This, a sort of "extender", is what I've been wishing for since the original Echo came out. Ordering tonight (since I can't do it from work).
Amazon Echo Dot
201–210 of 410 posts
Re: Amazon Echo Dot
#202> Echo Dot ($89.99) is available exclusively for Prime Members through Alexa Voice Shopping. Huh? Why would they prevent new customers from ordering this?
I presume because they've had trouble keeping the original Echo in stock. And they want Prime members more than Echo Dot owners.
It's not just Prime, you need one of the other Alexa products to order it.
Re: Amazon Echo Dot
#203Amazon was the only Big Four company silent on the data privacy lawsuit with Apple. Why would I place one of their always-listening products in my living room?
They also stood with Apple.
http://money.cnn.com/2016/02/26/technology/apple-microsoft-g...
Re: Amazon Echo Dot
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
The "play some good 60s rock" example isn't a VUI breakdown, it's a functionality gap in the backend. One that will probably be fixed pretty quickly, given the way things are headed. A VUI breakdown would be inability to understand accents, or non-responsiveness to commands. As a user input, Alexa is pretty well buttoned up.
You're thinking too much like an engineer :-) It's not a speech recognition breakdown but it's certainly a voice interface breakdown in the sense of I can't get the device to do what I want it to do. As a user, I don't care where in the pipeline my attempts to communicate a desired action break down. I just know that they do.
Exactly. We're used to dealing with either humans, who are intuitive and highly adaptive, and technology, which we manipulate and have total control over (so long as the system displays its status, we can find our way). We're not used to systems that expect us to interact with them in natural language, but have very specific criteria around what we ask for.
It still feels a lot like the old text-based RPGs, in that you spend most of your time trying to figure out how to phrase something to accomplish a basic need, while angrily thinking "it would have just been easier/faster to pick up my phone."
It's 2016. How are we still OK with the unreasonable constraints of technology that make us jump through a hoop like a trained poodle to get the treat?
Re: Amazon Echo Dot
#205"If you have more than one Echo or Echo Dot, you can set a different wake word for each". This is something I've been thinking is becoming more problematic as well as an opportunity for real ubiquity. I have 3 separate devices nearby that are Google Now voice activated (the newer devices support this even if the screen is off), and they will sometimes trigger at the same time accidentally. Since the processing is clo…
I learned to not have the wake word be "Amazon" when I was watching online training for AWS. The Echo went nuts until I finally paused everything and changed the wake word back to "Alexa".
Re: Amazon Echo Dot
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
Serious question: is it feasible to implement a kind of loose voice 'fingerprint' to prevent this kind of thing? Will/could Alexa know who's talking to it?
Short answer: yes.
Long answer? i.e. is it possible out of the box or is it possible in principle, if anyone actually builds it?
Re: Amazon Echo Dot
#207I would not be surprised if it turns out that Alexa is the biggest thing they've ever done, including AWS.
Zero chance of that. AWS will likely be a $100-$150 billion market value business in five years, with $6-$8 billion in operating income. They're tracking to $3.x billion in operating income in the next four quarters. It'll be valued as highly as Intel and Oracle. A device that tells you the weather, orders an Uber, or orders more low margin merchandise off of Amazon, is not going to generate that kind of massive fina…
I agree with you; however I believe the value of Alexa's value will be that it learns about you over time, making Amazon's services more "sticky" to the end-user, and making Amazon a more valuable marketplace to suppliers.
For instance, in the UK, Amazon has very recently partnered with an actual supermarket to sell some groceries[1]. If agents really catch on, what would a business pay to be the default milk provider when someone or their fridge says "I need more milk"?
Re: Amazon Echo Dot
#208My problem with Alexa is, I don't want to invest in a new ecosystem. I'm fine with Amazon being the hub that connects all of my services, but I don't want to use Amazon To-Do List, Amazon Prime Radio, Amazon Traffic, Amazon Sports, Amazon Calendar, Amazon Weather. That being said, they announce partnerships with more and more services every month. Things are looking up.
There is an open API, so this situation will improve over time.
Alexa and AWS Lambda are two of the things I'm most interested in these days (disparate, I know) but they're also things without open source equivalent. I'd love to see that change.
Re: Amazon Echo Dot
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
Alexa requires AWS to run. It's a symbiotic relationship, and Alexa is the consumer-facing AI extension. They've marketed it better than Watson and Siri so far, giving it new hardware to live in and opening it up to developers. But without AWS, there is no Alexa.
>they've marketed it better than Siri really?
Well, marketed to who is the question. To consumers I think Siri is advertised better (certainly, the vast majority of my non-tech friends know about it, Alexa not so much) but to developers Alexa is, well, actually open, so the advertising writes itself.
Re: Amazon Echo Dot
#210Be forewarned - if I am invited into your home for any reason, and I see an Alexa device, I will vocally add a large shopping list of nonsense to your Amazon cart :)
Serious question: is it feasible to implement a kind of loose voice 'fingerprint' to prevent this kind of thing? Will/could Alexa know who's talking to it?
I really want an 'Alexa, stop listenting' command. There's a button on the top that mutes the mic and puts a red ring around them, but when I have people over, it's not a great environment to use voice commands anyways.
'Everyone be quite so I can shout across the room to change my music'