Smart Tech Today #1: Voice Assistants in Your Ears

On Monday, Mikah Sargent and I recorded episode 1 of Smart Tech Today in person at the TWiT studio. In the show, we:

  • Attempt to create nicknames for the major voice assistants. Be sure to share your ideas for Siri, Alexa, and Google nicknames by emailing [email protected]!
  • Discuss all the products Amazon announced at its recent press event. Matthew gets Mikah to change his mind about the smart oven Amazon launched.
  • Ponder the future of voice-based operating systems given the fact that every company seems to be announcing earbuds that work with smart assistants.
  • Give a brief rundown of their smart home setups.
  • Answer questions about automating alarms using Siri Shortcuts and NFC tags.
  • Give a shout-out to the one-and-only Gemmy the Twerking Bear.

Here’s Mikah and I after recording – had a blast! We’re off to a great start, but any help sharing the show to new people still goes a long way.

Once we hit 30,000 subscribers, we’ll have a full video feed of each episode too, available on our YouTube channel:

Plus, here’s a set of Siri Shortcuts for subscribing and listening to the show:

We’ll be live every Monday at 4pm PST, with the episode dropping later each evening. Thanks for listening!

Links for the show:

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