Google Assistant adds dedicated Purchases page

If you want to check on Purchases you’ve made through Google Assistant, you can now check that through a dedicated page on either the Assistant settings or through the More settings option on the Google Home app. This doesn’t mean all purchases made through Google will be logged here, though. As Android Police speculates, you would need to have made the purchases through Assistant for it to show up on this page. And if you do a lot of shopping with Assistant, you might find more use for this page.

Google Home now lets you set location-based reminders

The latest Google Home update will now let you tell it to set location-specific reminders. You can prompt it with things like “Hey Google, set a reminder to pick up more coffee at the grocery store.” If your location services are on, you’ll get a reminder once you arrive at the place you set, like the aforementioned grocery store. You can even be more specific and ask for Google Home to remind you of a specific store, like say a Starbucks, and it’ll alert you if it finds you in any Starbucks. This gives Assistant an advantage over Siri because you need to specify a specific location to get the reminder. This feature is available for both Android and iOS devices.

Source: Android Authority

Apple's HomePod speaker comes to US, UK, and Australia on Feb 9

After a delay to market late last year, Apple's heralded HomePod smart speaker is coming on February 9 with preorders happening this Friday. Unfortunately, HomePods is coming to three markets -the US, UK and Australia with other countries (possibly Canada) getting the devices in the spring.

HomePod is a new product category from Apple. It looks to be taking on Sonos in terms of MESH enabled Hi-Fi streaming speakers but also looks to compete with the Amazon Echo and Google Home smart speakers which have been available in Canada since last year. Seen as a delivery methof for Apple Music, Siri, HomeKit and other Apple ecosystems, the HomePod is expected to bring big sound in a compact package.

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You can now broadcast messages to your Google Home speakers using Assistant

Find yourself at the grocery and want to ask your family what else you forgot to buy or even just want to call everyone for dinner? Google just updated its Assistant service to let you broadcast messages to Google Home speakers connected to your account. It works not just by speaking through the speaker but also through Google Assistant on your phone. You don’t even have to be on the same Wi-Fi network for this feature to work. All you need to say is “Ok Google, Broadcast (it’s) time to wake up…” or something to that effect. You can also broadcast custom messages. Here’s a list of the automated ones from Google.

Unfortunately it isn’t like Echo’s intercom-like system yet, where it lets users converse through the speaker and the Alexa app. But who knows if Google wouldn’t integrate that soon enough.

Source: The Next Web