mike’s piece on the investment and news, “Fetterman said Samsung plans integrate the Nomiku with their smart home platform, SmartThings….However, the consumer electronics giant has been fairly successful in their effort to integrate SmartThings with their various product lines in the home such as appliances and TVs. While Samsung had previously announced an integration of SmartThings with their own Wi-Fi ovens, Nomiku appears to be the first small precision cooking appliance integrated with the SmartThings smart home platform.”

Current Family Hub users can also get upgraded to include Bixby functionality inside their fridges through a software update – a nice feature for a pricey appliance that we’ve often wondered how appliance giants plan to support with new functionality coming out regularly.

The install of Bixby has just begun and the updates aren’t rolled out yet. But soon, the voice in the kitchen might be your fridge telling you what’s for dinner.

Microsoft Unveils Echo Competitor Powered By Cortana

Microsoft is not necessarily a leader in the smart home these days, trailing Samsung, Apple and Google in platforms and hardware offerings and instead focusing on other core offerings. But as the Amazon Echo and then Google Home voice assistants jumped onto the scene, the tech world speculated about whether Apple and Microsoft would put their respective AI voice assistants – Siri and Cortana – into physical devices, too.

Rumors abound that Apple is about to do just that – but they’ll be last to the table as Microsoft previewed its Cortana-powered wireless speaker on Monday. Ahead of their BUILD developer conference, which starts tomorrow, Microsoft showed off the Invoke, a speaker manufactured by Harman Kardon and enabled by the company’s digital voice assistant.

Invoke does what Google Home & Echo do for the most part – weather reports, news, music, reminders, timers, etc – and the details thus far are fairly underwhelming. The company reported Invoke will offer “deep integration with Microsoft’s suite of knowledge and productivity tools,” making it a potentially interesting tool for home offices or businesses as a scheduling tool. The device will also have integration with Skype, allowing users to make calls via the platform.  It will certainly sound better than the Echo with Harman Kardon audio engineering and design behind the speaker – and that feature alone might drive audiophiles to Invoke over the competition.

Microsoft’s blog does not detail how or if the device will allow for third-party developers to build additional features and functions – something both Echo and Google Home are capitalizing on to add use cases and turn the speakers into sous chefs, personal assistants and smart home controllers.

Harman Kardon’s press release announcing the speaker definitely positions the audio brand to offer a competitive device to other premium smart speakers like Sonos – with a high-powered AI engine inside. The speaker will have seven microphones and advanced ambient noise technology to help Cortana hear you even in loud environments – another area where HK’s contribution could give Invoke an edge over the Echo. Pricing wasn’t given yet but the product should be available via Microsoft stores in the fall.

With the BUILD conference starting tomorrow, we’ll be sure to share updates and details about Invoke and the features it might bring to the home and kitchen.

Ok Google, What’s For Dinner?

When Google Home first arrived on the scene, Mike and Ashley speculated on the Smart Kitchen Show about how it would stack up against Amazon Echo. Amazon’s big entrance into the smart home, Echo came with convenient functions like timers, grocery lists, playing on-demand streaming music and radio services and eventually included recipe skills. It was an ideal device to sit on your kitchen counter.

Google introduced its answer to Echo but at first lacked the functionality that Echo has grown to enjoy due to its open API and thousands of skills developed by third parties. One of those skill areas that’s seen growth is in food & beverage, especially recipes. But this week, Google partnered with big food content houses like the Food Network, New York Times and Bon Appetit to give Home users access to over 5,000 recipes that can be read step by step by the Google Assistant.

The interesting thing about Google Home’s announcement is the way Google is adding functionality to its device. Amazon’s Alexa relies on skills developed by other companies – in order to get access to Allrecipes content, for example, you have to enable that skill in your app before you can use it.

Google takes a different approach; if you have a specific recipe you want to look up, you can head to the Google Assistant app on your phone, pick it out and send it to Google Home to walk through. So a component of this feature still involves your phone – unless you want suggested recipes, and then you can just ask “Ok Google, let’s make spaghetti” and Google’s Assistant will suggest a recipe for you. That suggestion feature, enabled without any input on the part of the user, is fairly unique.

