Episode 61 - The Wink Debacle (and Recovery)

With no guest for this week's show we take the opportunity to get caught up on some significant goings-on in the smart home. To kick things off we have a brief discussion about the official launch of the Apple Watch. We sat down to record this episode the night before the product finally goes on sale. Mostly we discuss how, and which, smart home manufacturers will benefit from the product's release. We hope to have more to chat about on this front for next week's episode, so be sure to tune in to get our thoughts. Following our Apple Watch discussion, we hit a few follow up points regarding the "Great Dash Button Debate". Back on Epsiode 58 (http://www.hometech.fm/shows/58)  we had a conversation about Amazon's recently released Dash Button and Replenishment Services. For fear of kicking a dead horse we won't go into specifics here. We did however want to mention that recently good friends of the show Mike Wolf and Richard Gunther gave their thoughts on an episode (http://www.technology.fm/thesmarthome...) of Mike's Smart Home Show. They both offer great insights, and we recommend you give it a listen. After (hopefully) concluding our Dash-debate we move on to give our thoughts about the recent Control4 "Smarter Living Experience (http://www.control4.com/o/live-event) ". Last week (http://www.hometech.fm/shows/60) we had Brad Hintze from Control4 on to discuss the event. With the show now in our collective rearview we provide our analysis. In spite of some apparent technical difficulties, it would seem Control4 effectively communicated their message. Tune in to hear more. Lastly we discuss what was (regrettably) the main event in smart home news last week. In what was a completely avoidable set of circumstances, the folks over Wink (http://www.wink.com/products/)  failed to update a security certificate on their hardware. This oversight caused a substantial number of their deployed units to fall offline completely, with no ability to reconnect. There are a number of lessons in this story, not the least of which is how the company handled the outage (http://status.winkapp.com/) - effectively and with full humility and candor. Listen in as we give our thoughts on how this event will affect Wink, and the smart home landscape at large. As always we hope you enjoy! If you have any thoughts, comments, or suggestions related to this week's show, or any others, please don't hesitate to contact us (http://www.hometech.fm/feedback/) , or let us know on twitter (  / hometechpodcast  ) ! See you next week! Show Notes • Tivo Roamio (https://www.tivo.com/shop/roamio) • HomeTech Patreon Page (  / hometech  ) • Alarm.com Apple Watch App (http://www.alarm.com/blog/apple-watch...) • CEPro - Let the Apple Watch Home Automation Games Begin (http://www.cepro.com/article/let_the_...) • Lutron Apple Watch (   • Lutron App for Caséta  Wireless on Apple W...  ) • The Smart Home Show - The All-Amazon Smart Home Speculation Episode (http://www.technology.fm/thesmarthome...) • Control4 Live Smater Video (http://www.control4.com/o/live-event) • Wink Recovery Instructions (http://hubfix.wink.com/recovery.html)