It's also great for radio, if you have two Alexa device. I've got an Echo Dot connected via the line out to my 2012 Denon receiver, and when I'm not watching TV I leave the Denon on that input. The Dot has its microphone turned off so it can't hear commands.
I've also got an Echo Show in the same room with its microphone enabled. Then I can just ask Alexa to, for example, "on Dot, listen to classical KING FM, on Dot", and the Show will tell the Dot to start streaming that.
(I say "on Dot" at both the start and end because sometimes it wants it at the front and sometimes it wants it at the back, and I was never able to figure out what determined which it wanted at the moment).
Oh, and it is also a great way to get Spotify to play through my receiver. I can use the Spotify app on my phone or tablet or desktop to queue up things but tell the app to use Spotify Connect to tell the Dot to do the actual streaming of the music.
If Amazon had curated content I might actually consider ordering items through an echo device. As it is now, you have no idea if you're getting some keyboard smash brand.
It's AliExpress with slightly faster shipping now.
Regardless, I use it as a timer frequently, and it's fantastic in the kitchen. I make a lot of bread and it's nice to be able to set a timer when I have flour / dough on my hands.
a cool tip is that you can name your timers... hey siri set a timer named pasta for 10 minutes. or hey siri set a timer for pasta... "how long?"... 10 minutes
This is true of all voice assistants, you basically described my use of Siri.
Timers, controlling lighting, stopping music music, weather queries..
Most other things are 100x faster to pick up your phone, tablet, laptop, whatever.
We are approaching 15 years of these things being mainstream and.. really that's it. Maybe that's fine.. it's just another mild lifestyle convenience!
But again, a reminder of the hype cycle and what actually ends up being useful technology when put in the hands of regular people.
Motion detector night lights. I've got a bunch of them. Softer light, no need to make a noise and wake anyone else up. One in the loo, one outside my room, one on the fridge, several down the hallway. They're on magnetic stickies so you can grab one if you need to go further. They do need charging but not very often.
Ok, cool, but would you pay a monthly subscription fee for the ability to talk out loud to get lights to turn on, instead of hitting the existing light switches?
I use the Philips Hue system, and it works super reliably. But the Amazon integration is... getting iffier with that. No idea why. But yeah, voice controlled lights are nice.
I sometimes wonder if I'm just biased or if performance really did get worse. It would be cool to have an anonymous Alexa coder or someone who got the axe there chime in as sometimes happens.
But I think the main problem was their entire vision for monetization was just nonsensical according to what I read. So I think they wasted many hours of effort on that front instead of trying to make devices people found enjoyable to use or that actually delivered value by working well.
People don't really want to buy blind via a device if they don't have to, and if they did it would likely come at the substitution of buying directly from the site. They nixed their web interface, and the mobile app performed poorly. They invested talent in coming up with buttons to reorder very specific stuff like laundry detergent, but something like their "Subscribe & Save" seems like a more sensible approach to that problem.
We used to buy from Alexa but when Amazon went to shit and we couldn't trust that "Order Tide Pods" would result in similar price/quantity Tide Pods showing up, we stopped doing that.
Plugins would have been great if plugin store didn't look like main Amazon store.
Most people in Alexa don't even believe in the monetization. We are actually building this thing and joking about it at the same time. You can imagine the quality is deteriorating because no one cares about the product anymore.
I have 4 Alexa devices. I use them every day as an alarm, a radio in the morning, timers, and to turn lights on and off, and make video calls to my parents.
Like most people when I got my first one I played around with some other things but quickly stopped bothering. I'm perfectly happy with them as they are and don't know what else I would use them for. In browser and on phone AI have already filled the need for AI that I have at the moment.
Amazon wants to squeeze you if possible, and probably change things around so you’re not happy anymore and sell you back the things you’re using today.
The only amazon device I own is a kindle and I still hate the idea that I can't know if its listening in, or trying to share my wifi with other devices through amazon sidewalk, or whatever.
