Only 4 weeks left and 2021 is over.
I remember starting my Top Two Tech Stories in January, 2021 – and it’s been fun! Right now – not sure if i’ll continue into 2022.
For now, there’s alot going on in the tech world – with the whole metaverse etc.. but I’m going to bring it right home. And focus on two stories, that would’ve been relevant to folks here.
First up – it’s all about the Holiday Season!
- Nest Doorbell and their tunes!
Google announced this Wednesday on its Nest community blog the return of holiday-themed ringtones for Nest Doorbells (via 9to5Google). Visitors arriving for family holiday gatherings can now press the Nest Doorbell and be greeted with sounds of the holidays, including “Winter,” Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Christmas, and New Year’s jingles.
Google did have holiday bell options last year as well — but only as a perk for subscribers to its Nest Aware smart alert service. This year, owners of both the battery Nest Doorbell and the wired version (formerly Nest Hello) can get in on the fun sans that subscription. Google mentions that the newer battery Nest Doorbell requires users to use the Google Home app with an account in order to activate the themes — while wired users can also enable them through the Nest app and site.
Google is setting the trend on having seasonal ringtones — in October of this year, the company released Halloween-themed ringtones with multiple spooky tunes. The ghostly ringtones also replicated onto accompanied Nest speakers and hubs inside the home — a feature now available for the new holiday ringtones so families and friends can get cheery together before even opening the door.
Next up… whilst most of us have Sky TV – there are some, who have Virgin Media TV and it’s not been great recently…
Some Virgin Media customers were left without access to TV services for more than 10 hours, after the firm suffered a nationwide outage.
The issue began at about 10:30 GMT prompting thousands of viewers to report problems.
The firm told customers its engineers were trying to fix the problem, which hit cities across the UK, including London, Birmingham and Manchester.
Virgin Media apologised, and said it would fix it “as soon as possible”.
The issue had been caused by “a major power outage”, the firm said.
The website Downdetector which tracks outages received more than 18,000 reports of problems at one point.
Many users tweeted their annoyance at the loss of service, and the way in which Virgin Media communicated: “Can you update please? No TV. Your status page down. No info on phone lines,” wrote one customer.
The company said it had identified the fault and its engineers were working flat-out to fix the issue.
At 13:45 GMT the company wrote: “We have now restored several channels with customers able to watch BBC One, BBC Two, ITV, ITV+1 and Channel 4. TV360 customers are also able to access apps on their box,” the firm wrote.
“We’re working to restore all channels as quickly as possible and continue to work towards having this resolved this afternoon.”
But the partial return did not please everyone: “Channels 1 to 4 are working, but the problem is it’s not the year 1985 and we pay for hundreds of channels,” one customer tweeted.
And some users complained that the channels had appeared then disappeared. Oh Lord.
There you go… all about TV going down and welcoming guests to a nice tune from your doorbell.. I’m sure my parents had a doorbell similar that played a christmas tune back in 1985!