Google’s latest Assistant SDK updates make third-party speakers smarter

Support for third-party actions and better configuration options

Google has announced a new batch of updates for its Google Assistant SDK, which lets developers create their own Google Home-like devices powered by Google’s digital assistant that makes third-party and homemade devices closer to Google’s official smart speaker.

The biggest addition is support for third-party actions — essentially Google’s version of Alexa Skills for Assistant — that will let developers using the Assistant SDK directly control their hardware with Assistant. Actions have been available on the official Google Assistant app for smartphones and Google Home speakers, but this marks the first time that Google has opened it to allow developers to use them for direct control of devices. Much like third-party devices with Alexa built-in can control your smart home — like the Ecobee4 for example — third-party devices with Assistant built-in will soon be able to do the same thing.

Additionally, there’s now support for text-based queries and responses — something that the full fledged Assistant has been able to do for a while. Google’s also added several new languages to the Assistant SDK, including English (Australia, Canada, UK, US), French (Canada, France), German, and Japanese.

Lastly, Google has added the ability to allow users to customize settings in an Assistant SDK-based device from the Google Assistant app, allowing users to set things like language and location (which, conveniently, Google has just expanded options for), and toggle personalized results. Users will also now be able to set a fixed GPS location for their SDK devices, enabling better support for location-specific queries like local stores or weather.

The new features for the Assistant SDK are available now — for full details, check out Google’s updated documentation.

Comments

The Secret Science 02:The 30 Most Disturbing Human Experiments in History

Disturbing human experiments aren’t something the average person thinks too much about. Rather, the progress achieved in the last 150 years of human history is an accomplishment we’re reminded of almost daily. Achievements made in fields like biomedicine and psychology mean that we no longer need to worry about things like deadly diseases or masturbation as a form of insanity. For better or worse, we have developed more effective ways to gather information, treat skin abnormalities, and even kill each other. But what we are not constantly reminded of are the human lives that have been damaged or lost in the name of this progress. The following is a list of the 30 most disturbing human experiments in history. 30. The Tearoom Sex Study Sociologist Laud Humphreys often wondered about the men who commit impersonal sexual acts with one another in public restrooms. He wondered why “tearoom sex” — fellatio in public restrooms — led to the majority of homosexual arrests in ...

The Strange and Stranger Case of Wyndham Lathem

A Northwestern University plague researcher has been charged with a brutal murder. Here’s what we know about him. WIKIMEDIA, TONY WEBSTER O n July 27, The Chicago Tribune reported that there was an arrest warrant issued for Wyndham Lathem , a microbiologist at Northwestern University. The crime Lathem would later be charged with was brutal—26-year-old Trenton James Cornell-Duranleau, whose body was found in Lathem’s apartment, had been stabbed dozens of times. But Lathem was nowhere to be found. As events unfolded over the following days, it became clear he had fled from Chicago to California with a second suspect, 56-year-old Andrew Warren, a University of Oxford employee from the United Kingdom visiting the states. Along the way, the two men apparently made an anonymous $1,000 donation in Cornell-Duranleau’s name to the Lake Geneva Public Library and another donation for $5,610 to a Chicago health center. Lathem had also sent a video to fa...

Popular painkiller doesn’t have more heart risks than others, study claims

NEW ORLEANS — A long-awaited study on painkillers called nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, the most widely prescribed class of drugs in the world, has concluded that the three most commonly used carry a similar risk of cardiovascular complications. Yet critics say the study was too flawed to fairly compare them. Concerns about a type of NSAID called COX-2 inhibitors peaked in 2004 when the drug Vioxx was withdrawn from the market — a decision steeped in scandal because manufacturer Merck & Co had initially hidden data that would reveal the drug’s cardiovascular risks. A second COX-2 inhibitor, Pfizer Inc.’s Celebrex, was allowed to remain on the market with the condition that Pfizer conduct a study to prove that Celebrex was no worse than two older NSAIDs, naproxen and ibuprofen. The study lasted 10 years and enrolled more than 24,000 patients, but faced challenges. Doctors in European Union countries would not participate because they were worried a...

The Research

Search This Blog