Amazon Introduces Amazon Echo

What if your wife/girlfriend/daughter is named Alexa? Won't it get confusing?

"I don't know why Amazon only hires white dudes, honey!"
 
Lets see. You can buy an Alexa for each room of your house and it has no awareness of your phone. Or, you can just use the same hands free voice feature on your phone that's always with you in your pocket. Wouldn't be surprised if it ends up like their phone.
 
They should've used Majel Barrett's voice so people can use the "computer" as the keyword.
 
Alexa was just what that guy chose to name his echo.

You could call it Bob or Hey Joe.

No matter what, its just stupid.

Jesus don't use your brain for anything, you can just buy a plastic box.
 
Oh shit....sorry, it is called Alexa......dumb name.....:eek:

Joe would have been better.
 
The nice thing here is you get to accept the Amazon terms of service and have every word spoken in your home recorded and kept on Amazon's cloud forever.
 
Alexa, is Amazon recording this and using it to build a shopping cart for me?

some drunk time fun too...
Alexa, do I have to purge to be pretty?
Alexa, why does daddy hit me?
ooo, while looking at the wife:
Alexa, can I do better?
 
magoo said:
Alexa was just what that guy chose to name his echo.

You could call it Bob or Hey Joe.

No matter what, its just stupid.

Jesus don't use your brain for anything, you can just buy a plastic box.
Click to expand...

magoo said:
Oh shit....sorry, it is called Alexa......dumb name.....:eek:

Joe would have been better.
Click to expand...

You name it whatever you want. Alexa was used as an example. The dad explained that in the first few minutes of the video.
 
Since when did a tech site have to be as ignorant as the masses and call all voice commands siri? I will just go back to playing on my Samsung iphone.
 
I can't figure out what the fuck Amazon is thinking with these dumb ass ideas.
 
If it wasn't for the fact that you can't trust a company like Amazon or Google or Apple with that much of your personal life, it's kind of past time that we have voice aware assistants in our home.

I wish I could just appreciate the service for what it is, but unless I can have a pay version where my inputs aren't saved outside my personal box where I can actually CONTROL all the highly personal scheduling I'd put in it... then no way in hell.

But man, being able to set alarms, make lists when you think of something by voice, set appointments, whenever you think of something... and yes getting a basic empirical question answered without digging out your phone or having to sit down at a terminal...

It could be so great, if you could just have some level of privacy with it.
 
People pay considerably more for blue tooth speaker setups that sit in the corner of their home... at least this does more then just play music. For the millions that have Amazon Prime this device at $99 really is not that bad assuming that the sound quality is good.
 
For 99 I would give it a shot if it sounds decent as a bluetooth speaker and does much more than just playing music. For 200 hell no!
 
I can actually see this being incorporated into an entire house setup. Mics and speakers in every room going back to a central server.
 
Advil has the right of it. Even as a Prime member (and thus, being able to pick it up for only $100), I see a number of reasons why I will be unlikely to do so.

The fact that its "brains" are basically proprietary and off site, is a major privacy issue. I'm sure there's a "generous" privacy policy that basically says "everything you say to, around etc... the device gets sent to Amazon Web Services and we can do whatever we like with this data". If you wouldn't let an Amazon rep sit in your home and take notes on everything you said, in return for them answering a question for you now and then, this device is little different.

Technically, I'm none too impressed with the onboard functionality. How much is proprietary? For instance, is it basically tied to Amazon's app store and/or the iOS/Android app? It said "desktop web browsers", yet doesnt' specify if it has a bog standard web interface (and if it does, is it secure) for configuring certain things? Would it even be able to play music in say, FLAC form from a Samba4 share on my local network...or is it all about proprietary access to certain apps? If it manages my calendars, where are they stored? Which formats can it interact with, and how so? Does it connect everything to the Amazon cloud? There are no data connections physically - everything is wireless required. It seems so far everything runs in a proprietary manner and is tailor made for those who are fully integrated into the Amazon ecosystem.. but I'm willing to admit the technical details aren't well..detailed enough for full analysis.

