Tag Archives: amazon alexa

This minimalist wooden board offers a interior-friendly way to control your home with Alexa

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The last thing you probably expected is for a beautiful piece of wood to be your control dashboard for your smart home.

The Internet of Things has slowly but surely invaded our homes in the guise of smart lighting, dynamic photo frames, and, of course, smart speakers. While many of these are designed to look stylish and handsome, most of them carry an aesthetic that often clashes with minimalist rooms or decor. Smart speakers are perhaps the biggest culprits in this regard, but a Japanese company has found a solution that lets you put Alexa-powered smart speakers out of sight.

Designer: mui Lab

mui looks like an unassuming block of wood, but it’s actually just as talented as a smart speaker. Actually, it can do more than what most voice-only speakers can, like the Amazon Echo, because it has a touch panel on its front surface. Unlike a busy and overwhelming touch screen, however, the mui board presents visual feedback as monochromatic icons and text in a dot-matrix style that matches the board’s minimalist aesthetic.

More than just being a novel way to present a smart home hub, mui offers an equally unique approach to mixing nature and technology. Rather than the usual cold elements of a tablet, a phone, or even a smart speaker, the wooden board adds a warm and almost human touch to interact with devices and appliances. Its designers want to evoke joy and calm, feelings that should be associated with the home in the first place.

Despite its minimalist appearance, the mui is by no means minimal in features. In addition to its own mobile app, mui Lab is introducing a new “calm” interface that turns the board into a visual interface for connected Amazon Alexa speakers. That’s in addition to the original mui Platform’s compatibility with the new Matter smart home platform.




Inspired by Taoist philosophy, the mui board offers a refreshing spin on how we interact with our smart homes, basically by doing or showing almost nothing. It’s not going to appeal to people who prefer seeing everything in one go, but this design will definitely go well with rooms and furniture that try to hide the tech behind soothing organic materials.

The post This minimalist wooden board offers a interior-friendly way to control your home with Alexa first appeared on Yanko Design.

This cabinet on wheels can fetch you things like a loyal canine

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There’s finally a robot for the home that’s not just for sucking up dirt on the floor.

Robots are coming, whether we like it or not. They may not be the kind that’s negatively portrayed in movies, at least not yet, but few of them can be considered “friendly,” even in appearance. Today’s robots also seem to stand on two opposite ends of a spectrum, with sophisticated but nightmarish Spots on one end and simplistic but single-purpose Roombas on the other. Few other robots are designed for home use, but a company backed by Roomba maker iRobot and the Amazon Alexa Fund is aiming to change that in the simplest but most useful way possible.

Designer: Labrador Systems

At first glance, this robot looks nothing like the typical robots you see both in homes (on the floor) and in factories. When it isn’t active, it looks more like a tall shelf with an open box compartment. In fact, the faux wooden sides of that compartment, available in Light Maple and Warm Teak colors, seem to be designed to blend with your furniture and masquerade as a simple shelf.

It’s anything but simple, of course, and this shelf on wheels can move around your house on its own at your beck and call. You can tell it to bring you your medicine or the plates for setting the table, or you can tell it to accompany you to the laundry room while it carries the washing load for you. Appropriately, this robot is named the Labrador Retriever.

In some cases, this robot is powered by some of the same technologies that robot vacuum cleaners use to navigate your house. After learning the lay of the land, it uses 3D vision to drive itself to or away from you, avoiding obstacles along its path. It can be controlled manually, through an app, or by voice, specifically through Amazon Alexa. It also has some special tricks of its own, like sliding a specially-designed Labrador-branded tray of food or medicine onto its shelf without any human intervention.

Unlike robot vacuum cleaners, the Labrador Retriever and its smaller sibling, the Labrador Caddie, aren’t just designed to make life easier. In fact, they were primarily envisioned to empower those with physical difficulties or handicaps to be productive and live normal lives. Of course, that means that these robots need to have designs that won’t haunt your dreams, and thankfully, the Labrador Retriever is as inconspicuous as a modern minimalist cabinet, contrary to what its name might suggest.

The post This cabinet on wheels can fetch you things like a loyal canine first appeared on Yanko Design.

The 2022 Jeep Wagoneer will have Amazon Fire TV built in

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The 2022 Jeep Wagoneer and Grand Wagoneer will have plenty to keep passengers entertained during long trips. They'll be the first vehicles to have Amazon Fire TV built in to the infotainment system. Passengers will be able to watch movies and sho...

Amazon Fire TV adds more live channels, including IMDb TV and Plex

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Amazon has bolstered Fire TV's lineup of live TV services with a few more options. IMDb TV, XUMO and Amazon’s news app are available now and Plex's live TV service will be integrated into the Live features soon. All of those apps are free, ad...

