201–210 of 467 posts
I wish I could install OK Google on Echo.
Edit - looks like you can, with a custom skill - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PR-LVPMU7F4
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The joke's on us. Not even Orwell thought people would be willing to pay for that kind of technology. He thought government would have to force people to get it into their homes.
See the forward to Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death": > "But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another--slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in…
Max Headroom, episode ABC.1.3 "Body Bank"
Paula: " ...what's that?"
Blank Reg: "It's a book!"
Paula: "Well, what's that?"
Blank Reg: "It's a non-volatile storage medium.
It's very rare. You should have one."
Paula: "Stuff it!"
That show was way ahead of its time.
// Blank is beautiful!
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Presumably you only listen to chart-topping american pop and music made by people with common english names? Because so far I've never had any luck whatsoever with anything else.
You can upload your own mp3s to Amazon Music and play them from the Echo. No cost until you go past 250 songs. http://www.voicedesigned.com/content/how-play-your-mp3s-echo...
A voice assistant is only as useful as its ability to understand speech. If it can't tell anything from half of my music library then it's not worth much to me.
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Because this way the screen can turn on and off dynamically. Also, it doesn't tie you to having to have a TV in a location you want one.
HDMI-CEC allows similar on most modern TVs. As for not being tied to where you have a TV, for $200 you can buy a 40"+ 1080p TV, for $100 you can have a really nice IPS 22" 1080p monitor. Probably better than this tiny thing.
Its interesting to see how fast Amazon can come to market with these new hardware pieces. I guess the fallout of the Amazon Phone at least had some lessons learned in hardware suppliers, etc... I realize they're throwing hardware out there prior to seeing what the software can do with it, but I think its necessary to get people locked in. I like their approach from the business perspective. Give the people a voice co…
With a screen now, it's like my own personal drive-thru to order whatever, products, food, whatever amazon is selling.
People are missing this: "With the Alexa App, conversations and contacts go where you go. When you’re away from home, use the app to make a quick call or send a message to your family’s Echo. Alexa calling and messaging is free—to get started download the Alexa App." Alexa is now in the messaging and communication game. https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/09/amazon-enables-free-calls-...
But... why? Presumably everyone who would even consider buying this already has a computer at home, which does that better anyway.
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This isn't that complicated or sad. You can still call anyone in the world and still text anyone in the world. Its that the remaining spaces to compete in are feature based, and features don't move forward quickly on open standards. There are plenty of working open standards to do the basics, its if you want to do anything beyond the basics that you end up in a walled garden.
Video calling and instant messaging have both been around for ages at this point, and remain stubbornly walled off. Both should qualify as "basics" by now. Sure, you can still SMS worldwide, as long as they have a cell phone. But non-phone devices are becoming very common. What if you want to send or receive messages on your tablet or computer. (This works OK in the Apple world, but only because they hack it by routi…
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Leaving aside interoperability fun and the user experience that /u/smacktoward refers to, TVs don't always switch on very quickly. My TV takes a good 10 seconds to start producing audio after the google chromecast 'on' command. Putting the screen in themselves gives them control of that experience.
Netflix is taking care of that for you. > When you see the Netflix Recommended TV logo, you’ll know the TV has passed a rigorous evaluation process. > TV Instant On > Your TV starts up instantly and apps are ready to use right away, just like your smartphone. https://devices.netflix.com/en/recommendedtv/2017/
I've also found that disabling the 'instant on' feature of my TV makes it perform much better. When I used the standby mode, apps would occasionally crash or stop responding after a few hours. The only way to get them to work again was to unplug the TV.
I never have to unplug the TV now that I've disabled instant on.
That being said, I own a Samsung TV, which has the worst software of any TV I've used, except for Philips, which was worse only because the TV I owned didn't support SSH keys longer than 48-bits or something really stupid like that.
Ideally I'd be able to purchase a non-smart TV that turned on instantly, but I don't see that happening any time soon.