In 2017, Google is finally ready for your living room

Google has been talking about your living room for a long time.

We imagine any new tech thing takes a lot of planning, a lot of money, and a lot of time. The push to get Google into the living room certainly did. Ideas to expand Android and use new technology in your home were being kicked around out loud in front of groups of developers as far back as 2011. We’ve discussed Google’s plans for living room domination almost as far back as that on our podcast. It was never a secret, but in 2017 it might actually happen.

A lot of people have written some really smart words about Google’s movement into places where you and your family and friends hang out and relax. I’ve spent the majority of the year in anticipation, afraid to jinx it by writing anything of my own. I was afraid that Google wouldn’t be able to do the most important thing they needed to do to get into those places: nail the experience. They have to get that right to have any chance of success with a unified push for everything Google where you work and play.

More: With Google Home and Google Wifi, we’re finally getting a proper smart home foundation

Getting it right doesn’t mean getting it perfect. It means showing everyone who uses it that it’s a foundation for something that not only does what we need but makes it easy and fun. And Google did nail it.

Google Cast, Google Home, and Google Wifi feel like they belong together when you use them. You could add Nest and Android TV to that list and enthusiasts would agree. None of the devices or services are perfect, and even Google Cast has its quirks and can be stubbornly stupid sometimes. But you really do feel as if these products were made for each other in a way that no other Google products have. Articles and debate about what they do wrong or how they match up to the competition are important to have but often overlook the bigger picture that these are great products that everyone only expects to become better. They don’t need to be fixed or redone, they need to be refined and more great features need to be added on top of the great features already there. Nothing is broken.

We didn’t arrive here overnight. Chromecast started as a small idea with a goofy name and has taken some time to get where it is today. Google spent a year learning what people wanted from a router. And they’ve been trying to be smart and build something you want to talk to for at least a couple years. These past products were all good in their own right, but mostly lacked the broad consumer appeal needed to be successful in the homes of folks who weren’t waiting for the next thing from Google they could buy and just wanted cool stuff. This year, they finally reached that “just cool stuff” status for everyone.

Google’s current crop of hardware products are all better versions of things we have been using for a while.

That makes 2017 an important year for Google in a new way. With the products and technology ready to convince the consumer at large that it’s time to buy them and increased presence in advertisement and stores, the cost of doing things wrong has skyrocketed. Each decision and each change in the way Home, Wifi and Cast work or even feel when using them has to be great and make everything better to carry this momentum to more cash registers and more coffee tables. A major gaffe or fundamental change to the way things work — things we’ve seen from everyone a time or two — could tank the living room initiative.

I’m not particularly worried for 2017, though. This is a new Google. They do things we don’t like but they also seem to have become focused on the user experience more than the past. There’s still a way to go, but they are steadily moving in the right direction.

I can’t hide the fact that Google Home, the whole Google Cast ecosystem, and Google Wifi have wowed me and I’m not going to try. Even when they don’t or can’t do what I want the way I want it, they are still great products that do a lot of other great things. They’re fun to use and I never thought I’d have a microphone listen to my life voluntarily, even if it is confined to my office behind a shut door. They’re even fun after they’ve malfunctioned at the beginning of an important company online meeting and started playing music and announcing loudly to everyone that they were sorry but couldn’t do … something. I’m not surprised that I’m excited about a router but am surprised that so many other people are. It tells me Google is ready for the living room and 2017 might not be another year where we’re all left wanting.

Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and season’s greetings everyone. Love each other.

Honest Few turns your social media posts into money for books

With e-book libraries, Amazon Prime Reading and the plethora of online services available putting free publications in your various devices, it’s a wonder that people still pay any money for books anymore. But a new website called Honest Few is founded on the belief that you should still give something in return for your digital books: social media shares. Instead of shelling out the $3 to $20 you would normally drop for an Amazon bestseller, Honest Few is offering popular titles for free, as long as you spread word of the service and book on Twitter or Facebook. As a former bookworm who now only borrows books via New York Public Library’s app or Prime Reading, I was intrigued by this new way of getting a good novel for free.

The process of downloading a book for free on Honest Few is quick and straightforward. Browse the library of available titles, either by cover or on a grid of tiles containing one-sentence synopses. When you see something you like, click on the link below either the image or the quote, and you’ll be taken to the book’s author page. There, you can read more details about the story, get to know the author’s background, and see a list of reasons why the writer thinks you’ll enjoy the book. Once you decide you want to read it, you can either purchase it or get it for free.

To get it gratis, you’ll have to trade a share or like from your Facebook or Twitter accounts. The idea of exchanging social media exposure for goods and services isn’t new. Amazon sellers frequently give users products in return for reviews on the site, while prolific YouTube, Instagram and Twitter stars often get rewarded for talking about certain brands on their accounts. Heck, some people have made a living out of doing just that. But Honest Few lets basically anyone get books for a simple share; it doesn’t matter how large your following is.

Honest Few’s library is diverse but very limited, with only 59 titles right now. Its offerings range from nonfiction self help and anthologies to fictional tales of romance, suspense and crime. I found the discovery grid interesting, but ultimately a letdown. Everything sounds intriguing when it’s summarized in one well-written sentence (kudos to Honest Few’s team here). They were so intriguing, in fact, that I ended up checking out new genres I wouldn’t have read otherwise. In that sense, the discovery system is effective. But after landing on one too many listings for romance novels I didn’t want to read, I started to feel tricked. Or maybe I was a bit embarrassed at my evident taste for cheesy love stories.

If you want to hate-read any of the titles you discover, you can do so at basically no cost to you. It’s free; you just have to tweet something, anything, to get access to the book. In theory, when you want to get a book for free, all you need to do is like Honest Few’s Facebook page or share that link on Facebook or Twitter. A pre-written post appears, tagging the website’s social media accounts and including a link to the page. After you submit your post, you’ll get a link to a Google Drive folder with the book you wanted, in MOBI, EPUB and sometimes PDF formats.

Before you can download anything, though, you’ll have to sign up for an account. Registering requires that you abide by the site’s terms and conditions, which includes a section on Deals. Here, it says that the company only offers “a limited quantity of free or discounted products.” Because of that, securing one of these products is not guaranteed, and “most deals are first-come-first-serve, and each can be redeemed for the purchase of one (1) item only.” This, I believe, is the part that is supposed to enforce self-government on the user’s part. It’s oddly worded, though; deals here refers to books, although I wasn’t sure until I clarified with the company.

This expectation of good behavior from the user is important because you don’t actually have to tag Honest Few or share the link to that particular page to get your free book. You can craft any tweet at all and still get access to the download link. I ended up going on a download spree, and all I did was post some Tweets to my personal account, without even tagging the site. I felt a little bad, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to talk about a book I was reading before I knew whether it would be good. To assuage my guilt, though, I tweeted once about trying out the service to feel better about not paying anything for these books.

Having to look at the author’s profile before you get the book for free certainly makes you think twice about gaming the system. But it’s also very easy to skip the part of each listing that makes you learn about the writer, whether you simply scroll past the details at top speed, or click the “Get It Free” link to just straight to the share-to-download area. If the company wants to truly ensure it gets publicity, it should find a way to make sure that only shares that tag the Honest Few account or link to the site qualify for free books. But perhaps giving away these files for non-restricted posts could be enough to generate the word of mouth that the tweet-for-books system was meant to.

In the end, although I got a few interesting new books out of my time with Honest Few, my biggest takeaway is the realization of how valuable my social media profiles are. If the future of technology involves a similar form of barter trade, I’m curious to see what I will eventually be able to afford. Meanwhile, I’ll curl up with some new e-books that I got just by tweeting about a new service.