{"id":657796,"date":"2013-05-14T08:00:27","date_gmt":"2013-05-14T12:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gigaom.com\/?p=644979"},"modified":"2013-05-14T08:00:27","modified_gmt":"2013-05-14T12:00:27","slug":"the-hue-lightbulb-makes-some-connected-friends-and-gets-new-skills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/657796","title":{"rendered":"The Hue lightbulb makes some connected friends and gets new skills"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hold onto your Hue lightbulbs, because Philips is updating its connected lights and the app that controls them with some new capabilities. The most fun element is a partnership with IFTTT, the startup that allows you to link your connected devices — like your color-changing lightbulbs — to your web services with an easy few-step process.<\/p>\n

This means you could create an IFTTT recipe<\/a> that lets your Hue bulb turn a different color, or blink when a file is uploaded to your Dropbox, an email comes in or it’s going to rain. IFTTT already has a partnership with Belkin’s WeMo, so hooking it up to the Hue seems right on track.<\/p>\n

To me, the IFTTT partnership is the most exciting, but others may like the geofencing aspect that can automatically turn on or change the light’s settings as a Hue user arrives home — without the user even having to take their smartphone out of their pocket. That, plus a feature that lets users schedule their use settings on a calendar as opposed to resetting them every day were added in response to user demand.<\/p>\n

Philips has been riding a wave of success in the developer community since launching the lightbulbs last October. Despite the $200 price tag for a starter kit containing three bulbs and $59 price tag for each bulb, many tech-savvy people are picking them up and playing with them. In March it opened up its software development kit<\/a> to make that play easier and give larger companies the tools and support to integrate the bulbs into their own connected home products.<\/p>\n

Today’s features just tie it even more into a developing network of connected devices that can communicate with each other over the web — a vision the creators of the Hue seem to embrace<\/a> based on my discussion of how they view the internet of things during a podcast in March.<\/p>\n

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