Smart Home

According to a report, Intel is planning on closing down its New Devices Group. This particular division of the chip-making giant was involved in developing wearable projects. One of these projects was called “Superlight” but was better known to the outside world as the Vaunt smart glasses. It seems the state of the smart-glasses market prompted Intel’s withdrawal.

A report from Bloomberg has stated that Facebook is creating a chip-making team. Job listings have appeared on the social-networking site’s careers section that seem to point toward this eventuality. Other tech giants, such as Apple and Google, have already started producing their own processors. Facebook-produced chips could be used in hardware or for AI-improvement purposes.

A report from Bloomberg has stated that Apple has had to cut manufacturing orders with Inventec in regard to the HomePod. Apparently, the smart speaker has not been selling in huge numbers and Apple workers have commented that store inventories are simply piling up with the device. A number of factors are being accused for the HomePod's sluggish sales, including the relatively high price of US$349.

The CL200-series ultra-compact form-factor PCs measure only 3.26 x 4.56 x 1.33 inches and have a fanless case due to the 6 W TDP Intel Celeron N3350 dual-core/dual-thread SoC powering the systems. The entry-level CL200 comes with 1 GB LPDDR4 and 8 GB eMMC storage, while the advanced CL210 integrates 2 GB LPDDR4 and 32 GB eMMC storage.

This week Samsung was showcasing their 2018 Smart TV lineup including a new ambient mode that displays relevant information, models with local lighting zones to improve dark and light parts of a scene, specialised power and data cables, and Bixby integration.

Apparently, some Alexa-enabled devices have started laughing in a disturbing manner at their owners. There have been reports made of unrequested creepy chortles issuing from smart speakers and Amazon devices by a number of users, who cannot understand why their personal assistant has suddenly become so sinister. Amazon is currently working on a fix for this disquieting issue.

According to Reuters, Amazon has acquired the smart video doorbell maker Ring for more than US$ 1 billion. The current Ring doorbells can integrate with Amazon Alexa and it's likely that the company wants to expand in the home security market. This would be Amazon's second acquisition of smart doorbell companies after purchasing Blink last year.

Archos has presented Archos Hello, the company's first smart home device. Hello is a smart display with a built-in battery for optional portable use. The device runs on Android Oreo with Google Assistant and will come in two different sizes.

Facebook's upcoming smart speakers are expected to arrive in July, reveal insiders familiar with the matter. Sporting 15-inch touchscreen displays, they are also supposed to provide video chat and social features.

Google has announced that it intends to acquire the Internet of Things platform Xively in order to expand its own Cloud IoT Core infrastructure. Google will pay US$50 million for the takeover.

Google is planning on bringing its Google Assistant service to a large number of new countries and the voice assistant will also support multiple new languages in 2018. The company has announced this during a presentation at the Digital New Initiative Summit in Amsterdam.

Researchers at MIT managed to simplify and adapt the intricate algorithms required by large neural-nets in order to be ran on mobile devices and smart home appliances.

Samsung is looking to expand its Bixby voice assistant platform across all of its consumer products, including white good, by 2020. The move is aimed at increasing its IoT footprint as well as its AI efforts.

While the Redmi Note 5 is headed for India and expected to arrive on February 14, it looks like the Mi TV is going to be introduced locally on the same day.

There are rumors that Amazon is in the process of developing new artificial intelligence chips to be used in hardware that features the company's virtual assistant, Alexa. The chips could help reduce response times by utilizing speech recognition software.

In addition to the X900F series that Sony unveiled at CES 2018, this iconic Japanese brand also announced the X850F series. Both feature Google Assistant support and have been listed already on Amazon at prices that range between US$1,499 and US$3,999.

Google has announced that it is folding the Nest smart home products team into its rapidly expanding hardware division. The move will see the end of Nest-branded products in favor of Google's own "Made by Google" branding.

The new Xeon D-2100 processor architecture allows for up to 18 "Skylake-server" generation cores and was designed to provide lower-power processing to multiple enterprise applications, focusing on the needs of data centers and network operators.

Although it quickly infected a few thousand devices worldwide, the spread of the cryptocurrency mining malware ADB.Miner seems to be quite limited at this time. However, there is still time for this piece of code to become a serious global threat.

During the presentation of Sony's Q3 2017 financial ressults, they announced the resignation of their current President and CEO, Kazuo Hirai, to be replaced by Kenichiro Yoshida. Hirai's time at the top was defined by a return to profitability for Sony, and he will remain with Sony Corporation as Chairman.

In contrast to many other smart speakers, Apple's HomePod will not support streaming over regular Bluetooth. You'll need an iOS device to stream music as the speaker only supports Apple's proprietary AirPlay protocol.

Due to the lack of workers, Samsung decided to shut down one of its two manufacturing plants they have in Slovakia. However, this is pretty good news, since earlier reports claimed that the company was considering the possibility to shut down both of them.

