AT&T has launched its newest video service brand, called AT&T TV, and it could be the beginning of the end for AT&T’s DirecTV offering. From a report: That’s because AT&T TV is like DirectTV in many ways: It allows you to watch more than 100 live TV channels, but whereas DirecTV requires you to have a satellite dish, AT&T TV only…
Tag: smart home
Toyota Will Transform a 175-Acre Site In Japan Into a ‘Prototype City of the Future’
At CES on Monday, Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda said the Japanese auto giant will transform a 175-acre site of a former car factory into a “prototype city of the future” where it can test autonomous vehicles, innovative street design, smart home technology, robotics, and new mobility products on real people who would live there full-time. The Verge reports: The site, which…
Amazon Sees Alexa Devices More Than Double in Just One Year
It took Amazon four years to populate the world with 100 million Alexa-powered devices. It took the company just one more year to more than double that number. From a report: The e-commerce titan announced Monday that there are now “hundreds of millions of Alexa-enabled devices” in customers’ hands worldwide, a massive increase from the 100 million it announced last January….
Den Automation Raised Millions To ‘Reinvent’ the Light Switch. Now It’s Lights Out For Startup
Den Automation, the once-promising UK smart home startup that raised nearly $5.8 million via equity crowdfunding and boasted former Amstrad chief Bob Watkins as CEO, has agreed to go into liquidation, The Register reported Tuesday. From the report: Documents seen by this publication show Wilkin Chapman Business Solutions Limited has been appointed as liquidators, with Ian Michael Rose and Karen Tracey…
Amazon Brings Alexa To AWS IoT Core Devices
Amazon’s annual AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas — where the tech giant reliably announces a host of products heading to Amazon Web Services, its cloud platform — doesn’t kick off officially until next week. But that didn’t stop the tech giant from previewing a few of the highlights, the bulk of which relate to the internet of things (IoT). From…
Nvidia Revamps Shield Android TV Streamer, Introduces New $150 Model
Nvidia today introduced a revamped version of its Android TV streaming device, complete with a faster processor and a new remote control. From a report: In addition to a $200 Pro model, Nvidia is also introducing a new $150 version with a home theater-friendly form factor that is meant to cater to a mainstream audience interested in great picture quality and…
Privacy-Respecting Smart Home System Can Work Offline and Sends Fake Data
A publicly-funded group of designers, artists and privacy experts from Amsterdam have designed a smart home system prototype to “prove it’s technically possible to build a privacy respecting smart home while maintaining convenience.” Its controller uses an Arduino Nano to disconnect the system from the internet during times when it’s not in use. They’re building everything on Mozilla’s open smart home…
Both Apple and Amazon Are Quietly Building Networks That Know the Location of Everything
Wired reports on both Sidewalk, Amazon’s new low-bandwidth long-range wireless networking protocol, and Apple’s new position- and distance-measuring U1 chip (mentioned in a recent keynote). Apple’s U1 chip — which allows precise, indoor positional tracking via the latest iPhones and will power, at the very least, directional AirDrop file-sharing — popped up on screen but was never even mentioned. The interest-piquing…
Amazon Is Going To Kill Your Dash Button
Amazon said Thursday that it will turn off the capabilities of all its Dash buttons worldwide on August 31st. “The decision follows Amazon’s move in February to stop selling new buttons,” reports CNET. “At the time, the company let folks with existing Dash buttons continue to order stuff with them, but an Amazon spokesperson said usage “has significantly slowed” since then,…
Mozilla Debuts Implementation of WebThings Gateway Open Source Router Firmware
An anonymous reader shares a report: For the better part of two years, the folks at Mozilla have been diligently chipping away at Mozilla WebThings, an open implementation of the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web of Things standard for monitoring and controlling connected devices. In April, it gained a number of powerful logging, alarm, and networking features, and this week,…