THE BYTE

Welcome to the BYTE, where we serve up the latest home and tech news from the last week for you to sink your teeth into.

This week’s BYTE includes the unseen home buyer, a new personal assistant for your home, the latest on a fruity new phone, a new way to track renewable energy, and burritos falling from the sky. Enjoy!

Generally

Am I Seeing That Right?

According to a new study 19% of buyers made a sight-unseen offer on a house.

Wait Really?

Really Really. With the latest tech such as 3-D walkthroughs and Matterport tours available online, more and more buyers are confident with their purchases without seeing the actual house. Stories of Skyping or FaceTiming into home tours also were accredited to the increase in confidence. As tech like this continues to advance, the model for buying and selling houses may need to change as there may be fewer open houses and more conference call type video walkthroughs.

L.U.C.Y. I’m Home

Meet Your New Assistant

A new project launched on Kickstarter could be our first big step towards a smart home like Iron Man’s Jarvis. L.U.C.Y. is a wall mounted personal home assistant. You can talk to L.U.C.Y. and ask the weather, make reservations, call/video call people, view traffic and news, and so on and so on. If this is as great as they say it is then this could be the next step from products like Amazon’s Alexa.

Take Notes

Renewed Faith

A new online tool tells you the amount of renewable energy that would be created from any point in the world. It can calculate the wind and solar power a specific area would generate. As solar power becomes more popular, a site like this could be used when the eco-conscious are looking to select a location for their next home.

Did The Apple Fall Far From The Tree?

Apple released their latest iPhone 7 this week. If you haven’t seen the new tech and what it offers, it doesn’t have a headphone jack, but comes with an adapter. The phone is water and scratch resistant, longer battery life, comes in the same sizes as the 6s and 6s plus, the camera is much better especially on the 7 Plus, and gray iPhones have been replaced with black.

May Burritos Forever Rain

In Alphabet Inc.’s, Google’s parent company, latest move they partnered with Chipotle and Virginia Tech to deliver burritos around campus via drones. The companies have permission from the FAA and the project will be closely monitored to ensure nothing goes wrong and to collect data on how drone deliveries should be regulated in the future. If this all goes well we could be one step closer to our favorite foods literally falling from the sky.

Totally Unrelated

Getting Loony

If you love the Loony Toons and need a Monday pick me up then this Southwest Airlines flight attendant’s end of flight speech is exactly what you need.