The process is a little more intuitive and baked into the platform than Alexa skills, which sometimes can be clunky depending on how the developer choose to integrate. Some skills require you to say “Alexa, ask (brand/company) to XYZ” which is an awkward way to speak and harder to remember.

Google also choose powerhouse brands to partner with for this integration – collectively, Food Network, NYT and Bon Appetit have amassed loads of food content through the years and probably have recipes for just about anything you’d want to cook. In fact, these and other publication and content houses are constantly thinking about how to leverage their digital warehouses of recipes and food knowledge and partnerships like these are easy ways to make money outside of traditional advertising.

According to Google, the feature will start rolling out in the coming days. We’ll finally be able to say – Ok Google, let’s eat.

Starbucks Announces In-Car Voice Ordering On Ford SYNC Via Amazon’s Alexa

Starbucks held its annual shareholders meeting yesterday, revealing its financial success 25 years after the Seattle-based coffee giant’s IPO. Starbucks spent time talking about its hiring plans in the future, new gluten free and vegan products and new tech and digital innovations, including voice ordering via Amazon’s Alexa in the car and voice mobile ordering.

The company announced back in January that it was creating a skill for Alexa and mobile voice or text ordering for the iPhone and Android apps. Today the voice and text ordering go live for the 100k+ customers who have the mobile app on their phones.

More interesting though is the partnership with Amazon and Ford to allow in-car ordering via Alexa. Amazon and Ford announced that Alexa would be integrated into Ford SYNC 3 technology at CES this year, allowing drivers to access the voice AI platform in any Ford vehicle with the upgraded smart tech.

Now, Amazon, Ford and Starbucks are working together to enable the Starbucks skill inside the SYNC 3 platform. A simple “Alexa, ask Starbucks to start my order” allows you to order coffee and have it ready when you arrive without ever picking up your smartphone. Using the mobile pay & order app, customers have to designate regular or favorite orders from which to select from and up to 10 local stores from where they’d like to pick-up. The SYNC 3 technology is inside most 2016 and newer model Ford vehicles.

As someone who struggled with trying to order her usual soy latte while leaving preschool dropoff (and just bought a Volkswagon), I am pretty envious.

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Turning Text Messages Into Machine Language For The Smart Home

There’s a new race in the smart home – it’s not about who will control your home but rather how. The introduction of voice assistant devices Amazon Echo and Google Home have definitely changed the conversation and the market for how we interact with the tech inside our homes. But if speaking commands to things in the house to turn them on or off or check their status seems unnatural, you could always text instead.

That’s the premise of Unified Inbox, a small company based Singapore that’s developed soon-to-be-patented software that delivers smart home control via text messenger. It’s easy to see the appeal of texting your home – it’s an easy and common way for humans to communicate with each other and it removes the awkwardness of barking out orders to an inanimate object.

The CEO of Unified Inbox, Toby Ruckert, makes the case to Reuters, saying “Think of it as a universal translator between the languages that machines speak … and us humans.” Though the company is small and privately funded, it has companies like Samsung, Bosch and IBM jumping on board to integrate functionality into their own devices. Using Unified Inbox’s platform, manufacturers can add a text assistant to their product, capitalizing on the ubiquity of smartphones in every home.

The API developed by Unified Inbox is called UnificationEngine or UE and works by taking text inputs to a messenger app and translates the human words into machine language. Described as an “IoT messenging platform,” UE was developed to bridge the language gap between people and the things around them.

Credit: Reuters

Text commands such as “turn off the lights,” “start the coffee machine at 6,” and “preheat the oven to 450” can be typed into over 20 different messenger apps along with Twitter and SMS to control a variety of home devices. From ovens and kettles, the platform can work with many appliances and Unified Inbox is testing more including garage door openers and toasters.

But why have “more than half of the world’s appliance makers” – according to Ruckert – signed up to partner with this small startup? Reuters reports that Ruckert and other tech leaders like Mark Zuckerberg see a huge future in text control – and think that big companies are worried about Amazon’s dominance.

“They’re worried the big tech companies’ one-appliance-controls-all approach will relegate them to commodity players, connecting to Alexa or another dominant platform, or being cast aside if Amazon moves into making its own household appliances.”