Alexa Routines now work with Amazon Fire TV

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Alexa Routines now work with Amazon’s Fire TV devices. The feature allows you to carry out common actions on several smart devices simultaneously with a single custom Alexa command. For instance, you may already switch on your bedroom light and activ...

Amazon makes it easier to link smart home devices to Alexa

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Amazon is making it easier for you to connect devices to your Alexa ecosystem with its latest feature. When Device Discovery is enabled on your Alexa app, you can go to the More section then Add a Device. You’ll see products on your WiFi network that...

The TalkSocket lets you ditch Siri on your iPhone and talk directly to Alexa or Google Assistant

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It’s a pop-socket, but it’s also a voice-assistant. Meet the TalkSocket, easily one of the most consumer-centric, innovative surprises of the year 2020!

The TalkSocket looks exactly like a regular PopSocket-style phone-holder. It’s about the same size and shape, and it attaches to the back of your phone, allowing you to grip it better. However, it’s more than that… With a microphone on the inside, and a nifty Echo-inspired LED ring on the outside, the TalkSocket is actually a miniature smart-speaker that allows Alexa and Google Assistant (which for the most part exist within homes) to actually be with you in your pocket wherever you go. The socket connects to and communicates directly with the Alexa or Google app on your phone. Talk to it as you would talk to a smart speaker and it instantly responds, without needing you to tap buttons or even unlock your phone. More importantly though, it lets you override your phone’s existing voice AI for something you use everyday, so if you’re more used to talking to Alexa at home (and you have all the Alexa-enabled smart-home devices configured already), you can just override the iPhone’s Siri and communicate with your favorite voice AI instead, telling it to order toilet paper for you, or shut the garage door as you leave the house.

The partnership with PopSocket really makes the TalkSocket an interesting multipurpose device. For starters, it’s built to be compatible with any PopSocket base, allowing you to attach it or take it off your phone in a swift motion whenever you want. It functions like any phone-grip too, allowing you to grab onto your phone as you’re going for a run, or struggling to type out a message with a single hand as you sip coffee with the other. The PopSocket collaboration also has helped spawn multiple other accessories, like being able to snap your TalkSocket on a keychain-attachment, a mount for your car, or even a coffee-cup sleeve… in short, it gives you the ability to take Alexa out of your house and wherever you go, all while retaining the simple interaction of talking to your assistant, instead of unlocking your phone, downloading an app, opening it, and then asking Alexa to do your bidding.

Under the hood, the TalkSocket is just a really well-made device that cleverly taps into your phone to actually do the heavy-lifting. Two microphones in the TalkSocket allow it to capture voice commands, sending them directly to your phone, which then processes the input and gets Alexa to respond. The TalkSocket is just a gateway, providing you with a hands-free way to talk to Alexa or Google Assistant (with support for Cortana, Bixby, DuerOS and Mycroft coming real soon) through your iPhone in the simplest way, no matter where you are – in your car, on a walk, in a café, at work, or even in the bathroom where your Echo smart-speaker can’t hear you. The two microphones and the LED ring run on low power, while the TalkSocket communicates with the phone using BLE (low energy). This gives the socket nearly 5 days of working time on a full charge, and when it runs out of battery, just place it on a wireless charger and it’ll replenish itself! Pretty remarkable, isn’t it? Hey Siri, why don’t you take a holiday while Alexa fills in for you, eh?

Designer: TalkSocket

Click Here to Buy Now: $59 $128 (54% off). Hurry, only 374/500 left!

TalkSocket: Alexa. Hands-free. Everywhere.

TalkSocket is the first accessory that attaches to your phone for a seamless hands-free experience using Alexa or Google Assitant, even when your phone is locked.

Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant have some of the most impressive AI on the market but their convenient experience is lost as soon as you leave your house.

You love your voice assistant at home. Why switch to your smartphone’s voice assistant when you step outside? Think about how much more you could do if your favorite voice assistant joined you hands-free on the go too.

Give your favorite voice assistant a consistent platform and get a hands-free experience everywhere.

Use your phone to play music, answer questions, order on demand.

Features & Benefits

2 built-in microphones and on-board wake word detection.

Multi-day battery life (up to 5 days) + QI wireless charging compatible.

PopSocket accordion and swappable base.

No speakers – uses your phone’s audio output.

Easy to install and swappable. Peel and stick TalkSocket directly on the device or attach to a PopSockets swappable base. Quick, easy removal to charge TalkSocket on any wireless Qi charger.

Click Here to Buy Now: $59 $128 (54% off). Hurry, only 374/500 left!

Alexa can now pay for gas at Exxon and Mobil pumps

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The next time you need to fill up your car, you might pay for your gas using your voice. Amazon, ExxonMobil and payment provider Fiserv have announced that you can pay with Alexa at some pumps. The Alexa skill was announced at CES in January, and it’...