Smart home experts hope 'magic' moments will convert nonbelievers

What will it take to convince smart home newbies that the tech is for them?

In a panel at CES in Las Vegas on Thursday some of the biggest names in the smart home industry joined CNET Editor in Chief Lindsey Turrentine and Editor at Large Brian Cooley to look at what it will take for the smart home to become a real, essential and seamless part of everyday life.

Speaking at the event, Alex Hawkinson, chairman and CEO of SmartThings, said the sales his company has seen over the past year suggest it's not just early adopters opting in to the smart home revolution. The industry is growing, but a huge challenge still lies ahead.

 

How to post 360-degree photos to Facebook

By now, you've undoubtedly come across an interactive photo whilst browsing your Facebook feed. Such photos instruct you to hold your phone up and move it around to view different parts of the photo.

It's a fun way of viewing so-called 360-degree photos. And would make one believe you need fancy, or expensive equipment to make it happen. The truth is, however, you don't need a special camera or even a 360-degree photo app in order to upload your own interactive picture.

 

SolarGaps turns window decor into solar panels at CES

Opening the blinds has never been so helpful. On display here at CES in Las Vegas, SolarGaps turns the actual slats of your window coverings into solar panels. SolarGaps blinds will be smart enough to shift their angle slightly throughout the day in order to maximize their power intake. The company also plans to integrate with the Google Home.

Smart home scoreboard at CES

The scoreboard

Google Home's progress

Alexa's progress

Siri's progress

6 apps to install on a new MacBook

These are the first six apps I installed on my new MacBook Pro, from a text expander to a word processor, with four useful apps in between. All are free except the first, which costs only $5 and offers a free trial. Let's take them in alphabetical order.

aText

aText is a simple, text-expansion app that lets you create abbreviations for commonly typed words and phrases. With it, for example, I can type "@@" instead of my email address. Or "ty" instead of "thank you." It offers other features but it's worth the cost simply for a handful of keyboard shortcuts that saves me time each day.

aText costs $4.99 (£4.18 in the UK and AU$7.05 in Australia) and is available from Tran Ky Nam Software. You can try aText free for 14 days.

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Making your own keyboard shortcuts in aText can save so much time.

Photo by Matt Elliott/CNET

 

Google Pixel phones, Daydream View and Chromecast Ultra: Everything Google just announced

It feels like forever since the first rumors about Google's announcements for this event started cropping up, but now we can finally lay at least some of them to rest.

Just joining us? Here's what you've missed thus far.

The event opened with a cute video by the characters of HBO's "Silicon Valley." "Why wasn't I on the beta?!" That was followed by a summary by Sundar Pichai of computing since the first PC. "We're moving from a mobile first to an AI first" world." That means Google Assistant, announced at the Google I/O conference in May, with its voice queries, contextually relevant information and so on -- much like the most current version of Apple's Siri.