Personal computers, once the driver for Intel’s fortune, were difficult to spot during the 90-minute keynote at the Intel Developer Forum this week in San Francisco. Instead, the Internet of Things (IoT) was front and center.
I joined USA TODAY’s Elizabeth Weise and editor Laura Mandaro to talk about what we saw — and what it means.
Forward-thinking Chinese appliance vendors like Haier are getting aggressive about turning the Connected Home vision into a reality. They are integrating connectivity across their product lines, from wine coolers to water heaters. Because of lengthy replacement cycles for home appliances, Haier understands that an appliances it sells today will have to connect with a broad range of other smart devices ten years from now. To help ensure that happens, Haier is future-proofing its broad line of appliances by integrating intelligent, platform-agnostic connectivity components from Qualcomm.
And find out how Haier is future-proofing its smart appliances in my blog post HERE.
If you were frustrated by early versions of personal digital assistance apps like Siri or Google Now, it might be time to try again. A new wave of the technology is beginning to roll out with a lot more knowledge and horsepower behind it to help our laptops, tablets and smartphones fit naturally into the way we work and play.
With the rollout of Windows 10 to millions of PCs now underway, Microsoft’s Cortana is the most visible effort of this new wave of personal assistance technology. But there are others, of course. Notably: Apple’s Siri, Google Now for Android, Amazon’s unique living-room product called Echo, and dozens of apps that leverage IBM’s Watson suite of cognitive tools. The apps all promise great advances in the search function, one of the most ubiquitous activities in our connected lives. Even more exciting, though, is the potential they have to transcend beyond looking up things we ask to begin anticipating our needs and, over time, even acting on our behalf.
To find out more about how they work and what they can do for you, read my USA TODAY column HERE.
