Chronicle Staff and News Services Updated 5:16 pm, Tuesday, January 24, 2017 Photo: PARAMOUNT PICTURES Image 1of/1 Caption Close Image 1 of 1 Patrick Stewart as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in “Star Trek: Nemesis” Patrick Stewart as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in “Star Trek: Nemesis” Photo: PARAMOUNT PICTURES Beer on the moon, Star Trek in your Echo, $100M

Ninety-nine percent of appliances and devices in the home are not connected. Today, you have no idea if the HVAC is working efficiently, let alone if it is about to breakdown. Ditto for your hot water heater, washer, dryer, dishwasher, etc. The failure of any one of these appliances is a major inconvenience and significant

Since Home arrived a few months ago, Google has been regularly adding new features to the compact speaker and its virtual assistant. Today, the company announced that the connected device can now be used to control smart home gadgets from Belkin’s WeMo line and Honeywell. This adds more options for controlling lights, switches, thermostats and

The future of smart devices is in the home, and increasingly Americans are turning to Amazon as a source for those devices. More than 8 million Americans now have an Amazon Echo device, with the number of Echo households tripling in the past quarter, according to a new report from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners. Awareness

Google was a bit late to the connected home party. Its Amazon Echo competitor, Home, officially launched in November of last year, and slowly but surely, the company has been adding some key partners to help expand its reach. Last year, Nest, Philips Hue and Samsung SmartThings all were added to Google’s burgeoning connected home ecosystem, and

The Honeywell Lyric. Chris Monroe/CNET “Hey Google, turn up the temperature.” If you have the always-listening Google Home on your countertop, you now have more options if you want to make your home smarter. Previously, you could talk to the Google Home and adjust the temperature with the Nest Learning Thermostat. Now, the Google Assistant