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After several months of waiting, the new Harman Kardon Invoke smart speaker will be released this coming Sunday, October 22nd.  The speaker is powered by Microsoft Cortana and is the first dedicated Cortana smart speaker to hit the market.  It will be priced at $199 and will be available through a variety of retailers.

Microsoft Cortana has 148 million active users today and that number is expected to jump with Invoke.  The personal assistant, named after the personal assistant in the Halo franchise, has been a staple of Windows 10 since inception while the Android and iOS versions have been available for some time now.  In fact, on Android, you can make Cortana your default personal assistant.

In the year since its release, there is little room for debate on the growth that Google Home and Google Assistant have seen.  The smart speaker has sold well and with brains behind it, Assistant, has continued to grow in abilities on what it can help you with in your day-to-day.  I’ve had a Google Home in my home office for nearly a year now and it is so integrated into my day that I can hardly see not having it around.

If there has been one challenge with Google Home, it has been the size.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s not huge at just under 6″ tall, but it is noticeable if you have it in a bedroom or family room.   That is where the $50 Google Home Mini comes into the picture.  Standing only 1.65″ tall and covered in an elegant fabric, the Home Mini is designed to go into various rooms of your home and just be there unobtrusively.  It is designed to blend in but remain always available and provide excellent sound quality.  The Google Home Mini truly is for the masses because of all of this and a price point that is hard to resist.

A quick heads-up for readers who use Chrome OS.  You have a new update rolling out.  The new build is version 61.0.3163.123 (Platform version: 9765.85.0) and according to the release notes, will be rolling out to a majority of devices starting today.  As always, you can check for the update manually by typing chrome://help in the browser omnibar and tapping the “check for updates” button.

The update does not specifically call out any new features or fixes.  Rather, it is a bug fix and security update for the platform.  Over the past few months it has become common practice for Google to release a major update at the beginning of the month then one of these smaller, fix oriented updates around mid-month.

It has literally been a year since it was announced but Visa Checkout integration into Android Pay is finally starting to roll out to users.  Back in October 2016, Google and Visa announced that Visa Checkout and Masterpass would be coming to the tap-to-pay app for purchases online.  At the time, it was indicated that the integration would happen in early 2017 but it has taken until October of this year to happen.

Better late than never I suppose.

With the integration, Android Pay users can pay on hundreds of thousands of new sites where Visa Checkout or Masterpass are accepted using their preferred device authentication method – like fingerprint recognition. No longer will users have to remember multiple usernames and passwords in order to checkout, saving them time and hassle.