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Hilton plans to offer a smart hotel room system next year
From a Watson-powered concierge to in-room VR porn, hotels are getting more and more tech-savvy and connected. There's an Amazon Echo in every room when you stay at Wynn's Las Vegas hotel, and more destinations are adding ways to watch your own Netflix and Chromecast when you stay. Now Hilton is ready to roll out a new mobile-centric connected room. The smart room system is currently in beta at one Hilton hotel and set to deploy to several more in the coming weeks. A full deployment to all Hilton hotels is planned for next year.
SONTE: App-controlled digital shades for your windows
There's a new and completely unique Kickstarter campaign that started this morning, and it hopes to make it possible for you to control a window's opaqueness from an app. SONTE Film is a self-installed "digital shade" that is applied to windows and can be made opaque -- or clear again -- with a tap on an app button. The link between your iPhone and SONTE is a WiFi-enabled transformer and a thin cord that connects to the window film. The film can be cut to any shape or size, meaning that you finally have a way to opaque that odd round window in your master bathroom... The company notes that the opaqued film even works as a projection screen. While lower backing levels are available with non-WiFi transformers, kicking in at the US$219 level or above provides you with a 1-square-meter installation kit with the app-controlled switch. Pledge $1,494 or more and you'll get one of the first daisy-chain packs covering a whopping eight square meters (86.11 square feet) of window. SONTE is expected to ship the first kits to backers in September. You can check out the easy installation process and see just how well the film works in the video below.
