If you've been coming to CES for the past decade and hit the marketing panels and keynotes, you would think that every year promises a transformation for our business. This year, the pablum finally feels real and potent; artificial and augmented intelligence applied to marketing and advertising dominated the discussions on the stages and in...

Growing up as a Sri Lankan American immigrant, I remember my first visit to a museum in the United States. It was more than a building filled with objects--it was a portal. For me, it bridged the unfamiliar with the familiar, transforming the abstract idea of a new home into something tangible. Museums became spaces...

With a change in presidential administration comes speculation among advertisers and their lawyers as to what course the new Federal Trade Commission chair will chart. But this time, ad industry mavens can do more than just read murky tea leaves, because president-elect Donald Trump's choice for chairman is a known quantity: sitting commissioner Andrew N....

The clock is officially ticking for TikTok. What once seemed far-fetched now feels more real than ever. After a long, contentious battle--with TikTok arguing that a ban would be unconstitutional and violate free speech rights, and lawmakers citing concerns over data privacy and foreign influence--the app recently lost its legal efforts in the D.C. Circuit...

CES is not a tech show--it's a time machine. Each booth, keynote, and prototype offers a glimpse of the future. It's a cacophony of innovation, yet hidden within the noise are the signals that define tomorrow's consumer behavior, business models, and cultural shifts. For ad executives, the challenge isn't merely surviving CES; it's about seizing...

The digital advertising industry had a lot to celebrate in 2024, as much of the uncertainty brought on by the pandemic was in the rearview mirror. Tech giants saw a spike in ad revenues: While Google's ad revenue jumped more than 10% year over year, Meta saw a sales increase of 19% over the same...

With a TikTok ban looming, LinkedIn putting a stake in the ground as an influencer platform, and pharma finally finding its footing, 2025 is shaping up to be a transformative year for the world of influencer marketing. We're about to see some major shifts that will impact how brands operate and where they invest, as...

SEO specialists have been talking about a zero-click reality ever since Google debuted the featured snippet in 2014. Now, with the advent of the AI Overview 10 years later, we're finally seeing it happen. AI Overviews (AIOs) are what SEOs thought the featured snippet would be: They're long, in depth, and provide not just an...

Two years after the launch of ChatGPT, the business world is finally waking up. This isn't just another tech trend that VCs will throw money at while screaming "disruption"--one that may be gone in another year. AI is the new electricity. It will impact everything. Companies are fumbling in the dark, trying to figure out...

Twenty-seven. That's how many times I offered a brilliant freelance creative director a full-time job when I was chief creative officer. Twenty-seven times, they said no. It drove me crazy. They already freelanced with us regularly, loved the team, crushed the briefs, and (apparently) tolerated me just fine. The money was great. What was the...

Live shopping and video commerce are exploding, driven by growing consumer interest and the success of global disruptors like Shein and Temu. These international players dominate their markets with highly engaging, frictionless shopping experiences and have expanded aggressively into the U.S., raising the stakes for domestic brands. This evolution parallels the introduction of TikTok in...

Home Assistant announced today the availability of the Voice Preview Edition, its own design of a living-room-friendly box to offer voice assistance with home automation. Having used it for a few weeks, it seems like a great start, at least for those comfortable with digging into the settings. That's why Home Assistant is calling it a "Preview Edition."

Using its privacy-minded Nabu Casa cloud—or your own capable computer—to handle the processing, the Voice Preview Edition (VPE) ($60/60 euros, available today) has the rough footprint of a modern Apple TV but is thinner. It works similarly to an Amazon Echo, Google Assistant, or Apple Siri device, but with a more focused goal. Start with a wake word—the default, and most well-trained version, is "Okay, Nabu," but "Hey, Jarvis" and "Hey, Mycroft" are available. Follow that with a command, typically something that targets a smart home device: "Turn on living room lights," "Set thermostat to 68," "Activate TV time." And then, that thing usually happens.

"That thing" is primarily controlling devices, scenes, and automations around your home, set up in Home Assistant. That means you have to have assigned them a name or alias that you can remember. Coming up with naming schemes is something you end up doing in big-tech smart home systems, too, but it's a bit more important with the VPE.

Read full article

Comments

© Home Assistant Foundation

ChatGPT is coming to phones. No, not smartphones — landlines. Call 1-800-242-8478 (1-800-CHATGPT), and OpenAI’s AI-powered assistant will respond as of Wednesday afternoon. “[Our mission at] OpenAI is to make artificial general intelligence beneficial to all of humanity, and part of that is making it as accessible as possible to as many people as we […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

This month, The Weber Shandwick Collective (TWSC) got a new CEO--but it seems like there won't be much of an adjustment period. Susan Howe stepped into the chief executive role at the communications agency on Dec. 2, and since joining nearly 29 years ago, she has held successive leadership roles running the gamut from regional...

Twenty years ago, I sold my namesake agency I founded at age 27 to Edelman. At the time, many accused me of being a sellout, but the truth is I would have sold out had I not sold the agency. I never intended to establish a shop of my own. But after a rather chilling...

As much as the story has generated a lot of buzz, I find the news of Omnicom's acquisition of IPG to be unsurprising and part of the natural order. I am sad for the great agency legacies that will be mothballed. I am sad for the jobs that will be cut. I am sad that...

On December 13, 1996, Miller Beer pulled all its business out of Leo Burnett, literally overnight. Officially, it was about lackluster sales, but rumors abounded that Miller discovered a subsidiary of Burnett had taken a small project from Anheuser-Busch, and Miller was livid. Now that holding companies own a huge part of the advertising landscape,...

The recent announcement of Omnicom's acquisition of IPG got me thinking about my early days working for both holding companies. I started my career in media at BBDO, buying television. Back then, media and creative worked together under one roof, and holding companies were only beginning to consolidate their power. It was a simpler time...

In what is without a doubt one of the top five episodes of Seinfeld, George is regaling his moment as a "marine biologist" with Jerry, Kramer, and Elaine: "The sea was angry that day, my friends, like an old man trying to send back soup at a deli!" George's "perfect storm" also perfectly captures what...

In light of THE news (do we treat this like the Super Bowl without saying exactly what it is?)--for me, as the CEO of an independent agency, it's an interesting time to reflect. As a former employee of both holding companies, Omnicom and IPG, and truly growing up a child of "Big Advertising," I'm fascinated...