I realized the other day that in this race to become the nexus (pun unintended) of home automation/IoT, the horse I think most likely to win the race is Amazon.

I realized the other day that in this race to become the nexus (pun unintended) of home automation/IoT, the horse I think most likely to win the race is Amazon. The Echo just came out with updates that control wemo switches and hue lights, meaning you can now say out loud in your house 'alexa, turn on the kitchen lights', and your kitchen lights will turn on. People have also made hacks to allow it to control a nest, which seems like something that would be an actual feature (since the same person also hacked in hue lights before amazon did it officially). And the edge that Echo has is that people aren't buying it for Home Automation, they're buying it on its own merits.