Google wants its virtual assistant in every room of your house

 San Francisco (Plusminus88)Google is teasing the future it thinks you want.

Inside a beautiful multi-million-dollar house in San Francisco on Wednesday, the company set up a model smart home outfitted with every Google device and connected home gadget imaginable.

The one-day demo highlighted an assortment of new Google Assistant features coming in the weeks ahead. There are recipe recommendations on smart displays and custom alarms for children recorded by actors from popular cartoons.

The tour was also a chance to see how Google (GOOGL) imagines people living, parenting and even sleeping surrounded by its products.

Smart speakers have given new life to the smart home market, which was struggling to move past its early-adopter beginnings before Amazon's (AMZN) voice assistant Alexa came along. Now the major companies, including Amazon, Samsung, Apple (AAPL) and Google, are fighting to lure customers into their own ecosystems.

The assistant personalities are different, but the applications are mostly the same.In Google's model home, most appliances are either internet-connected or plugged into a smart plug that lets you turn them on with a voice command. Communication is constant and everywhere — between rooms and family members who aren't in the house.

A feature lets a member of the household broadcast a message to every room, such as "I'll be home in 20 minutes, start the rice maker." It'll now let the person at home reply, so it's like a phone call or text message conversation but through speakers.

In addition, Google smart displays will now show recommended recipes based on the time of day and year. If you make a mess while cooking, just ask Google to send out the robotic vacuum.

Parenting is the newest hot area for voice assistants, and the Google house was set up to show how it could work for a family with kids. Ask Google Assistant to read your children a bedtime story, and it can tell them stories about Dora the Explorer and PAW Patrol. If you'd prefer to read your kids a book yourself, you can ask Google Assistant to "read along" with a book it knows and it will play matching music and sound effects in the background.

Parents are increasingly using alarms to help time kids' screen time, tooth brushing or studying. To build on this, Google Assistant is adding alarms voiced by characters from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and LEGO City. If you want to wake up your children without walking to their room, you could ask Google to turn up the lights or play music in their room while you sip coffee downstairs.

Upstairs in the master bedroom, adults can unwind by asking Google to put their phone on silent mode. The next morning, an alarm will go off and trigger a routine, automatically starting a coffee maker near the bed and reciting the day's weather and headlines.

Voice assistants may have started in a single room for playing music, but Google's house previews a future where almost every room has an always-listening microphone, a speaker, camera and a screen of some sort. (There was no bathroom demo on the tour, but it's safe to say they'll be there soon too.)

The future Google is selling can seem unnecessary and sometimes pricey, but it could be incredibly convenient for a busy family. Unless the power goes out. Then they'd just have to sweep and parent on their own.

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Why we need Windows Phone 7

For a slow holiday news week, there's been plenty of chatter over the last few days about Windows Phone 7.

It all started Tuesday when several tech blogs posted editorials on why Microsoft's operating system was failing, a fact that Mobile Burn's Dan Seifert wryly pointed out on Twitter. And then, almost as if in response, a leaked memo on WMPoweruser spilled details on the next software update, the Windows Phone Marketplace hit the 50,000-app mark, and WinSupersite reported that AT&T will be the first carrier to offer LTE-enabled Windows Phone 7 devices.

I'll spare you another musing on why I think Microsoft's operating system is failing (though I think "flailing" is better word), since I doubt that I'd have anything new to add to the discussion. By all means, stronger carrier support, more devices and apps, and faster software updates are crucial to Windows Phone 7's success. That's exactly why I hope the above rumors are true. And if you care about the future of smartphones, you should too.

Though I played with Windows Phone 7 quite a bit shortly after the first handsets were introduced in October, 2010, I used an HTC HD7 as my primary phone for a few months last autumn to really get to know the OS. To honestly see its merits and drawbacks, I couldn't view it through iPhone or Android-tinted glasses. And, frankly, I quickly understood why it was winning a high user satisfaction rating.

To me, Windows Phone 7 offers the best elements of both iOS and Android. The hub-based interface is clean, customizable, and completely original (I really love the notifications); you can choose from more than one handset design; updates arrive directly from Microsoft (though some also consider that a liability); there's real multitasking and great integration with apps (even if there aren't many of them), and I never had to hard reset a phone. In many ways, it's a great middle ground.

That's why we need a third viable smartphone OS, despite what warring Android and iOS fanboys might argue. At the moment, RIM certainly isn't it up to the task and HP's sad decision to pull the plug on WebOS has left with one less viable player. So I really hope that Microsoft can step up its WP7 game and prod the iOS and Android teams to do better. Do you really think Apple and Google would continue to be as innovative if the other wasn't around? Of course not, which is why we need strong competition to continue.

Like I've said before, we shouldn't want to live in a world with no choice in smartphones. Having just one OS would abysmal, but even two isn't enough. So in addition to actually trying to use the OS for once, I hope that knee-jerk Windows Phone 7 detractors--maybe you'll find some in the comments section for this blog--think twice before denouncing the OS as dead and dancing on its grave. Choice is fun. No choice is boring.

Yeah, we've heard a few times now that Windows the glory days of Windows Phone 7's success are just around corner. I pretty much said as much in my 2012 CES preview, and I said it a few times last year like when Nokia announced its Microsoft partnership. Maybe it won't come at all, but with Nokia designs, LTE phones, more apps, and bigger updates coming down the road, anything is possible.

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Samsung still doMinates mobile phone market, but Apple is gaining

Samsung is still the biggest maker of mobile phones, but Apple is gaining ground, according to data released today by market researcher ComScore.

Samsung accounted for 25.6 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers for the three months ending November 11, a slight increase of 0.3 percent over the previous three months. While Apple came in fourth with 11.2 percent, its 1.4 percent increase was the greatest market share increase for the previous three months.

Samsung and Apple were the only mobile phone makers in the top 5 to boost their share of the market during that period. LG came in at No. 2 with 20.5 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers, a decrease of 0.5 percent, followed by Motorola, which lost 0.3 percent to finish the period with 13.7 percent of the market.

In the No. 5 spot, beleaguered handset maker Research In Motion logged the greatest percentage loss, dropping 0.6 percent to 6.5 percent.

Android, meanwhile, continues to dominate the mobile OS landscape. Apple's iOS also made headway, though not at Google's expense.

Google's mobile operating system controlled 46.9 percent of market, up 3.1 percent over the previous three months, while Apple's iOS came logged an increase of 1.4 percent to finish in second with 28.7 percent. The rest of the top 5 platforms all lost marketshare: RIM lost 3.1 percent to finish with 16.6 percent, Microsoft lost 0.5 percent to finish with 5.2 percent, and Symbian lost 0.3 percent to finish with 1.5 percent.

Today's data does not reflect the 700,000 new Android devices Google says it is activating on a daily basis, or the 4.2 million iOS devices and about 2.6 million Android devices activated on Christmas Day.

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