Text Messaging Featured Article

Text messaging might have started off as a service to allow you to quickly and easily send messages to friends and family, but over the last few years it has grown into something quite a bit more. LG announced during last week’s CES (News - Alert) that it has come up with a  text messaging service that will allow you to send those messages to your home appliances. Texts like “turn off” or “preheat to 350 degrees” will allow you to start working on dinner or save energy no matter where you are.

HomeChat isn’t actually that new a concept. There are literally dozens of different companies that are all working on trying to develop smart home applications. The difference between HomeChat and M2M devices is that this isn’t an automatic thing. With this text messaging service you can have complete control over your washing machine, or over, or toaster or conceivably any appliance you would like.

Instead of setting and forgetting or leaving the control in a program’s hands you can easily change something if a problem arises. Maybe you told the oven to start preheating as you left work and then got delayed. You should also be able to send a text turning the oven back off, quickly and easily. The best thing about HomeChat is that the program is designed to allow people to text more naturally.

LG’s head of appliance brand marketing in the US, David VanderWaal, explained how this new service will work while presenting at CES. “You no longer need to learn machine commands,” he said. “Just speak naturally and your oven will understand you.” Other companies, such as Samsung (News - Alert) have been working on connected homes as well, but no company has really managed to put the tech together in a way that allows the average user ease and comfort.

The first company that is able to crack the code of connected homes, is likely going to be the company that is recognized as the king of this particular vertical. LG took its first steps towards claiming the crown.