Our youngest voice assistant! Announced 18th of May, 2016, our five-year-old is now the whiz kid of the team. He was first speaking two languages at once and translating conversations for us.
We talk to Google Assistant through our smartphones, Google Home/Nest and Hubs, and many other third-party devices.
And Google plays our favorite music and can automate our daily routines. He controls our smart lights and can control almost all devices with a smart plug. This way, Google can keep our indoor air humid and even clean. Because with Logitech Harmony, he can control almost all devices that come with an infrared remote, like our entertainment system or our old iRobot Roomba. We can even teach him some tricks to entertain the whole family.
Hey Google, Happy Birthday! Google Assistant is Five Years Old!
Today, on 18th May 2016, five years ago, Google Assistant and Google Home were announced at the Google I/O 2016. Time flies by for the young ones. Can you imagine our smart little fellow is already five years old? Time to celebrate and look into the highlights of our youngest assistant.
OK Google, Play Some Music! Your List of all Google Music Commands
In this post, we will explore all the Google music commands to enjoy all the music services supported by our Google Home and Nest devices. From basic playback commands and playing our favorite music, to setting sleep timers, music alarms, and creating our own music commands with Google Routines.
Healthy Humidity with Venta Airwashers and Alexa, Siri and Google
We are mainly composed of water. The air we exhale is completely saturated with water. But, do you know the humidity of the 2,641 gallons (10,000 liters) of indoor air that you inhale, per day? It starts with a dry…
Breathe! Dyson Pure Cool with Siri, Alexa and Google
We spend about 90% of our time indoors. The last couple of months maybe even more and primarily at home. And while we’re at home, we breathe around 10,000 liters (2,641 gallons) of air, per day. Breathing is the only…
Work from Home with Siri, Alexa and Google: The Silent Listeners
Was it your partner, whispering “I love you” into your – what turns out – active meeting headset? Or your three year old, opening the door to your bedroom/office only to tell you that she pooped in her underwear? Maybe…
Google Routines: Immersive Storytelling with Ambient Scenes and Sounds
Google is an amazing storyteller! We will look into the many ways to listen to his stories, but this post is actually about quality time with your kids, your partner, or yourself. We will create Google Routines, where he will…
Google Routines: How to Automate your Life with Google Assistant
It started years ago with shortcuts, then came Google’s ready-made routines. Nowadays, we can create custom routines just by entering any Google Assistant command or by choosing from 20 popular actions. Google Routines are one of the helpful features of…
CES 2020: Alexa, Google, no Siri and quite some Smart Home Announcements
The annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas is finally over. As one of our 2020 resolutions is to write up all the announcements which are relevant for our posts, here is your timely update. We will update our…
University of Waterloo: This is how Google, Alexa and Siri look like!
There are stories you cannot make up. Thanks a lot to voicebot.ai‘s Bret Kinsella, who found this story in the University of Waterloo News, titled: People too trusting of virtual assistants. Here’s how research works at the University of Waterloo:…
Google and Philips Hue – Setup and Voice Commands
In this post, we will look into the setup of Philips Hue for Google Home, Nest and Assistant. You’ll find all the voice commands, the gentle sleep and wake feature, and also examples how to group and automate your Philips Hue lights with Google Routines and Philips Hue Zones (beta).
Every Human Lies – Eavesdropping on Siri, Alexa and Google
They are soon eight and five, while our youngest became three in May. Still, our voice assistants Siri, Alexa and Google delight us continuously with new features. One of the recent ‘features’ came to some of us as a surprise:…
Logitech Harmony: Who will win, Alexa or Google?
Let’s find out, whether Alexa or Google supports our Logitech Harmony better. We will compare configuration, voice commands, smart displays, and assistant specific smart home features.
Philips Hue: Who will win, Siri, Alexa or Google?
Let’s examine the strengths and weaknesses of Siri, Alexa, and Google by comparing their configuration options, voice commands, and smart home features for our Philips Hue lights. The world leader in lighting and the smart assistants of the biggest tech companies, can it get more “smart home” exciting than this?
How to create your own Easter Eggs with Siri, Alexa and Google
Last year we successfully ducked compiling the endless list of Easter eggs, which are hidden inside Siri, Alexa, and Google. Rather than spoiling the Easter egg fun – which basically every other website sadly does – we tried to keep…
Nanoleaf Aurora: Who will win, Siri, Alexa or Google?
Have you ever wondered, which of our super assistants supports our Nanoleaf Aurora best? Let’s examine the strengths and weaknesses of Siri, Alexa, and Google by comparing their configuration options, voice commands, as well as their smart home features for our Nanoleaf Aurora.
Logitech Harmony and Google: New Setup and Voice Commands
Ok, we were a bit disappointed. There were quite some bugs in the initial integration of Logitech Harmony and Google Home. Guess what? It took some time and now the bugs are fixed. Time to update this post to reflect…
Google Home and Nanoleaf Aurora: Setup and Voice Commands
Let’s introduce our Google Home to Nanoleaf Aurora. In this post we will set up our little Google Home assistant to talk to Captain Muks. We will look into the basic setup and additional tricks to get the most out of our setup.
