People are lazy. Well, let me speak for myself. I am lazy. So it’s no wonder why on this week’s episode of CTRL+T, I was drawn to some news items that touched on home assistants and personal assistants for when you’re out in the wild.
Amazon’s Echo Dot was the top-selling product on all of Amazon this holiday season and startup Fin recently launched its human/AI personal assistant.
Henry Pickavet, TC editorial director and CTRL+T co-host, and I also explored the HQ Trivia craze. This past week, HQ Trivia launched its Android app in Canada and opened up pre-registration for U.S.-based Android users. HQ plans to launch its Android app in the U.S. on January 1.
In the vein of getting people or AI to do things for you, I spoke with Omni founder and CEO Thomas McLeod about his on-demand storage and rental startup. McLeod described Omni as an “operating system for things.”
For example, Omni is going to start building out a service where you can get services performed, like dry cleaning for your suit, before Omni delivers it to you from storage. Down the road, McLeod envisions an ATM of sorts, where you put a bike in storage in San Francisco and then have access to a bike somewhere across the world.
“It’s more about having access to things and not necessarily your things,” he said.
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