Check out the full story on Unified Inbox, their API and how machine learning that continues to change how we talk to our things.

Google Home Adds Shopping Feature And Partnerships With National Retailers

When Google launched the Google Home voice assistant speaker, they demonstrated their commitment to the smart home and the growing trend of voice control, a trend so far led by Amazon. Taking aim at the Echo market, Google launched Home with a big vision but not as many features as enthusiasts would have liked.

Still, 2017 is the year that “works with” Google Home becomes the new “Alexa skill” and no one is counting Google out of the game. The one area where Amazon previously had an inherent lead over Google, of course, was in its powerful commerce engine. Alexa makes it easy to order items from Amazon and, if you’re a Prime member, have them brought straight to your door in two days or less.

But news last week changed that. Google announced via a blog post that it has partnered with a number of big name retailers and added the ability to voice shop from them using Google Assistant. Retail Dive has the full story on Google’s new partnerships, with brands like Costco, Walgreens, Whole Foods, Bed, Bath & Beyond and even Petsmart, Google is clearly trying to cover its commerce bases with everything from food and grocery to household and pharmacy.

Google’s blog post on the announcement gives users a quick walk-through of how to get started. With simple commands like “Ok Google, how do I shop?” Google Assistant will walk users through the process. Or you can also just say “Ok Google, order paper towels” and presumably, it will. It’s less clear exactly who you’re getting paper towels from, though it’s likely you have to set up store preferences in your Google Home account. You also have to add a credit card on file to automatically charge upon ordering.

Credit: Google

The blog also says the service is free – for now. After April 30, it appears Google may have plans to create some type of Prime-esque membership for users to be able to take advantage of voice command shopping.

Google’s massive search and data engine give Google Home inherent advantages in the long run over competitive voice assistants like Amazon’s Echo. And with this new shopping feature, they’re looking to grab some of Amazon’s native territory as well.

ChefSteps Adds “Conversational Cooking” To Sous Vide With Echo Skill

We’ve talked a lot on The Spoon about the power of the Amazon Echo in the kitchen – as a virtual sous chef, a custom bartender, a unique component of guided cooking and just a helpful assistant (Alexa, set a timer for 5 minutes!) And the power of the Echo as a frictionless controller in the smart home is evident in the myriad of skills announced from virtually every top smart home manufacturer – lights, thermostats, even locks now have limited voice control functionality with Alexa.

So it’s no surprise when one of the big players in the smart kitchen space announces plans to deepen its Echo integration, beefing up Alexa’s power as an AI assistant. ChefSteps, the Seattle-based culinary startup discussed its Amazon Echo skill for Joule, a sous vide cooker and the company’s inaugural hardware device last week at the GeekWire conference.

We covered Joule’s launch extensively, detailing ChefSteps move to give back money to backers when initial demand far exceeded their expectations and production costs were lower than expected. As the emerging sous vide trend quickly grew thanks in no small part to Joule competitors like Anova and Sansaire, Joules began shipping to eager backers and the company began talking about voice control. In an initial post about Amazon Echo, ChefSteps explained,

“ask any chef who’s ever barked “Fire!” at her line while a packed house awaited their entrees: sometimes, a cook’s best tool is her voice. That’s where Alexa comes in.”

Initially, the ChefSteps Joule skill for Echo is limited to basic, albeit helpful, functionality. Users could ask Alexa to check the status of the temperature, or set the temperature in preparation for a particular recipe, or stop the device. But ChefSteps’ co-founder Chef Chris Young discussed plans to go much further with Echo, using a deeper well of knowledge to create a true AI helper for your sous vide cooking.

Dubbed “conversational cooking,” the new Echo skill will enable home chefs to get even more help, asking Alexa to “start cooking my steak medium rare.” Joule users can give Alexa basic information, like the size of the meat and the level of doneness they’d like and Alexa will set Joule to the correct temp and cook it for the amount of time needed to accommodate. Perhaps most interestingly, Alexa will act as a customized cookbook of sorts, remembering the instructions from past recipes and storing them for future use.

In the future, Young and his team expect even cooler Alexa features like contextual recipe and cooking instructions based on time constraints and in-app food purchasing. In other words – they are just getting started.