Sonos is opening up their speakers to work with Amazon Echo and Spotify. Starting next year, you’ll be able to control playback on Sonos speakers with voice commands through Alexa-enabled devices.
- The Echo has a pretty decent speaker itself, but if you want some better quality, you’ll be able to connect it to your Sonos sound system. It’s a clever way to give any Sonos speaker voice control without building new hardware, and a public beta is scheduled for 2017. You’ll also be able to control playback directly through Spotify on both desktop and mobile. (You can already play Spotify music on Sonos speakers, but it requires you to go through the Sonos Controller app.) [The Verge]
- In other news, Google is launching a carpooling service in San Francisco as part of the Waze navigation app. A few months ago they began working with several companies in the Bay Area to organize ride shares with Waze Carpool, and now they’re planning on opening the service to the general public this fall. Although it will be in competition with Uber and Lyft, the fares will be low enough as to discourage drivers from actually becoming taxis. They just want us to make car friends. [The Wall Street Journal]
- Google+ is getting some new features. You can now add images and links in your comment replies, and they’ll be pushing the recent redesign onto users that was previously opt-in. For the time being you can still switch to the classic design though. [Google+]
- SwiftKey is finally getting back to normal after their minor snafu that was sent customized suggestions to the wrong people. They’re reenabling phone number and email address predictions along with the syncing service that initially caused the problem. [Android Police]
- Pebble is updating their watch OS with some new features, including a newly revamped timeline interface that makes it easier to see all your notifications and events. There’s also a new health app that’s less cumbersome to use. [TechCrunch]
Source: LifeHacker
