It’s the Kielbasa Kid…

… and do you own a smart speaker? I don’t at least not yet but 1 in 6 Americans do and I can see one in my future. A friend of mine has one and it is just too cool. It’s like having a Genie in a bottle except it cant make you wealthy but I’m sure if you ask the right questions it could help in your career. I forget what game we were playing but it was like having your own game show host asking the questions and keeping score. If you wanted to hear a song, viola it was there. You can even use it to listen to the radio which a lot of folks who have the device are doing in fact more than using an actual radio. According to a new study by NPR and Edison Research, 16 percent of Americans own a smart speaker of some kind, a whopping 128 percent higher than a year earlier. Researchers spoke with two groups of people: a blind 1,010-person phone study and an 806-person group of smart speaker owners. They found about seven percent of Americans reportedly bought at least one smart speaker between Black Friday and the end of 2017, and for four percent it was their very first speaker. Amazon still rules the market, with the study estimating 11 percent have one of Amazon’s Echo speakers, while four percent have a Google Home of some kind. When it comes to how these devices are being used, 66 percent of buyers plan to entertain others by streaming music, asking questions, or playing games, and 64 percent anticipate using theirs for smart home control. Does that mean you can make toast too!