The new PowerVR Series8XT GT8540 GPU uses Imagination Technologies' Furian architecture and provides an 80 percent fill rate gain over its predecessor. Even more, it can feed up to six 4K displays at 60 fps simultaneously.

Apple's wireless HomePod speaker is finally launching on February 9 for US$349 with pre-orders starting tomorrow in the US, UK, and Australia. The HomePod features an enhanced Siri experience, spatial awareness, and a wide soundstage.

Samsung plans to make one million washing machines in the recently opened Newberry, South Carolina factory. This new manufacturing plant should also create more than 1,000 jobs by 2020.

A new study shows that there is strong consumer interest in smart speakers. As many as one in six households in the US have purchased a smart speaker with sales peaking during the recent holiday period.

Next to the voice commands available via both Google Assistant and Alexa on multiple Whirlpool smart appliances, Amazon Prime subscribers also get to use the Amazon Virtual Dash Buttons feature with some of them.

Anker Innovations, who is perhaps best known for their line of portable power banks, has announced a mammoth power bank, an Alexa powered car kit, and the expected availability of the Nebula Capsule

Anker Innovations has announced the ZOLO Model Zero, a new home speaker with a unique design, and a release date for the upcoming ZOLO Liberty+ Earbuds.

If the idea of a smart speaker interested you, but the idea of not having a screen was of concern, then the Lenovo Smart Display is worth a look. It comes in 8-inch and 10-inch versions and allows both verbal and visual communication.

Armstrong Zoom Internet has sent notices to its users that copyright infringement can lead to speed throttling that not only affects file transfer but also the ability to remotely control connected devices such as smart thermostats and video monitoring services.

A fresh patent by Samsung describes a modular TV that features a curved display and a modular base that can be configured as needed, from a speaker and wireless charger all the way to an AiO PC.

We can expect three new audio products from LG at CES in the form of a 5.1.2 channel soundbar, an 1800-Watt party speaker, and a premium smart speaker powered by Google Assistant that likely sits between the Google Home and Google Home Max.

Xiaomi has announced a new smart speaker produced via their Yeelight subsidiary which will start shipping in early 2018. A dual AI system uses Xiaomi's AI technology inside China and Amazon Alexa worldwide.

Although the ThinQ name has been used by LG for a few products already, all devices and services of the South Korean-based multinational giant that feature artificial intelligence will be placed under this banner starting in 2018.

Next to Android 8.1 Oreo, Google intros the Go edition, which is a variant of its mobile operating system that comes with a lighter set of Google apps and has been optimized to work on devices with 512 MB to 1 GB of memory.

Unveiled back in June, the Apple HomePod smart speaker was expected to hit the market in December. Unfortunately, Apple has confirmed that this Siri-powered accessory will start shipping in early 2018.

Xiaomi has chosen Spain as the first country outside of China where they have a full business presence, due to the large and active fan-base there. Answers given during the Q&A session suggested that this new presence within Europe would simplify the importing of Xiaomi products to the rest of the European Union.

Motorola and Lenovo have announced the new 'Smart Speaker with Amazon Alexa' Moto Mod, which adds additional microphones, speakers, and a battery in addition to having Alexa always listening.

Amazon has released their Amazon Key service which uses an Amazon produced smart camera, a smart lock from Yale or Kwikset, and the Amazon Cloud to allow delivery drivers to unlock your front door and leave your parcel inside.

Advertised as a communication robot, the new Sony Xperia Hello! is more than just another Amazon Echo wannabe. It can be used to make Skype or Line video calls, runs Android Nougat, and features a Qualcomm Snapdragon 650 processor.

The Samsung Connect Tag is a 0.06-pound IoT accessory with GPS, Bluetooth, and WiFi connectivity, as well as eSIM support. It runs Tizen IoT and will be on display at the Samsung Developer Conference that takes place in San Francisco later this week.

Google Clips is a small wearable action camera that automatically takes pictures of what it judges to be special moments. It learns who the important people in your life are via machine learning, and it may pose a serious privacy concern.

Google is spicing up their Home line of smart home management devices with Home Mini and Home Max. Mini is a smaller version of home, while Max is a massive smart speaker with dual subwoofers.

It doesn't look like Google will have much left to unveil at its October 4 launch event. In addition to all the Pixel 2 leaks, more details have spilled out about the new Pixelbook and the Google Home Mini intelligent speaker.

Intel's self-learning Loihi processor is built using the 14 nm manufacturing process and integrates 130,000 artificial neurons that can develop up to 130 million synapses. The chip can perform training and inference tasks, so it adapts in real time to environmental variables. Loihi could power self-driving cars in a few years, but it could also help improve education, facial recognition, manufacturing, emergency services and smart cities.

The PowerVR Series9XE GPUs are designed for entry-level mobile devices and cost-effective products, while the more advance Series9XM chips are aimed at mid-range smartphones/tablets, premium gaming set-top boxes and infotainment systems. Imagination's first NNA chip offers similar features to Apple's A11 Bionic and Huawei's Kirin 970 SoCs, but in a more energy-eficient envelope.