Episode 72 - Special Guest Julie Jacobson of CEPro

This week Seth sits down to chat with industry veteran and Editor-at-Large of CEPro Julie Jacobson. Julie has been covering the home automation market for more than two decades and has been one of our go to sources for home automation news each week. We chat about the interesting stock performance of Control4 and Alarm.com and discuss the recent news of Savant killing off their LiteTouch panelized lighting control system.

Show Notes

Episode 71 - 4Kp, 4Ki, and HD-OH-MY!

On this week's show we sit down to revisit last week's popular discussion on voice control in the home (spoiler: Jason still isn't a fan). We also chat about the future of 4K and what integrators need to know about video distribution thanks to a great article by Chris Pinder of HDAnywhere. Rounding out the show is a new home automation offering from Legrand that targets the production builder market.

Show Notes

Episode 70 - Apple Music 101: Radio on the Internet

Apple is rarely the first one to any party, but they tend to turn a lot of heads when they do finally show up. From portable music players, to tablets, to smart watches Apple has demonstrated this pattern time and again. True to form the company has now staked their claim in another existing market, subscription based streaming music, with Apple Music. 

Their most recent in a long line of fashionably late arrivals, the service goes for $9.99 a month. Users will have unlimited access to Apple's entire catalog, over 30 million songs, alongside an array of offerings including "expertly curated" radio stations and playlists, and the so-called "connect" platform where artists can engage with listeners in various ways. 

All in all Apple Music is a very compelling offering. We spend the majority of this episode discussing our initial impressions of the service. Comparisons with existing services like Spotify are not only unavoidable (hint: they're almost identical) but also help to illustrate what Apple is trying to accomplish with this initiative. Tune into our conversation to find out whether or not Apple Music is a product you should be paying attention to.  

As always we thank you so much for listening. If you have any comments, feedback, or suggestions please let us know, we'd love to hear from you. 

See you next week. 

HBO's Silicon Valley - Radio on the Internet

HBO's Silicon Valley - Radio on the Internet

Episode 69 - "Lights That Rock" with Shaun Springer from Twist

For this week's show we are pleased to present a conversation with Shaun Springer. Shaun is the founder and CEO of Astro, the company behind the newly released smart lightbulb / speaker combination Twist. Shaun's background in the smart home will be of particular interest to the integrators in our audience. Earlier in his career Shaun worked at Crestron, where he led research and development on the company's Core3 UI initiative.

Through his new venture Shaun is setting out to tackle the smart home by providing unparalleled simplicity. With the Twist lightbulb formally launched, we thought we'd bring him on for a conversation. We discuss some the rationale behind Astro's decision to position their products specifically for renters, an arguably underserved smart home market segment. Spending the remainder of the interview discussing the design and feature set of their new product, we discover a number of truly unique aspects to the manner in which Shaun and his team are approaching the smart home. Some of the company's ideas, on app control and 3rd party integration for example, might surprise you. Tune into the whole episode for more on that. 

Overall the Twist product seems well thought out and tastefully designed. We enjoyed having Shaun on to learn more. If you find this episode, or any of our others, enjoyable do us a huge favor and tell a friend about the show, or leave us a review on iTunes!  

See you next week.

Episode 68 - The Nest No-Show

In a couple of respects this was a rather disappointing week in the smart home. On one hand we had been looking forward to a press conference from Nest. The company has been awfully quiet since being acquired by Google in February of 2014 for whopping $3.2 billion. At the time of that blockbuster deal it was only natural to assume that, given this sort of brand-power and funding, Nest would be moving quick with further ventures into the smart home. Cue the crickets...

Hence it was with great anticipation that we were looking forward to Nest's June 17th press conference. As it turns out there wasn't a whole lot of meat on the bone. For all the pomp and circumstance what we essentially got was some minor updates to the Nest Protect smoke alarm, and a DropCam with a fancier stand. Tune into this episode to get our full take on the event.

While we were on the topic of disappointments we figured it was no brainer to discuss the latest in a long line of tough news for the folks at Wink. The home automation hub, spun off from the so-called online "invention platform" Quirky, has faced tough sledding from the get go. First in a series of scathing reviews from consumers and tech-press alike, then in the form of a security debacle we discussed on a previous episode. The product, which has consistently failed to meet expectations, now looks like it's heading for the selling block. Join us for a conversation about what this news means for the company, consumers, and the smart home market at large.

As always we hope you enjoy the show. If you find the find podcast valuable, entertaining, or both you can help us out either by becoming a patron or leaving us a review on iTunes! Either is immensely appreciated. 

See you next week!