Review: Philips Hue Smart Lighting System

Philips Hue turns the lightbulb completely on its head and manages to bring such a vast range of possibility in terms of lighting homes, offices, commercial spaces and any place that's in need of smart illumination.

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

One of the most impressive implementations of smart appliances or IoT (Internet of Things) has been by Philips, whose Hue line of smart lightbulbs, bridges, and switches, has all but revolutionized one of the oldest and most immutable devices and made it into a connected and smart appliance.

Lightbulbs are the oldest electrical devices. They're also the dumbest. You buy the lightbulb in the wattage you need, screw it into the socket and let it work until it dies, and then gets replaced. The cycle is endless.

If you want coloured lightbulbs, you buy them in the colours you need. Each lightbulb is one colour, forever. Not anymore. Read on.

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Google Home brings the fight to Amazon Alexa

Google Home is taking the fight to Amazon Alexa with a slew of new features including its own calling feature (as we reported earlier). What’s more, Google Home now also gets access to the free tier service of Spotify and support for SoundCloud and Deezer, among other music and radio services. The smart speaker now also supports HBO Now, Crackle, and Hulu. Google also adds Bluetooth connectivity from any compatible device, including the iPhone.

Aside from these, one of the new big features is what the company calls Proactive Assistance. Google Home will identify important information you might want to know and as the name suggests, it will light up on its own to let you know that it has something to tell you. An example shown at Google I/O demo was that it’ll alert you if you need to leave a bit earlier because of traffic in your area. Google promises to roll out these features slowly and will add more capabilities over time.

Source: BGR

Google Home will be able to make calls to US and Canada

Google Home has speakers, it has a microphone and it is connected to the Internet and has all your gMail info. Soon, it will be able to take all of these capabilities and put them to good use by taking calls. You will soon be able to make voice calls to anyone in the US or Canada. It's not clear if this is a regional feature or if Canadian Google Home devices will be able to use the feature. 

Source: Google

Mercedes-Benz vehicles get Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa support

Those in the US that have a 2016 or 2017 Mercedes-Benz are getting new functionalities for its car. Mercedes-Benz is bringing support for Google Assistant via Google Home speaker and Amazon Alexa via Amazon Echo line of speakers. As the video demo shows above, you can have these smart assistants do things such as start the car, turn off any appliances left on when you leave the house, and help with navigation. The feature also brings the ability to remotely lock the car.

Aside from having the smart speakers at home, you’ll need to have an active “Mercedes me” account as well as an active Mbrace subscription that costs around US$280 per year. According to the car maker, it plans to bring Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa support to Europe later this year.

Source: Android Authority