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Amazon expands Matter smart home support to older Echo speakers
Amazon has extended Matter support to older Echo speakers, and you can now set up those smart home devices on your iPhone.
Nanoleaf's Sense+ Control lighting line can automate itself
Nanoleaf's new Sense+ Control light switches connect to a Thread Border Router that features an assistant that can automate your lights.
Amazon will bring Matter smart home support to 17 Echo devices this year (updated)
Amazon has pledged to add Matter smart home support to 17 devices this year, with more coming in 2023.
The Matter smart home standard is finally available
The Matter smart home standard has finally been released, and companies like Amazon, Apple and Google are adopting it.
Eero will upgrade mesh WiFi routers to support the Matter smart home standard
Eero says it will upgrade its 'modern' WiFi mesh routers to the new Matter smart home standard.
The new Apple TV 4K arrives with HDMI 2.1, Thread wireless tech
The new Apple TV has HDMI 2.1 and a new type of mesh networking technology built-in.
Nanoleaf takes on Hue with its first bulb and lightstrip
Nanoleaf is taking on smart lighting giants like Hue with its first bulb and lightstrip.
Apple's revamped Messages focuses on groups
As part of its WWDC 2020 reveals, Apple announced that it is revamping Messages with new group messaging features in iOS 14.
Twitter is testing a new threaded conversation layout on iOS and the web
Twitter is testing a new look for threaded replies with lines and indentations.
Disney is tweeting everything that's coming to Disney+
The Disney+ launch is less than a month away, and the streaming service is busy drumming up nostalgia in an attempt to hook users. Today, it started a massive tweet thread sharing "basically everything" coming to Disney+ on November 12th.
Algorithms help an artist tease portraits out of thread
Our brains are great at forming images out of mishmashes and blotches of color, as a pointillist will tell you. Artist Ani Abakumova has taken that idea and applied it to simple colored threads to create incredible woven art. Creating thread art isn't as simple as painting dots, however, so her husband Andrey Abakumova developed an algorithm that lets her weave the threads to form lifelike representations of artworks like the Mona Lisa and Girl with the Pearl Earring.
MIT’s thread-like robot can slip through blood vessels in your brain
MIT engineers created a thread-like robot that can glide through the brain's blood vessels and could deliver clot-reducing drugs to treat strokes or aneurysms. The robotic thread could offer an alternative to open brain surgery, and it could be controlled by surgeons outside of the operating room. Theoretically, surgeons could control it remotely from an entirely different location.
Twitter is testing new labels for conversation threads
In a tweet today, Twitter announced that it's experimenting with new labels on conversation threads. The labels -- author, mention and follow -- are another attempt to make the platform more conversational and easier to follow. This may never move past the trial phase, but it's further proof that Twitter is bent on helping users make sense of threads.
Facebook Messenger gets threaded replies
Facebook is making it a bit easier to keep track of who's talking to who in a busy group chat. It's rolling out a thread feature for Messenger that lets you reply to specific messages (including media and emoji). If you ask an important question, you won't have to scroll through chat to see if someone answered it. You only have to long-press on a message to start a response.
Twitter tests conversation 'subscriptions'
Twitter is testing yet another new feature: a "subscribe to conversation" button that would let users follow a thread without liking or replying to it. Twitter user and software engineer Jane Manchun Wong (who's known for finding this kind of thing) discovered the prototype in the Android version of the app. In response to her tweet about it, Twitter said this is an attempt to make the platform more conversational. It's now the latest in a flood of changes we've seen from Twitter.
Twitter adds thread tools to help you craft epic tweetstorms
Multi-part tweetstorms are a staple of Twitter, for better or worse, and the social network wants them to be as easy to write as possible. After months of testing, it's adding a thread feature that simplifies creating and posting a series of tweets. The composer now includes a "plus" button that lets you tack on additional tweets, with whatever you've written before still visible to help guide your train of thought. And when you're ready, you can post everything at once -- no more leaving people hanging while you write the conclusion to your thrilling saga. You can add posts after the fact if you need to write an epilogue.
HP is turning trash into printer cartridges
All those printer cartridges from HP that usually cost an arm and leg will start helping to do some good in the world beyond your prints of kitten photos. During an event at its headquarters, HP announced that it is using recycled plastic from Haiti to manufacture select cartridges.
Zigbee crafts a universal language for smart home devices
As seamless as smart-home technology is becoming, the devices still tend to sit in isolated ecosystems. Zigbee-based gadgets don't normally know how to use Nest's Thread protocol, for example. That's where the Zigbee Alliance wants to help. It's launching Dotdot, a "universal language" for Internet of Things devices. The open platform lets hardware makers use Zigbee's software layer across virtually any other IoT network, increasing the chances that the devices you want to use can speak to each other.
Nest opens the networking code for its smart home devices
Nest already has a bunch of companies lined up to use its Thread network protocol in their devices (over 30 submitted right now), but it's not content with what's on deck. The Alphabet-owned company has created an open source version, OpenThread, that lets anyone implement the smart home-oriented technology in their connected gadgets. In theory, it doesn't take much work -- Thread is already an IPv6 protocol, so any device that handles the 802.15.4 standard (used for low-rate personal networks) should only need a few tweaks to play nicely.
Nest, Samsung and others team up for better home automation
A group of tech companies including Samsung, Google's Nest Labs and chipmaker ARM are teaming up to create a unified system to run all of your connected home gadgets. Thread uses low-power mesh networks to run all of your devices, promising greater reliability and cloud access for every piece of hardware in your house. The name might be new, but an early version of the protocol is already used to drive Nest's thermostats and smoke detectors. The group also believes that a simple software update would enable plenty of other existing smart home products to join in the fun. Of course, this isn't the only group trying to marshal the disparate forces that are trying to make in-roads into our homes. For instance, Qualcomm and Apple all have rival platforms in various stages of development -- so perhaps the next generation of forum debates arguments will be about which connected washing machine is "better" than the rest.