AI-News Cartoon with Siri, Alexa and Google – Episode 10 – Halloween Special
Spooky times ahead! This Halloween Episode is full of spooky stories and let’s not spoil the Halloween party before you see it, spoilers are below the clip. Ok, just the Head-lines: Intro (very spooky) – 0:00 The Smart Treehouse Of…
Logitech Harmony and Google Home: Updated App Integration – Why not to update (yet)!
UPDATE 2018-11-12: Please note that this post is outdated. We have already added a post for the new blue Harmony Service in Google Home: Logitech Harmony and Google Home: New Setup and Voice Commands additionally to the old retired red Harmony Service in…
AI-News Cartoon with Siri, Alexa and Google – Episode 9 – Alexa Everywhere
Alexa invites us to her surprise party and demonstrates all the new Amazon products with Alexa inside. Google and Alexa are still crunching Q2 numbers to figure out who has the biggest market share. Siri is now seven years old…
AI-News – Episode 7 – with Siri, Alexa and Google: Anatomy of an AI
We need to name this longest episode ever a tragicomedy. (Actually, it’s not that long, it will take you only about 8 minutes =) Why? Siri, Alexa and Google first entertain us with some figures on how important we humans…
AI-News – Episode 6 – with Siri, Alexa and Google: Google’s Identity Crisis
Oops, we seriously forgot to create a post for this wonderful episode? Sorry! Better late, than never. This time it’s time to get out of the newsroom. Twice! This episode covers: Siri just had her first self-driving car accident –…
AI-News – Episode 5 – with Siri, Alexa and Google: More Smart Speakers than ever
What happens, if there is an upcoming Apple Event, a large consumer trade show (IFA 2018) and many integrations, smart features and devices are announced? We get the biggest AI-News episode ever! Join Siri, Alexa and Google discussing following headlines…
AI-News – Episode 4 – with Siri, Alexa and Google: The House that spied on me
What do you do, when your assistants frequently high-jack your news channel with personal statements? You put scripts in their hands, so that they stick to the screen-play. Does it help? Well, we are not 100% sure! At least we…
AI-News – Episode 3 – with Siri, Alexa and Google: We are all made in China!
What a week! First we thought, we might need another special to cover for “no news – is no news”, but then we realized, there were quite some interesting headlines this week. So many, that our animation software kept crashing…
AI-News – Episode 2 – with Siri, Alexa and Google: The Epic Rap Battle
A fresh glimpse into the news around Siri, Alexa and Google. This time a young fellow invited himself and our assistants could not resist to show off their beatboxing and rapping. You will recognize this guy immediately, he is all…
AI-News – Episode 1 – with Siri, Alexa and Google: Siri’s Nervous Breakdown
Whoa, long time – no read! Well, this is because we were working on this post. Still, not a sunday read here, just a little clip to watch and enjoy! We hope you like this new AI news format, which we’ve…
The Google Privacy Matrix: Wanna wake up, Neo?
This should have become only one post: Google and our privacy and security. But I realized very soon too late, that such a post would be very, very dangerous. Dangerous for you and dangerous for me. Some of you would be shocked to…
Google and Our Privacy and Security: Red Pill
WARNING: If you’ve accidentally arrived here, without the explicit decision to take the “red pill“, please leave now! This post is a fictional story for insiders, who are curious about the potential impact of artificial intelligence. Have they left? Let…
Google and Our Security and Privacy – Blue Pill
Google is an advertising company. Ads finance the free services we can use. Google collects a lot of our data and transparently informs us, what they collect and how they use it. We are in control, what data we give to Google. Our data is safe at Google.
Easter Assistant Showdown: Who has the Best Easter Egg Hunt? Siri, Alexa or Google?
It’s this time of the year, which lets us think of Easter egg hunts. Not only the real Easter eggs but also the virtual ones, well hidden in our smart assistants: Siri, Alexa, and Google. An Easter egg in computer…
Musical Assistant Showdown: Who will win, Siri, Google or Alexa?
We use our smart assistants mostly for listening to music, but how musical are our assistants actually? How to decide, whether Alexa, Siri or Google fits better to our musical preferences?
How to teach your Logitech Harmony: Alexa, Hey Google turn on Roomba!
It must have been a strange moment for Mr. Colin M. Angle, CEO of iRobot, when he presumably announced summer 2017 his plans to sell the mapping data share maps for free with customer consent of his newest robotic vacuum cleaner (Roomba) models…
Logitech Harmony and Google Assistant: (Retired) Setup and Voice Commands
In this post, we will connect Google Assistant with our Logitech Harmony Hub. In case you have not already set up your Harmony devices, activities and favorites, it is a good time to do so. Refer to the post Logitech Harmony:…
Workaround: Philips Hue Scenes in Google Assistant through IFTTT
Finally our Google Home supports Philips Hue scenes natively! Still, if this feature does not work for you, here’s a workaround. Before we start, let me warn you that with this workaround you will need to configure every scene manually….
An Interview with Google Assistant
As with our other assistants, I tried to interview Google Assistant. It threw me off when it started to ask back. So, here is just a summary: Google Assistant’s age is two in dog years (it does bark after that). Google…
