Talk-n-touch screen

Fairly old readers might remember a 1950s musical movie entitled "Annie, Get your Gun" where the sharpshooting heroine, Annie Oakley  takes on male competitors with the  dare: "Anything  you can do, I can do better!" I  am  reminded  today, of this old classic riposte -- and here's why:

Google Home came a little after Amazon's Echo in the smart speaker arena. Then Amazon added a display to create Echo Show and now Google does likewise with its smart display, Nest Hub, trying to go one even better.  This does everything that the Google Home speaker did -- including control of home appliances and providing answers to spoken questions using Google's massive search resources. The new add-on is a 7-inch display screen that can display things like the time, weather, news or a recipe with spoken prompts.

Nest Hub's real edge, comes from its other tool Google Photos -- letting you access all your images to create a live and ever-changing photo frame. And yes, you can play everything in music and video, available on YouTube.

The asking price, Rs 9,999, pitches it against  the slightly smaller-screen Echo Show -- and to sweeten the deal, Google is throwing in a Mi Home security camera, that can be monitored at the Nest Hub. "OK Google, come into my nest!"