It was only a matter of time, really. Google Assistant hasn't quite reached its full potential yet, but it's already great at interpreting spoken commands. With IFTTT -- which basically acts as the connective tissue between lots of different web-facing services -- Google's Assistant just got a whole lot more useful. Just be sure not to confuse usefulness with novelty, since Amazon's suite of Echo home assistants has played nice with IFTTT for over a year now.

Anyway. There are around 57 Assistant-friendly recipes available right now, ranging from mostly mundane ("OK Google, block some time" creates an hour-long event in Google Calendar) to the surprisingly specific ("OK Google, set oven to Sabbath mode"). We've tested a few already, and can confirm that Assistant's voice recognition chops still work like a charm in these different contexts. Over the past hour, we've sent messages to Slack, added a handful of contacts to our Google accounts and added tasks to Todoist without a hitch. If only we had more smart home stuff around the office, we'd have told Google Assistant "it's party time" -- that puts Philips Hue lightbulbs in a color loop for maximum fun-times.