Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

REVIEWING A PRODUCT designed to learn over time is like reviewing a newborn baby. So much functionality is dependent on artificial intelligence and machine learning, the only certainty is that it’ll get smarter over time. Who knows what it’ll end up being: A jack-of-all-trades? A specialized savant? Or maybe just a creeper that records everything you say?

Consider the Amazon Echo. At birth, it didn’t have the ability to order you Domino’s, play Spotify playlists, or get things from Amazon Prime. In the past year, its capabilities and intelligence have evolved significantly. That’s thanks to hundreds of “skills” created by developers with the Alexa Skills Kit, partnerships with major companies such as Uber and Sonos, and Amazon’s new Music Unlimited service, which offers deep voice-control features.

At the ripe old age of two, Amazon’s Echo already has offspring in the form of the Echo Dot and Echo Tap. And now it has a neonate arch-rival in the form of Google Home. In the long term, the competition between the two platforms will be great for users of both devices: Two heavyweights in the tech world will be trying to make their voice assistants smarter, more versatile, and more useful than the other one.

As of now, they’re more like twins than not: They both tell decent jokes, they both stream NPR if you ask for news, they both do IFTTT, and they spout recipes and random facts with ease. Because it’s had more time in the world, Amazon’s platform has the advantage in many key areas. But Google Home ($130) trumps the full-size Echo ($180) in a few ways too—and not just in terms of price. They’re both really good, and they’re both going to get smarter. A lot smarter....

Adventures with a new platform called SmartThings.

Imagine coming home after work. Your door unlocks as it senses you approaching. When you step inside, the lights come on and the thermostat adjusts to the perfect temperature. If you’ve reached your fitness goals for the day, your TV turns on and a machine pours you a glass of whiskey. If you haven't, your stereo plays “Eye of the Tiger,” prompting you to get dressed for the gym. Hours later, when you climb into bed, your door locks automatically and soothing ocean sounds play; when you wake up the next morning, your coffeemaker starts brewing.

This sounds like a Jetsons plot premise, but it's what we've been promised by futurists in Silicon Valley for years. They call it “the Internet of Things” — a system where every object is connected to every other object via the Internet — and until recently, it was a kind of amorphous geek fantasy, reserved in practice for early adopters and the ultrarich. (Bill Gates has had such a system installed in his mansion for years.) For normal people, though, the Internet of Things has been slow to arrive.

So when a company called SmartThings offered to send me a kit that would help me connect all of the devices in my home, I was skeptical. Why would I need this? How would it help me?

But after a week of testing it, I’m convinced the Internet of Things is almost here. And it could be huge....