Tag: Google Home

At the Google event this morning in San Francisco, the new Google Home Mini was officially announced with availability starting later this month.  The hockey puck style Home Mini is designed to integrate into the décor of any home without being intrusive.  It comes in three colors, coral, chalk and charcoal.

Like Google Home, the Mini has Google Assistant built-in and works seamlessly with existing Google Home to make it available in every room.  It can also be apart of the new Broadcast feature that is coming to Home so a message can be sent to every Home in the house.

The much anticipated Google event to launch the next generation of Pixel phones, the new Pixelbook, the new Google Home Mini and many other things happens tomorrow.  The event kicks off at 9 a.m. Pacific here in the US.  That’s 12 p.m. Eastern and 5 p.m. London time.  The event is being held in San Francisco.

As they have done with previous events, Google will be streaming the event live on YouTube.

You can go to YouTube and watch it there or you can simply watch it below.  Either way, you can set yourself a reminder to tune in for the event.

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Google Assistant has grown up a lot in the past year thanks to developers and services leveraging APIs to create services for it.  While Assistant still lags behind Amazon’s Alexa when it comes to the number of services available, the gap is closing.

That presents a challenge for users who are looking for a service or feature but aren’t quite sure if it is there.  Google has addressed this and made it easy to find services for Google Assistant right from within it or the Google Home app.  Now you can simply type in a keyword to search and the Assistant will return all of the services that do that particular thing that you searched.

Last month, Google and Walmart made an announcement that shopping for the retailer would be coming to Google Express and Google Home.  That agreement has now gone live and you can find Walmart in the app as a shopping option.

Users will be able to link their Walmart online account with Google Express and shop a wide range of products from the retailer, mostly focused on groceries, and have them added to your Express shopping list.  They are then shipped to your home and if you spend over $35, the shipping is free.

Google has announced that US retailing giant Walmart will be coming to Google Express in late September.  The addition of Walmart to the shopping app means that you will be able to buy thousands of products from the retailer via the app or by adding it to your list via Google Home.

We’re entering an exciting partnership with Walmart to bring you hundreds of thousands of products at Walmart’s Every Day Low Prices—everything from laundry detergent to Legos—that you can buy through voice with your Assistant on Google Home or on the Google Express website or app.

The addition of Walmart to Google’s shopping app & service will greatly expand the products available to users.   If you already have a Walmart account, in the Express app you will be able to link your accounts which will allow for a quick and smooth shopping experience.

Google Home has a server-side update rolling out that brings a much desired feature to the Smart Speaker device:  Hands-free calling.  Home users in the United States & Canada will now have the ability to place a call to a local business or a contact by saying, “Hey Google, call (business or contact)”.  It is a feature that was highlighted earlier this year at Google I/O as Google continues to improve the device.

The new feature means that instead of having to pick up your mobile, you can simply make a call from any Google Home device you have in your home.  Obviously the call is broadcasted via the speaker built into the device so private calls should still be dealt with from your phone.