Amazon Echo Goes Live
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We have one, we got one the first week that they were out in private beta, and we love it. The kids love playing with "Alexa" and even my dad @SonshineAcres loves using it. It's still early and it is clear that we are early adopters but the power of the device and the concept is evident and I think that it is going to be quite successful. We are very glad that we got one.
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I'm considering sending mine back... It's just a toy that serves no real purpose for me. My wife really dislikes it when I ask Alexa things.
I think this mainly goes back to my opinion on voice technology in general - many people just won't like/use it. But I'm sure I'll be in the minority on this like I so often am.
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@Dashrender said:
I'm considering sending mine back... It's just a toy that serves no real purpose for me. My wife really dislikes it when I ask Alexa things.
I'll buy it off of you instead if you want. We want more of them already.
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I'll let you know... give me another week or so.
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@Dashrender said:
I'll let you know... give me another week or so.
Cool, thanks. Need to get one for my dad as he really wants one.
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What makes you love it so much? are you constantly telling it to add things to a shopping list? or telling it to play music?
Me, so far I ask it the daily weather, and some IMDB type stuff. While I've had it play music once, I rarely listen to music when I'm home - if I need background sounds I prefer the TV.
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@Dashrender said:
What makes you love it so much? are you constantly telling it to add things to a shopping list? or telling it to play music?
A lot of it is the kids, they absolutely love it. Remember they are 4 and 6 so too young to be easily using other devices. They love that it tells jokes and plays music.
A lot of why I like it is because it is cheaper and smaller and more attractive than my bluetooth stereo device and way nicer to use. I love using it for the time, weather and music. But the biggest deal is seeing how it will evolve to do things in the future. It's just a demo right now, not the final product.
For my dad, he uses it for music, the time, the weather (he's a weather nut) and hopes to get the home-control stuff to add to it. He will love that.
For an elderly friend of my dad's there is an even better use that I'll write up separately as we've already found it to be a great adaptive device for the blind!
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Oh, and I love that I can lay in bed and just say "Alexa, play a thunderstorm" and it goes.
I should mention that my entire music library is on Amazon already and my book library is nearly all on Audible. So this device natively integrates with all of my media that is audio-only already.
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@scottalanmiller said:
But the biggest deal is seeing how it will evolve to do things in the future. It's just a demo right now, not the final product.
And this is why I bought it - I guess with how well Google Now works I was expecting more. But more often than not when I ask a question, Alexis tells me she doesn't understand my question. I'll have to think about what I was asking and post them... I recall thinking these were common things that most people would probably ask and it was odd that it didn't understand me.
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
But the biggest deal is seeing how it will evolve to do things in the future. It's just a demo right now, not the final product.
And this is why I bought it - I guess with how well Google Now works I was expecting more. But more often than not when I ask a question, Alexis tells me she doesn't understand my question. I'll have to think about what I was asking and post them... I recall thinking these were common things that most people would probably ask and it was odd that it didn't understand me.
Remember it doesn't even have question asking functionality yet. So if you are "asking questions", you are already attempting a functionality that is not yet included.
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I asked it was a cockatoo was, and it told me. I guess I don't know what you mean by question asking ability?
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It doesn't seem useful to me, just a novelty item really.
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@Dashrender said:
I asked it was a cockatoo was, and it told me. I guess I don't know what you mean by question asking ability?
It just does a basic Wikipedia search at the moment, I believe, nothing else. It doesn't have the ability to analyze your question and do research. It can look something up on Wikipedia but taking the one word "cockatoo" and reading the first segment of Wikipedia back to you is super basic and requires no AI.
What people want is what Google and Apple have where you ask "where is the nearest McDonalds" and it uses some AI logic to figure out what you mean and then uses some tools to determine an answer. Right now it will read back the Wikipedia headers, but it doesn't answer your questions. It can't use a search engine, it can't make determinations, it doesn't do that stuff. You are actually doing the question answering, it just reads the answer that you told it to. It's reading to you, not answering.
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And it doesn't even do that well, for example I asked what is a Moluccan Cocaktoo and it couldn't find it.
But I do realize this is starter tech... it will get better with time.
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@Dashrender said:
And it doesn't even do that well, for example I asked what is a Moluccan Cocaktoo and it couldn't find it.
That's because Wikipedia doesn't have it. Like I said, it's not that it does it poorly, it does not do it at all. It just reads Wikipedia articles with the title that you give, it does not attempt to determine the answer to a question. As Wikipedia's entry for a Maluccan cockatoo isn't called that, the Echo doesn't have anything to return. It is not that the Echo is doing anything poorly, it just doesn't do what you are thinking it would do. You are still feeling like it is going to interpret what you say and research it, and someday it will, but for now, it does not.
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I knew I should have looked to see if there was a Wiki page for Moluccan Cockatoo.
And man.. is that wiki page spot on!
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I have loved playing with it the last few months. We have had ours since March and it has already changed some. I am interested to see where it goes. I hadn't thought about using it for white noise. That would be awesome for when @art_of_shred has band practice here so I can drown it out some.
I can't wait till it works better with my cell phone so it can do calendar reminders on IOS. That will be helpful to me.
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I used it for white noise on my first night with it
Back when I had a bluetooth speaker in my room, I was doing that all of the time from my Amazon library. So it was a natural reaction. -
OK it didn't work for Salmon crested cockatoo either. interesting.
and no this isn't a slam, just a point of note.
