With the help of Amazon's Alexa, Smart Kitchen appliances are getting smarter. Amazon announced expanded abilities for its voice assistant to control kitchen appliances and made an investment in June. Matt Van Horn, Co-Founder & CEO of June, the maker of smart ovens, was with us to share how the investment will help the company.
Currently, you can ask Alexa June for an ETA of when food will be done cooking, says Van Horn. With the expanded capabilities through Amazon, users soon won’t have to address June specifically. He explains how the engineering team always has to think about the different use cases and possible voice commands. When they first built the oven, they thought a lot about voice. June considered putting a microphone inside, but ultimately decided not to, Van Horn said.
Van Horn breaks down the target audience June is going after. He says he sees a mix ranging from busy parents to millennials moving into new homes. He recognizes there is potential competition from big players in the space. Van Horn says he is starting to see some products that are taking a play out of June’s book. He says they have a head start, but stresses that June products get better the more you use them because of the software model.
Joe Cecela, Dream Exchange CEO, explains how they are aiming to form the first minority-controlled company to operate an exchange in U.S. history. Watch!
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
