Comcast's Xfinity Home customers can use their Xfinity X1 voice remote to locate Tile devices and see the result of their search on TV, the MVPD blogged Thursday. It’s the first video and voice control partnership for Tile and is another way Comcast wants to improve customer’s lives through home automation, it said. The post cites an Esure Home Insurance survey saying the average person spends more than 60 hours a year looking for misplaced items. Tile trackers can be attached to cars, backpacks, suitcases, keys and wallets to help users locate them, Comcast said. Sri Solur, senior vice president at Comcast, said the partnership solves “real-life problems,” giving the example of a child coming home from school without his backpack and a parent being able to see the pack is at school by asking the X1 remote. When a user asks for the location of an item, the TV displays the last known location and address of the missing Tile attached to it, it said. At launch, the Tile feature is available just to Xfinity Home customers with the X1 remote, who can access the feature by following prompts on the Xfinity Home app. Later this year, the companies plan to expand eligibility to all Xfinity internet customers, they said.

Amazon began taking pre-orders Wednesday for a $79 Echo Dot aimed at kids, along with a subscription service called FreeTime on Alexa. It will also roll out the $3-per-month subscription with parental controls and “family-focused” features including explicit song filtering, bedtime limits, educational Q&A, household communications, positive reinforcement for using the word "please” and disabled voice purchasing, it said. Teaching politeness in the age of smart speakers has been a topic on social media as the word “please” isn’t part of a command to voice assistants; and disabling voice purchasing and access to songs with explicit lyrics has been a concern among parents since voice control allows anyone in the household to access a smart speaker. The $79 Kids Edition Dot -- available in blue, green and red -- costs $30 more than the standard Echo Dot and includes a year of FreeTime Unlimited with access to entertaining and educational content; ad-free radio stations and playlists; 300 Audible books for kids; and a “growing list” of premium kids skills from Disney, National Geographic and Nickelodeon, said Amazon. Alexa will respond with jokes and other kid-appropriate content when a child says, "Alexa, I'm bored," said the company. FreeTime allows household announcements over the Dot, enabling parents to call kids to dinner, leave a message or use the Drop In feature to hear anything within range of the Dot from another Echo device in the home, it said. FreeTime on Alexa will roll out to existing Echo, Echo Dot, and Echo Plus owners via a free, over-the-air software update starting May 9, also the shipping date for the kids’ Dot, it said.

LG’s Wi-Fi-enabled appliances are now compatible with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, bringing voice control to its 100-plus SmartThinQ products, said the company Tuesday. The LG appliances are also controllable by Android and iOS apps. Examples of operations consumers can perform via app and voice: remotely preheating LG ovens, and asking Alexa or the Google Assistant to turn off the oven; receiving a notification via smartphone that the refrigerator door is open; and asking Alexa or Google to make extra ice; using the app to stop the washer or dryer when not at home, and asking Alexa or Google Assistant to check time left on the dryer without having to make a trip to the laundry room.

Amazon Alexa released a guide with 10 things every Alexa skill should do: (1) do one thing really well; (2) use a memorable invocation name and utterances; (3) focus on intents rather than commands; (4) simplify choices; (5) pass the one-breath test; (6) include a variety of responses; (7) handle the unexpected gracefully; (8) be enhanced using analytics; (9) provide contextual help; (10) be beta tested. Breaking out guidelines, it said Friday: “If you can say the response out loud without taking a breath, the response is probably the right length.” Another example was Alexa telling a user: “I heard you say pizza pie. I’m sorry, I don’t know how to help you with that.” The skill acknowledges it heard the user, and it repeats the words captured so the user understands why it missed. “This gives the user an opportunity to try their question again, or ask a different one,” it said.

Clarification: Futuresource forecasts the global market for voice assistant-enabled headphones and wearables will top 100 million units by 2021 (see 1803080012).

Voice assistants are on course to be a major user interface over the next two to three years, said a Thursday Futuresource report. Smart speakers were more than half of the 49.6 million voice-assistant devices shipped worldwide last year, and the technology -- from Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft -- has expanded to media streamers, consoles, smart TVs and wearables, it said. The research firm forecasts more than 100 million voice assistant-enabled products globally by 2021, with headphones, smart home hubs, networking gear and set-top boxes added to the mix. It predicts more devices supporting far-field mics will hit the market this year. Futuresource estimates Google Assistant will catch up to Amazon's Alexa over the next two years, but the two companies will be challenged in China, it said. Alibaba and Baidu have invested heavily in artificial intelligence, having released first products in 2017 and tailoring products to markets outside their domestic base, Futuresource said. Naver in South Korea and Line in Japan are following similar paths, it said. Some brands are using voice assistants to build a unified experience across multiple devices in a specific room such as a kitchen, a strategy that could extend to education and enterprise, it said.

