11–20 of 66 posts
Why won't they release Assistant for all Android phones? Nobody uses Allo, and Pixel is a small minority of the market.
Imagine as a developer spending 20 hours building Actions only for there to be no audience.
Pretty neat, but from a user's perspective I'm a little disappointed that the current implementation seems to require me to explicitly tell Google what app I want to interact with. I'd rather be able to just ask Google "Find me a movie ticket for Rogue One on Thursday" and have it be able to infer that I want to use the movie tickets app installed on my phone, than for me to have to explicitly say "Let me talk to Fan…
Somewhat understandably the direct actions are limited to certain domains that Google supports. It isn't a free for all.
Hmm, the lack of installation on the skill is interesting and an obvious contrast to Alexa/Echo. Should we be expecting an arms race here for sensible invocation names?
Great question - we are under NDA, but I can share that Google is going to make priority 1 -> 10 the consumer experience, and priority 11 how to improve visibility through SEO. Think SEO to get the lion share of traffic.
Hmm, the lack of installation on the skill is interesting and an obvious contrast to Alexa/Echo. Should we be expecting an arms race here for sensible invocation names?
> There will be app store-like policies in place to prevent things like keyword camping — one developer using another company’s name for their action or another developer trying to jump on owning important keywords like “shopping.” Douglas says that “this is a large reason for there being a review process. Much of the policy compliance is this process of name selection. “
[1]: http://www.theverge.com/2016/12/8/13878444/google-home-devel...
I was looking at the page earlier today, wondering when it's being launched. Great timing as my days at work are over for the rest of the year. I'm working on a public-transport chatbot in South Africa, planning on making it available on Twitter, Facebook, and Allo (though less users here). Going to be a fun December and January!
The api.ai UI for building interactions looks way more approachable and developer friendly. On top of that it looks like they are building out support for multiple platforms (Slack, FB, Alexa, Telegram) so you can (maybe) have a central integration point for your all your chat apps. Some of the integrations look very basic though.
The biggest downsides are that I have never heard of these api.ai guys before and the pricing beyond their free tier (1 query/sec) requires you to contact them, yuck.
Edit: Looks like I spoke too soon. Apparently they were acquired by Google recently[1]. I was wondering why Google was making this startup so central to their product. Now they just need to be more transparent on pricing, but I guess they are testing the waters right now.
From using and developing for the Amazon Echo for the last year or so this "Conversational" setup just sounds super unnatural.
You want bus times: Amazon: "Alexa, ask [nextbus] [for the next bus]" Google: "Hey Google, let me talk to [nextbus] when is the next bus?" Perfect: "[keyword], when is the next bus?" (context set in advance for the specific bus you care about)
You want to control the lights: Amazon: "Alexa, turn off the [kitchen lights]" Google: "Hey Google, let me talk to [the house] [turn off] the [kitchen lights]" Perfect: "[keyword], turn off the lights" (contextually turn off the lights immediately nearest the source of the voice. optionally "turn off the [named] light"
You want to activate a scene: Amazon: "Alexa, [turn on|activate|start] [scene name]" Google: "Hey Google, let me talk to [the house] activate [scene name] Perfect: "[keyword], [time for a movie|it's bedtime|good morning]"
I haven't seen or heard of a single "Conversational" app for the Echo that has real usage. I just don't think that's the killer app (at least until they get smarter). The current killer apps are being able to: - Set timers/alarms - Ask quick questions (measurements, weather, time) - Control home automation
I just don't think the experience of talking back and forth to a bot is that enjoyable (again, yet, maybe in a Her future).
Pretty neat, but from a user's perspective I'm a little disappointed that the current implementation seems to require me to explicitly tell Google what app I want to interact with. I'd rather be able to just ask Google "Find me a movie ticket for Rogue One on Thursday" and have it be able to infer that I want to use the movie tickets app installed on my phone, than for me to have to explicitly say "Let me talk to Fan…
There are two actions - conversation actions (where you have to say "Tell Uber I want a cab") and direct actions ("get me a cab"). Somewhat understandably the direct actions are limited to certain domains that Google supports. It isn't a free for all.
Maybe as the technology matures Google will start getting smarter about being able to infer which provider I want to use for particular types of actions, but I recognise that's likely to be a rather difficult problem to solve.
Amazon lost the phone and tablet wars, so they shifted their focus to the voice assistant market, and are now ahead of competitors with their Alexa skills SDK. It's great to see Google now step up too. I expect Microsoft and Apple follow suit. It's pretty easy to imagine how one could port simple 'voice command' apps between platforms ('hey, order a pizza/uber/etc...). Over time, however, these platforms should emerg…
Google Now is about 95% of the way there on the sports thing (it is always showing me information about a couple of teams it knows I am interested in, including game status).
I'm interested in games that are significant cultural events -- my city's team making the playoffs, the cubs winning the World Series, etc. Outside of those times, I have no interest. Yet despite ignoring stories, I get frequent updates about players, teams, and events I have zero interest in.
Also, despite searching regularly for e-sports events, I see no updates on the teams in the LCS, or in Starcraft II's various tournaments. Or EVO. The sports events I do care about seem to have no support.
Hmm, the lack of installation on the skill is interesting and an obvious contrast to Alexa/Echo. Should we be expecting an arms race here for sensible invocation names?
Great question - we are under NDA, but I can share that Google is going to make priority 1 -> 10 the consumer experience, and priority 11 how to improve visibility through SEO. Think SEO to get the lion share of traffic.
For an example, say a user had a specific recipe app he wanted to use, instead of referring to either its exact name or hoping that when asking what recipe they should make that he gets the right app will they be able to go into their settings either online or in an app and assign the app as his preference or rename it to just "chef" or something simple?