Nest Thermostat is the smartest connected home gadget I own, but it's far from perfect "What do you think of that thing?" We're all used to being asked about the smartphone in our hands. Someone on the train on in a coffee shop notices something unique about your tech and leans over to see what it does that made you pick one up. It was strange at first to have the question asked of a...
As a standalone device, Nest is cool. The 'Works with Nest' program makes it invaluable In the first part of our Nest Thermostat series, I called this device the first connected home appliance everyone should want to own. Curiously, this statement had very little to do with the hardware itself (although I do still think it's one of the nicest looking thermostats out there today) or...
The mobile component of this connected thermostat is really what makes it futuristic OK, so it's just a thermostat. And while you will always have the option to walk right up to the pretty little dial on the wall and give it a spin when you want to change something, there's quite a bit of functionality baked into the Nest online services that ensures you basically never have to. As...
If you can do some basic wiring, you can hook up a Nest — but there still are some important instructions to follow One of the first things you will read when checking out user reviews of Nest Thermostat — something that is also repeated to some degree in professional commentary on the product — is what a pleasure the hardware is to install. Nest worked hard to make its thermostat...
Welcome to the first mainstream connected home appliance everyone should want to own Much in the same way that smartphones have come to enhance the way we communicate, the world of connected home tech is all about enhancing the way your living space communicates. There are a couple of really great examples of this technology (and heaps of truly terrible examples to match) but one of...
The folks behind the Big Android BBQ have spent the last year working on ways to bring a taste of their annual Texas-based event to different parts of the U.S., and in April the East Coast will get what's coming to them. The Big Android Meat and Greet is a one-day event that combines a developer event with a great party for Android folks to get together and enjoy. Since it's in Virginia...
Just as our fearless leader promised in his weekly missive, we're going to start taking a more focused approach for certain topics, and I have the honor of being the first to bring this to you. We're going to start off with the now Google-owned Nest Labs and their Nest Thermostat. Rather than post a single long post on the Nest Thermostat like we would a smartphone or tablet review, we'...
The folks at Cree dropped the first bulb in their new Connected line this week at Home Depot, and as we said in our hands on if you're looking for cheap bulbs to add to your connected home these are the way to go. Rather than bind themselves to a single kind of connecte hub, Cree Connected bulbs work with any ZigBee hub. You wouldn't know that by looking at the box, however, since the...
Meet YotaPhone's second attempt to make a dual-screen smartphone. YotaPhone 2 is AMOLED in the front, ePaper in the back, and has just enough software to make both sides completely unique without crossing the line into what we all too commonly refer to as bloatware. It's a worthy successor to the original YotaPhone in every way, but more than that it makes a compelling case for having...
This crazy two-faced phone actually works, and works well.
VR experiences are making a big splash at the Sundance Film Festival this year, and Google is among the names showing up to deliver a visual thrill to attendees. Rather than leave those of us who aren't attending in suspense, you can install and watch two of the experiences being shown off inside of Google Cardboard right now. Kaiju Fury is a cinematic short that Oculus Rift users may...
Smart lighting is a bunch of fun to play with, but for most people the current costs are way too high. Most people who have managed to justify the cost of a starter kit only go so far as to outfit a room or two, and that has just as much to do with there being absolutely no need for crazy color changing bulbs in your bathrooms as it does the price and design of the bulbs. The folks at...
What does a second e-ink screen actually get you? All e-ink displays have a few things in common — they work great in sunlight, the refresh rate isn't the best thing ever, and sometimes it's fun to put silly things on them just to see what happens. When the YotaPhone 2 slid across the desk, the first thing that surprised everyone was just how functional the e-ink panel is. The software...
We've jokingly referred to the robotic toys made by Orbotix as the world's best cat toys, but the truth is there's a ton that can be done with these little rolling robots. Sphero has a huge third party following with dozens of apps that let you do everything from roll your ball in an augmented reality maze through the camera on your phone to picking the ball up and using it as a...
We're no strangers to smartphone-controlled flying machines around these parts, especially those of us who have wandered the halls of CES, but the folks at Zano are promising something wildly different form the current experience with their mini quadcopter. While most flying experiences with smartphones happen at a 1:1 ration, Zano wants to give smartphone owners the ability to control...
More like a native app, less like a web app Everyone knows what Wikipedia is, because it's the world's biggest free resource for information that is largely supported and built by users. The folks at the Wikimedia Foundation have worked hard to make the world's information available to as many people on the planet as possible, and that means making sure the mobile apps are easy to use...
For years there's been this growing sentiment among smartphone users who have to drive on a regular basis, and that sentiment usually involved being able to just dock your phone in the car and use the larger screen in the dash to use the things your phone already does very well. As cool as it would be for the infotainment center in the car to just be the receptacle for our phones, many...
Full hardware specifications for both halves of the YotaPhone 2 Whether you love the idea or aren't sure why exactly you'd need it, YotaPhone has made something unique with their latest device. We've already done our initial hands on with the YotaPhone 2, and have plenty more on the way, but if you just want to know what makes this quirky little handset tick we've got you covered. Take...
The folks at BMW showed up at CES in a big way this year, and that has a lot to do with all the extra tech the company has been shoving under the hood. Demos during the week long convention included dares from BMW to try and crash their cars while the new 360° crash detection system was in place, as well as future-focused discussions on self-driving systems that will be able to drop you...
Cyanogen's Founder clears the air If you've been following the misadventures of OnePlus and Micromax over in India, you know that there's been a bit of a disagreement over who gets to use Cyanogen OS (as opposed to the totally open-source CyanogenMod) due to an exclusivity agreement that was created alongside the launch of the Micromax Yu brand. It's been a pretty big mess that has...