Posted on 11/06/2014 11:15:09 AM PST by Citizen Zed
According to Amazon's website, the device provides information, music, news, weather and can be completely controlled by the user's voice. It is always turned on and responds to command after prompted by being called "Alexa."
The site claims the device is continually learning and adds functionalities over time. The device runs on Amazon's Web Services, so it's brain is always in the cloud, according to the website.
"The more you use Echo, the more it adapts to your speech patterns, vocabulary, and personal preferences," the company states on its website.
Echo can be used to control Amazon Music, Prime Music, iHeartRadio and TuneIN, but can also be linked via bluetooth to play Spotify, iTunes or Pandora.
(Excerpt) Read more at mob.cnbc.com ...
BFL
BookMark
You said you had kids right? ;-)
All tech products have become mere fronts for surveillance gathering. Web 2.0, The Internet of Things, etc.
Karl did a ticker on this type of thing.
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=229568
These guys are still not listening to the privacy mess they’ve made.
There is NO WAY I would buy a device that is:
1. Always on.
2. Always connected to the internet.
3. Always listening.
4. Knows my credit card information.
Who did the product manager sleep with to get that job anyway? Anyone who buys one of this should get a “My Credit Card is Available to the Internet 24/7!” T-shirt.
yeah, but you got to watch that.
Never open a beer bottle if they start leaning away, unless you point it at them directly and they don't flinch.
We don’t have a very big house, and I still can’t imagine how useful this device would be if it’s just about always in the room you’re not.
If it had some (inexpensive) networked wireless microphone/speaker remotes that could be put in various rooms, then I could see it having more use. And especially if it could broadcast on multiple channels to those devices so different people could interface with the device and get output (music, etc.) at the same time. Then I could see it being ubiquitous, and I would likely use it instead of playing the radio in the garage, for instance.
That would also have and added advantage that you could do something like “Echo, there’s a fire, call 911”.
I have Prime, so they discount the price to $99. I asked for an “invitation”...so I signed into my Amazon, and they said I’d receive an email if I was chosen (maybe they didn’t use the word “chosen”...but something like that.)
The video says “It only hears us when we use the wake word WE CHOSE.” So emphasis on the chose would seem to me that everyone has their own wake word they set up.
:-)
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