Category: Smart Home

By: Vince Kattoula

Over the last year or so, mobile apps have followed us from our smartphones and tablets to our cars and homes in multiple ways. We can thank devices like Amazon Echo and Google Home for leading this app revolution into our homes. These devices are capable of voice interaction, music playback, making to-do lists, setting alarms, streaming podcasts, playing audiobooks, and providing weather, traffic and other real time information. They can also control several smart devices when used as a home automation hub. Personal assistants and voice commands, along with the apps and devices that use them, have been with us for some time now. Gartner reports that the use of these personal assistants, such as Siri and Google Now, has grown from 31% to 35% from 2015 to 2016. As the months go by, more consumers are becoming less apprehensive about this kind of technology.
As it becomes more seamless and intuitive, voice control in the home has the potential to become one of the biggest tech hits of the year. There are currently about 250 devices that are certified to work with Echo, which presents an opportunity for several brands to gain a strong presence in consumers’ homes. Furthermore, Amazon has encouraged rapid development of third-party applications with its open-systems approach and even financial incentives for some partners. Apple also understands this challenge, which is why they have built an app, called Homekit, solely dedicated to whole home automation.
What this means is your brand needs to start thinking about how it will interact with consumers beyond their phone, tablet, and even their car. How will voice controlled technology impact your brand’s identity and they ways it engages your consumers? It may seem like something far off in the future, but the sales of Amazon Echo and Google Home this past Christmas, would seem to indicate that the future is closer than you might think.
We can help you with those questions. Click here to reach out to one of our mobile experts, call 248-353-9030 or email sales@jacapps.com.

By: Vince Kattoula

If you’re like me, you’re one of the thousands of people who upgraded their iPhone to the latest operating system, iOS 10, a couple of weeks ago. After the installation, you may have noticed a new app on your home screen – the Home app. The Home app allows users to securely control all HomeKit accessories from their favorite iOS device. This got me thinking about all the different “connected” devices we use throughout each day in our homes and how the right technology can make all these devices work together.
We’ve seen apps follow you to your car, and now they are following you to every room in your house. Even though I’m still waiting for Siri to learn things like “Make me a sandwich,” you can tell her things like “Turn off the living room lights” or “Unlock the front door.” Also, 3D Touch lets you press and hold an icon to perform more complex tasks like dimming the lights or adjusting the thermostat.
Of course, to perform these tasks, you have to have these connected devices in your house. It only takes a quick trip to Home Depot or Lowe’s to find lots of them: thermostats, light controllers, door locks, even refrigerators with the logo above, indicating they can work with Apple’s latest land grab.
Perhaps one of the coolest features about the HomeKit app is the fact that it allows users to set up scenes. The scenes enable multiple accessories to work simultaneously. That means a user can create a scene named “I’m home” that turns on the lights, unlocks your doors, and turns on the air conditioner with just one command.
So, with the ever increasing “connected” world, it appears that offering consumers just a smartphone app won’t cut it anymore. Your brand needs to follow your audience wherever they may be in order to stay relevant in their lives. This means offering them apps everywhere (or App Everywhere℠ as we like to say), in the car, on their wrist, and now … in their homes.
The key to staying connected starts with us. Give us a call at 248-353-9030 or email sales@jacapps.com for valuable input on your brand’s mobile strategy.

The Swedish furniture chain, IKEA, will soon be coming out with new pieces that will be incorporating Qi technology. With this, we will be able to place our mobile devices onto “charging pads” on the furniture, and in turn will charge our phones wirelessly.

According to Mashable, “Qi is a popular wireless power standard from the Wireless Power Consortium (WPC) that is available in many hotels, restaurants, coffee shops, airports, and other public locations.” IKEA wants to bring Qi into the home, and will be the first large furniture retailer to offer this technology in their products.

Although we will not have to deal with remembering where we placed our chargers, the furniture will still need to be plugged into a power source. According to The Wall Street Journal, IKEA will also be coming out with wireless charging kits that will fit into existing furniture.