Reports this week were rampant from Amazon Echo owners of spontaneous laughter coming from the Alexa voice assistant. We heard two different Alexa laugh tracks: one, with half a dozen “ha” sounds in a high pitch voice and a lower “hahaha.” Our Echo speaker -- with the trigger word “Echo” -- issued an unsolicited laugh while we were having a phone conversation 10 feet away. New Jersey schoolteacher James Orlando told us he and his wife were going to sleep when Orlando said, "Alexa, off" to turn off the music coming from the Echo. “There was a break of silence for a few seconds and then the creepy laugh,” he said. Numerous Twitter users reported trying to issue smart home commands to turn off lights and having Alexa laugh instead while the lights remained on. The Daily Dot suggested a rogue third-party app could be running in the background and “purposely creeping people out. There’s also the possibility that these devices are infected with malware,” it said. Amazon emailed us: “In rare circumstances, Alexa can mistakenly hear the phrase ‘Alexa, laugh.’ We are changing that phrase to be ‘Alexa, can you laugh?’ which is less likely to have false positives, and we are disabling the short utterance ‘Alexa, laugh.’ We are also changing Alexa’s response from simply laughter to ‘Sure, I can laugh’ followed by laughter.” When we asked our Alexa Thursday if she could laugh, she responded with a cutesy “tee hee” -- a different laugh from those we had heard from spontaneous events.

Some 57 percent of U.S. broadband households are interested in voice control features for their car, said a Wednesday Parks Associates report. Interest is highest among consumers who own smart speakers or voice recognition on smartphones, and is high among consumers planning to buy a car soon, it said. A quarter of U.S. broadband households plan to buy a new vehicle in the next 12 months, and more than 75 percent are interested in voice control as a feature, said Parks analyst Kristen Hanich. Parks predicts that, beyond directions and music control, consumer use of voice control in the car will parallel those for voice on smartphones and smart speakers for locating businesses, accessing weather information and sending emails or texts. Voice control will create new demands for data services that extend to the car, said Parks. "As consumer interest in voice control and connected safety features rises, there is a parallel rise in interest in car data plans, preferably bundled with consumers' current mobile data plan," Hanich said. Consumers are currently limited in their options for data sharing, she said, leaving opportunities for mobile service providers and third parties to “forge partnerships with automakers and dealers to aggregate billing, improve the onboarding process for car buyers, and enhance the consumer experience overall."

Amazon Echo’s lead in the worldwide smart speaker market is projected to fall to 51 percent in 2018 from 69 percent last year, said TrendForce Thursday, as Google Home adds to its base and HomePod reaches the market. The research firm predicts Google Home’s share at 21.6 percent behind Amazon Echo products, with HomePod, which hits stores Friday, third at 8.9 percent. Alibaba and Xiaomi are expected to take 6.3 and 5.1 percent of global share on sales in the China market, it said.

Sonos will launch the limited-time “Sonos Two” bundle Friday, offering two voice-enabled Sonos One speakers, regularly $199 each, for $349, it said in a Thursday announcement. That’s the same price as one Apple HomePod, which goes on preorder Friday, ahead of Feb. 9 availability (see 1801230058). Apple pushed Apple Music integration in its Tuesday HomePod news release. The bundle announcement coincided with an ad Sonos ran in The New York Times Thursday headlined “Freedom of Choice.” The full-page ad shows a Sonos One speaker with logos of nine music services: Spotify, Amazon Music, Deezer, Google Play Music, SoundCloud, Apple Music, SiriusXM, TuneIn and Tidal. Copy for the ad reads: “Big Tech wants to lock you into one music service. We think what you listen to should be up to you. That’s why we support over 80 music services, more than any other smart speaker system.” The announcement said Sonos has always been agnostic about sources of music and audio available for its speakers and said the company is “doing the same with voice assistants, preferring to stay open-minded and let listeners make the choices.” On whether Sonos would work with Siri or Bixby voice assistants in the future, a spokeswoman said the company is “always looking to add more voice partners.” On the timing of the Times ad, she said: “With several conversations around smart speakers, the ad calls out a trend where we are seeing big tech try to lock people into a single ecosystem.” She repeated Sonos’ agnosticism with music services and said Sonos has “always been about creating a home sound system to fill any room with your favorite music and content, not just a single speaker.” Sonos is continuing to work on Google Assistant and AirPlay 2 integration for later this year, she said.