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Following in the footsteps of Google’s own Nest, Logitech has announced that the Logitech Circle  home security cameras now integrates with Google Assistant.

Today, Logitech announced Circle 2 home security cameras now work with the Google Assistant on smart speakers like Google Home, eligible Android phones and iPhones, so you can easily ask to watch live video of what’s happening in and around your home. Start by saying, “Ok Google, show me the backyard camera,” to show a live view of your backyard on your TV using the Google Assistant and Chromecast, or a TV with Chromecast built in.

The news is great for consumers as it now provides a choice of home security cameras that can leverage Google Assistant for real time monitoring of your home or apartment.

The integration works with both the original Circle cameras as well as the recently updated Circle 2 models and works on both wired & wireless integration into your home network.  Functionally, it works the same as the Nest cameras do with Google Assistant.  If you have a “front door” camera, you can say, “Hey Google, show me the front door” and it will stream the video feed from that camera to your Chromecast.  Additional cameras are support for other doors or areas in your home or apartment.

For those of you are in the Early Release program for Microsoft Edge, look for an update to hit your devices today.  The update for the Android port of the Windows 10 browser is mainly aimed at bringing stability and performance improvements to the app.  No specific items were called out in the release notes other than these general statements.

It has been widely reported by those in the testing program that the Android version of the app is slower and less stable than the preview that is available on iOS.  This update is aimed at addressing some of those issues.

I’m part of the Early Release program on Microsoft Edge and I’ve already received the update.  In my very preliminary testing for this post, the browser certainly feels faster than the original build with improved rendering speeds on pages.

The first public beta of Android Oreo 8.1 has been released to the Android Beta Program community today.  The new build is OPP5.170921.005 and it is the same across all eligible devices in the program.  That includes the Pixel 2, Pixel 2 XL, Pixel, Pixel XL, Pixel C, Nexus 6P and the Nexus 5X.

It has been suspected that this first maintenance build of Oreo was going to be here quickly after the Pixel 2 launch and that has proven to be the case.  Oreo 8.1 does bring some noticeable changes from an end user experience but for developers, there are some significant changes.

From a user perspective, there are minor changes to the UI like colors on the settings menu, a new ambient screen on the original Pixel lineup and Bluetooth power indicators on the notification shade. Most of these are in the new Pixel 2 lineup already but are no going out across other Pixel and some Nexus devices too.

For developers, the API level is up to API 27 but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.  There are other new APIs along with refinements to other features of the platform.    Here is the rundown.

Neural Networks API

The Neural Networks API (NNAPI) provides apps with hardware acceleration for on-device machine learning operations. The API supports on-device model creation, compilation, and execution. Apps typically do not use NNAPI directly; instead, NNAPI is meant to be called by machine learning libraries, frameworks, and tools that let developers train their models and deploy them on Android devices.

Added WallpaperColors API

Android 8.1 Developer Preview (API level 27) adds support for managing wallpaper colors. This feature lets you create a WallpaperColors object from a bitmap, a drawable, or by using the first three most visually representative colors. You can also retrieve details of the first three noticeable colors of a wallpaper.

Sprint, the US’ fourth largest carrier, has posted their fiscal 2nd quarter (calendar 3rd quarter) financial report today.  The report was better than analysts expected but the company still had a $48 million loss for the period ending September 30, 2017.  The company reported an operating income of $601 million with earnings of $2.7 billion before EBIDA.

The carrier added some 279,000 post-paid phones in the last quarter with 95,000 pre-paid net adds.  That is a massive swing from the same quarter in 2016 where the company reported 449,000 pre-paid losses.  The post-paid additions also represents 9 consecutive quarters that the carrier has increased subscriptions.

The carrier also reported that it has $6.4 billion in cash reserves with a total of $11.4 billion in liquidity.

It has been widely reported that Sprint has been struggling for years but new leadership and direction, as well as revamped advertising campaign, has brought refreshed hope for the carrier.