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What happened to the doughnut-shaped Olly speaker?
A few years back, CES attendees went mad for Olly, a doughnut-shaped speaker with a voice assistant that adapted to your personality. It was a refreshing change to the seemingly infinite hardware packing Alexa and Google Assistant, and visitors were charmed by its ability to stand up and spin around a circular stand. Olly's creator, a London-based startup called Emotech, offered two prototypes at the show -- one that was excitable and spoke quickly and another that seemed a little more placid -- to demonstrate how Olly would mimic its owners. As TechCrunch reported, the company wanted to start its initial production run later that year.
Olly is like an Amazon Echo but with personality
Everyone's making a smart personal assistant these days -- thanks, Alexa! -- but most of them aren't as adorable as the Olly. It's basically a doughnut-shaped speaker that lies flat when dormant but stands and spins around with lights flashing when active. But what sets the Olly apart from the Echo-clone pack is that it incorporates a bit of personality into the mix. What kind of personality? Well, yours: Olly's personality adapts to yours over time. According to London-based Emotech, its parent company, Olly's behavior will evolve depending on how you interact with it.
Olly: the web-connected robot that converts pings to odors
What if there were a way to add smells to the things you see every single day on the internet? To some, just the thought of that there scenario would induce nausea. To others -- primarily those who spend their days Googling various rose gardens around the globe -- it just might be the extra dimension to surfing that they've been waiting for. If you happen to find yourself tucked into that second camp, we'd like to introduce you to Olly, the web-connected robot that's capable of emitting smells based on inputs from the 'net. The critter was dreamed up by Tim Pryde and the folks surrounding the Don-8r (Foundry, if you're curious), and while there's currently no way to purchase one, instructions are forthcoming to produce your own with a 3D printer. In fact, it's recommended that users build a few, stack 'em up and connect different inputs (Twitter, Instagram, your mum's vegetarian cooking blog) to each one. It's the perfect cacophony... or the perfect disaster, depending on your browsing habits. [Thanks, Tim]