They can charge as much or as little as they'd like for it. The idea of using such a service is repulsive, even for free. Amazon is the enemy, not your friend. Giving them more access to more of your life is a bad idea.
The basic idea of Alexa is great, the problem is, as you point out, it'd under the control of an untrustworthy company.
It's too bad we can't buy Alexa (/-like) devices that run auditable open-source code, and connect them to an open-source program running on our home servers. I'd be happy to have such a device/service, as long as it's under my control.
I don't know that there are any companies I'd trust to run alexa or an alexa like service. It's not like I trust google, microsoft, or apple more. I don't trust any of them.
...for extra features. Its existing capabilities are still free (at least for now).
Considering I only ever use it as a timer, an impromptu alarm clock, and to ask what the time or temperature is when I'm about to head outside sometimes (can you believe there used to be a phone number you had to call to get that information if you didn't want to wait 7 minutes for the weather channel to do its forecast again?), I will just go without if they ever try to charge for that.
If you're able to have an actual conversation with it to clarify your intentions or for it to interpret more complex instructions, there is actually a lot of potential here
Honestly I never feel the need to have high quality always on mic, or a macrobug (as opposite to classic spaying devices, payed by those who spy instead of me, and well hidden instead of being in plain sight)...
Sure, if we live in the house, not at a desk, might be nice to have some "audio-based UI" but it's far from being a normal case. While I work or anyway I'm at the desk I can see anything quicker, when I'm not I'm typically do something else so I've no need to ask for current weather or something like that.
On contrary I do like MUCH home automation, but on MY terms. I do not like much Home Assistant but that's the least unusable of all I've tried, and I do like to have for instance:
- auto close/open certain roller blinds following the Sun position and the home+outside temperature
- run or not run water heater depending on water temp, available p.v., others running/scheduled charge, next day weather forecast
- auto-closing main home water valve when I go out for more than one day, also auto-close inlet, open purge in case of food sensors alarm
- ...
Long story short SIMPLE things, but beyond Alexa capabilities anyway. And things that could be far easier if a concept of OPEN, STANDARD appliance exists instead of the current sorry state of IoT...
And yet another way to try and destroy journalism: AI summaries of the news.
Why not just listen to the news? You can listen to BBC on Alexa, along with almost any other news radio station you please. If you want short summaries, just look at the AP.
AI summaries might not be correct or might miss out on important context: in the news, the details are everything. And I doubt Amazon will be paying for the news services they scrape.
Are AI summaries of news really that much better than just listening to the news? Does the AI part mean it's going to try and figure out what news stories I listen to? Or will it just be the same for everyone, and then you might just say Alexa give me the news, and you can program it to give you news summaries from a huge list of available sources, which are not AI generated.
This seems like a stupid product idea, akin to subscription mouse. And I actually like and use my Alexa devices quite a bit (nest thermostat, smart water heater, smart lights, timer, weather, use as a speaker for my laptop), so I think I'd be their target market.
The word ‘news’ appears once in the entire article. Here is the usage:
“Among features of the subscription Alexa, expected in October, are recipe suggestions based on your family’s dietary restrictions and AI summaries of the news. Caroline reported that you’ll still be able to use the current version of Alexa without a subscription fee.”
You went on that entire rant and called an entire product stupid based off of that?
AI summaries of the news being one of two features mentioned in the article, so I'd assume those are the newsworthy things. My point is that this functionality is already present on the device and works quite well without needing any AI buzz or subscription fees.
The smartphones at least nominally do not have consent to freely listen and record. Alexa is different in that you have full awareness of its capabilities when you agree to use it.
It does timers, tells the weather, and, uh, shouts at me from Ring when someone is at the door.
Handy when cooking and I don't want to touch something.
The voice recognition is iffy, the misunderstanding is constant, the vocal command line is painful. The plugins don't work seamlessly at all.
But it's a good timer.