Cortana's smart-home powers grow with IFTTT, Honeywell, Ecobee support

The key weakness of the Microsoft Cortana-powered Harman/Kardon Invoke smart speaker was that it just wasn't a great smart-home controller, lacking many of the services and IFTTT support of its rivals. Today, Microsoft said, that changes. Microsoft said Friday that it has added support for IFTTT, the conditional platform that triggers various connected services, to Cortana. And those services have expanded, too: Cortana can now control products from Ecobee, Honeywell Lyric, Honeywell Total Connect Comfort, LIFX, TP-Link Kasa, and Geeni. Because Cortana offers essentially the same capabilities across various platforms, that means the new smart-home controls are available from the Invoke, but also from your Windows 10 PC or even the Cortana apps for Android and iOS.