As Thanksgiving looms, many Americans are stressing over preparations to ensure everything runs smoothly and that all members of their family have a good time. There is no need to worry though – smart technology can be your life jacket this holiday season.
How to make it on time?
Family members often travel from all over the country to make it to Thanksgiving dinners. On the day itself nothing is more stressful than delayed flights and long queues for security checks. For your convenience, the US Customs and Border Protection Department approved the use of the Mobile Passport app which allows US passport holders to fill in all necessary forms and answer CBP questions directly from their Android or iOS smart devices.
The app contains maps of hundreds of airports globally, including gate directions and available amenities. This is especially handy if you are running late as it also provides line wait times and passenger ratings of the airport services.
Cook to perfection with the IoT
Handling the preparation of the Thanksgiving meal is never an easy task. To ensure your turkey is not dry and your pumpkin pie is on point, let Amazon Alexa and GE connected appliances become your sous chefs.
This holiday season, Amazon’ Alexa and GE combined forces and introduced the smarter way of cooking. By connecting the Alexa virtual assistant with GE smart stoves, device owners can preheat their oven remotely or check the internal food temperature while the food is cooking by using voice commands.
The Alexa feature for GE is called Geneva, so whenever you want to check how your turkey is doing in the oven, simply say: ‘Alexa, Tell Geneva to check the turkey temperature.’ Geneva can also ensure that the turkey is placed in the center of the oven for even cooking, whereas an integrated meat probe can indicate if the dish is overcooked, undercooked, or just right.
Safety comes first
With the increasing popularity of IoT devices, it’s important to ensure your holiday is not ruined by hacked refrigerators, home control systems, and other connected tools. During the holiday season, consumers are still just as susceptible to cyber attacks.
Even though there is no widespread anti-virus protection on IoT gadgets yet, device owners can check the status of their smart appliances by visiting the Internet of Things Scanner page, maintained by the security firm BullGuard. The page can tell you if your IP is on the public list and can run a scan for your IoT devices with ports open to the internet.
Acting cautiously with the IoT is not an overprotection. The recent DDoS attack denied access to quite a few big-name websites and made them inaccessible for hours. After an investigation, it was revealed the attack took control over IoT hardware which was then used to attack DYN and take down some of the world’s largest websites.
With Thanksgiving, you want everything to run like clockwork, so make sure your technology works for you and not against you.
