Recently, there have been reports that Sonos could be working on a new portable speaker system that will allow users to play music through WiFi and Bluetooth. Those speakers have yet to make their debut, but it seems that Bose could have beaten them to the punch as the company has taken the wraps off their aptly named “Portable Home Speaker”.
Amazon has launched all manner of hardware products over the past few years but a mobile home robot has not been one of them. There have been a few reports in the past about such a product being in development over at the company. A new report mentions that Amazon is still working on a wheeled home robot which would quite understandably feature its Alexa personal assistant as well.
Companies like Amazon and Google who have created smart devices like Alexa and Google Assistant speakers have long asserted that they do not listen in on your conversations, but what about keeping a record of them? While we can’t speak for Google, it seems that as far as Amazon is concerned, it turns out the company does.
Earlier this year at CES 2019, KitchenAid announced a couple of smart home gadgets. One of the devices announced was a smart display and the other was a smart oven called the SmartOven+. For those who are interested in the smart oven, you’ll be pleased to learn that the device is now available for purchase, if you’re willing to spend $3,199.
When the world was introduced to smart speakers with built-in digital assistants, there were some concerns about the technology, such as how much of what we say to it is recorded, and whether or not these devices are spying on us. However, it turns out that there might be another problem we didn’t quite anticipate.
Do you like buying products that come with Alexa built-in? Here’s another one for you. SGW Global, the company that makes Motorola-branded home phones for the global market, has today announced the first home telephone with Alexa built-in. It’s as easy to use Alexa on the new Motorola AX as it is on any other compatible smart home device.
There’s always something about devices that are always listening that doesn’t quite sit right with people who worry a lot about their data privacy. However, that has not prevented smart assistant-enabled devices from becoming very popular over the past couple of years. In a step that will be appreciated by many, Amazon is now allowing users to command Alexa to delete all of their voice recordings from that particular day.
Smart speaker devices like the Amazon Echo, Google Home, and Apple’s HomePod are always listening for their wake word. This prevents them from being used all the time and it also affords customers some semblance of privacy, where it is presumed that these devices are not listening to them until their wake words are spoken.
Amazon released the announcements feature for Alexa last year initially for Echo devices only. The feature allowed users to broadcast their voice to every Echo device in the house, basically turning them into an intercom system. Amazon has now announced that this feature is being rolled out to every Alexa-enabled device, it’s no longer limited to just the ones that are made by the company itself.
Purchased a latest LG smart TV this year? You will soon be able to access another smart assistant on it. The company has confirmed that its 2019 lineup of TVs will be updated with support for Amazon Alexa later this month. LG will be rolling out this update in North America first. Customers in Asia and Europe will have to wait a bit longer to get it.
Amazon is rolling out its Alexa Guard feature for Echo devices in the United States. This follows an invite-only preview of the feature which was launched a few months back. What Alexa Guard essentially does is listen for signs of potential danger in your home when you’re away. It can be enabled by simply telling the Echo device that you’re out and it will then start listening for signs of […]
At the moment, most of the major tech companies have their own digital voice assistants. Amazon has Alexa, Apple has Siri, Google has Google Assistant, Microsoft has Cortana, and Samsung has Bixby. Unsurprisingly, Facebook now wants in on the action and according to a report from CNBC, they have heard from their sources that the company is indeed developing its own voice assistant software.
The concept of a smart speaker is good, but in reality, there are some legitimate concerns that some have, such as whether or not companies are listening to you and recording what you tell your device. If you are one of those people with such concerns, then you might want to rethink whether or not it might be a good idea to keep a smart speaker in your home.