Google discovers seniors (sort of) and thus a market is maybe born. There was a breathlessness to the CNBC article on July 23, 2018 – Google is mulling older adult applications for its Nest product line – particularly in senior housing settings, hopefully at less cost per installation than its website pricing. And gee whiz, one of the uses is pathway lighting to find the bathroom – presumably replacing motion-sensing night lights for $7.97 from Walmart. Up next, predicting life-threatening falls, perhaps as an alternative to Philips CareSage or BioSensics Frailty Meter, for example. Google execs qualified our enthusiasm, per the article: “The ideas are only in the discussion stage and may not find their way into shipping products.” Since his role at Google is to do “something interesting” -- perhaps this may not turn out to be.
PALO ALTO, CA – July 10, 2018 – Adding to the company’s growing lineup of Artificial Intelligence-powered (AI) microservices for the smart home, People Power, the Internet of Things (IoT) software company providing white-label solutions for home security, energy and senior care service, today announces its new Home Occupancy Status Microservice.
Smart speakers have exploded in popularity for the past couple of years, and Google has seen a lot of growth, particularly this past year. Now, new market research suggests that Google has outsold Amazon for the first time ever…
During Q1 of 2018, the smart speaker market apparently grew by 210%, selling 9 million speakers. Traditionally speaking, Amazon’s Alexa platform dominates those sales, but after over a year on the market, Google has finally surpassed them.
An age-old and old-age question. When this blog was launched in 2009, one of the opening salvos raised the question of sensors in the home or a PERS device on the body? Looking at that post, the companies have mostly changed. In the monitor-place corner, Healthsense’s eNeighbor is now Lively Home, part of GreatCall. QuietCare was eventually folded into Care Innovations. Monitoring the person, Halo Monitoring became an offering as part of one of the earliest mobile PERS companies, MobileHelp. Monitor the place argument was based on the reality that seniors don’t always wear the pendant. Monitor person acknowledged that seniors leave the place and are out and about. Both are crisp, make good presentations and set up message for selling. Both are inadequate arguments for what older adults need, and what providers of all types should provide.
SAN FRANCISCO, February 16, 2017 — August Home Inc, the leading provider of smart locks and smart home access products and services that make life more simple and secure, today added the ability to unlock the August Smart Lock with a voice command using Alexa-enabled devices. Now August Smart Lock users are able to ask Alexa to “unlock my door,” using a secure voice PIN code in addition to locking and checking the status of an August Smart Lock.