Nest Doorbell

Google-owned Nest today announced that its Nest

Hello video doorbell and a smart lock created with

Yale are now available for purchase. A Nest

Temperature Sensor for tracking and changing the

temperature in specific rooms in your home makes

it debut today and will begin to ship in April.

The Nest Hello debuted last fall alongside Nest’s

security system and outdoor camera, while the Nest-

Yale lock has been anticipated for two years.

The Nest Hello sells for $229, Nest-Yale lock for $249,

and temperature sensors for $39 for a pack of two,

with up to six allowed per household.

Devices made available today attempt to weave

experiences through Nest  smart home products

with Google Assistant voice control and the Nest

App.

If someone rings the doorbell, Google Assistant in

Home speakers will tell you, “Someone’s at the front

door.” Subscribers to Nest’s Aware program for 24/7

video recording will be able to identify individual

people recognized by Nest Hello’s cameras and

facial recognition AI. Nest Hello also comes with

a quiet time mode, so doorbell chimes in your home

remain silent but an alert telling you who’s at the front

door is sent to your phone.

Home speakers are also used to deliver a chime

when a sensor from Nest’s Secure home security

system senses that a door or window has been opened.

Nest Hello comes with quick responses like: “Hi there,

you can just leave it, thanks” for in-home deliveries, or

“Just a moment, we’ll be right there” if you need a

moment to get to the door.

FitBit

After tepid sales of its first smartwatch, Fitbit has a new

model for the Spring with a lower price and a more

appealing look.

The new $200 Fitbit Versa looks a lot more like an

Apple Watch, with a brighter, curvier design than the

chunky, science fiction inspired $300 Ionic model

released last year. The smaller Versa arrives in April

and should fit women’s wrists better. Available for

preorder starting on Tuesday, it also comes in a

broader range of color combinations, including a

more feminine rose gold model with a light peach

strap. The massive Ionic model only looked good

on people with big wrists and came in mostly

masculine color schemes. Some reviewers called it

flat out ugly.

“Looking forward, we’re going to continue to evolve,”

CEO James Park said on Monday at a presentation

for reporters. “We do strongly feel that there’s

significant opportunity for us to gain more share through

the launch of more mass appeal devices in the category…

most importantly all at the right price point.”

The move to revamp its smartwatch push comes after

a difficult holiday shopping season for Fitbit’s entire line

of watches and trackers. Ionic was supposed to offset

falling sales of simpler fitness trackers, but it was too

niche. Fitbit sold only 5.4 million total devices in the

fourth quarter, down from 6.5 million a year earlier and

8.2 million sold back in 2015. Ionic failed to meet

“aggressive goals” that the company had set, CEO Park

has admitted. Total sales in the 2017 quarter declined

1% to $571 million and fell short of the $588 million that

analysts had expected.

Fitbit’s stock hit an all-time low of $4.67 after the fourth

quarter report, though it has since bounced back a bit

to close at $5.31 on Monday. Still, that represents a loss

of almost three-quarters since Fitbit (FIT, -1.48%) went

public in 2015.

Alexa News

Alexa calling, the feature that lets users place voice

and video calls from Alexa devices, like the Echo, is

now coming to tablets. Amazon announced this

morning added support for calling as well as messaging

features on tablets, including iPads, Android tablets

and, of course, its own Fire tablets.

On the Fire HD 10, Alexa calling and voice messages

will be available hands-free — you can just ask Alexa

to take action. Meanwhile, on the Fire 7 and Fire HD 8

or older generation Fire tablets, you’ll instead press the

Home button to place a call or send a message. The

devices will also support Drop In — the feature that lets

you use Alexa devices as an intercom system of sorts,

where you can instantly connect with other devices

around the home, or in friends’ and families’ homes,

if you choose to enable it.

To use the calling and messaging features, you’ll need

the latest version of the Alexa app and will need to verify

your phone number and import your contacts.

The expanded support for voice calls and messaging is

the latest example of how Amazon’s Alexa app is becoming

more than a utility for managing the settings on Echo

devices or Alexa’s smart home integrations.

Amazon had announced in January that the app would

also be expanded to include voice integration, meaning

users could speak to Alexa in a dedicated app instead

of only through Alexa devices (or oddly, the Amazon

shopping app, which got Alexa integration first.)

With support for calling, messaging and voice commands,

Amazon has a way to establish a presence on mobile,

where it had earlier failed with its own Amazon-branded

Fire Phone smartphones. It gives Amazon a chance to

dive into social and messaging, too, where it had never

directly competed before.

The new calling support is available in the latest version

of the Alexa iOS and Android application, says Amazon.

Happy Pi Day

We would like to wish a Happy National Pi Day (3/14) to all!!!

Amazon Alexa News

Amazon's Echo line of devices gets a new feature in

the form of "follow-up" mode, which lets users spit out

command after command without repeating the wake

word each time. Alexa won't nest one request into

another, but it will accommodate multiple requests back

to back.’

That means it's still not possible to perform two commands

in the same sentence. So, users can't say something like,

"Alexa, dim the lights and search for romantic comedies on

Netflix." They still have to divide those into two, but now

without needing to say "Alexa" each time.

The new feature works because Alexa now continues to

listen five seconds after a command, indicated by the blue

ring on the hardware staying lit. Once that fades, it means

Alexa has returned to sleep mode and will only be accessed

again via the wake word.

There are potential problems here, though. There's the

fact that for it to determine a command is indeed a follow-

up, Alexa must first be "confident" that the second

command isn't just background noise from people

chattering or a dialog from a TV program.

Amazon didn't provide a lot of details on how Alexa

determines follow-up commands, but there's reason to

believe this won't work 100 percent of the time initially.

After all, until they received an update, Echo units were

shown to be prone to following commands from the TV.

Interestingly, Amazon says that users can now

deliberately prevent Alexa from listening to commands

by saying "stop" or "thank you."

Sony Keyboard Replacement

If you need to tell a digital device what to do but can't

use a keyboard, voice is the first option that springs to

mind. You can use it for phones, digital assistants and

smart speakers.

But some devices are getting digital eyes in addition to

digital ears. That's the vision, so to speak, of Israeli

startup EyeSight Technologies. EyeSight has mostly

dropped its previous efforts to build its gesture-recognition

tech into phones, TVs and PCs. But it's got a new angle

on the market: connected devices in homes and cars.

On Monday, Sony and EyeSight plan to announce that

the Japanese electronics maker has built the vision

technology into an interactive portable projector called

the Xperia Touch. The device already can project an

image onto a wall or other surface and then use infrared

light sensors to see how you're interacting with the image

on that surface -- slicing up fruit in Fruit Ninja or playing a

virtual piano keyboard, for example.

EyeSight's upgrade will now let you control the content

from a distance, without touching the projected image's

surface. Think Tom Cruise in "Minority Report."

Update

Over the weekend our email server finally shut down. What does that mean? Where do we go from here? Your guess is as good as mine!!!