Don't get me wrong, I like these sort of "assistant" kits and home automation etc...but I'll be damned if I'm going to put it in the hands of any third party, much less one that gobbles up any info that it is fed. I'm thankful there are some AI projects out there that are still FOSS. Its a pity one of these companies can't license and package their AI/search/assistant tech in a privacy and FOSS integration friendly way; I'd be willing to pay for that, even, if I could basically confine that technology to being resident in a local way and with an ironclad privacy policy so that anything that was exposed through the use of it would not be saved/cataloged/mined etc.

We're quickly ceding control of our lives to "smart/internet of things" devices that provide minor convenience at the cost of major privacy issues.
 
Xaeos said:
Would it even be able to play music in say, FLAC form from a Samba4 share on my local network...or is it all about proprietary access to certain apps?
Click to expand...
For anything other than Amazon's own content, it appear to simply act as a Bluetooth-based amplifier for your other devices.
From the linked announcement page:
Echo provides hands-free voice control for Amazon Music, Prime Music, iHeartRadio, and TuneIn. Plus, Echo is Bluetooth-enabled so you can stream other popular music services like Spotify, iTunes, and Pandora from your phone or tablet.
Click to expand...
If you have a way to send your personal collection to a Bluetooth transmitter, I suspect you could make it work.
Why you would bother is another subject.
There's already a butt-load of Bluetooth transmitters and speaker systems out there that probably work just as well and avoid the issue of Amazon gaining access to your personal data.
 
Xaeos said:
Advil has the right of it. Even as a Prime member (and thus, being able to pick it up for only $100), I see a number of reasons why I will be unlikely to do so.

The fact that its "brains" are basically proprietary and off site, is a major privacy issue. I'm sure there's a "generous" privacy policy that basically says "everything you say to, around etc... the device gets sent to Amazon Web Services and we can do whatever we like with this data". If you wouldn't let an Amazon rep sit in your home and take notes on everything you said, in return for them answering a question for you now and then, this device is little different.

Technically, I'm none too impressed with the onboard functionality. How much is proprietary? For instance, is it basically tied to Amazon's app store and/or the iOS/Android app? It said "desktop web browsers", yet doesnt' specify if it has a bog standard web interface (and if it does, is it secure) for configuring certain things? Would it even be able to play music in say, FLAC form from a Samba4 share on my local network...or is it all about proprietary access to certain apps? If it manages my calendars, where are they stored? Which formats can it interact with, and how so? Does it connect everything to the Amazon cloud? There are no data connections physically - everything is wireless required. It seems so far everything runs in a proprietary manner and is tailor made for those who are fully integrated into the Amazon ecosystem.. but I'm willing to admit the technical details aren't well..detailed enough for full analysis.

Don't get me wrong, I like these sort of "assistant" kits and home automation etc...but I'll be damned if I'm going to put it in the hands of any third party, much less one that gobbles up any info that it is fed. I'm thankful there are some AI projects out there that are still FOSS. Its a pity one of these companies can't license and package their AI/search/assistant tech in a privacy and FOSS integration friendly way; I'd be willing to pay for that, even, if I could basically confine that technology to being resident in a local way and with an ironclad privacy policy so that anything that was exposed through the use of it would not be saved/cataloged/mined etc.

We're quickly ceding control of our lives to "smart/internet of things" devices that provide minor convenience at the cost of major privacy issues.
Click to expand...

Bingo.

Seemed interesting, and I was tempted since I can get it for $100. Then I remembered that I don't use the stuff built into my phone, why in the world would I use this thing with amazon listening to an open mic in my home all day long? This is a privacy issue the same way that kinect is a privacy issue on the xbone. If this were being handled entirely device-side, and I could be certain somehow that it wasn't phoning home then I might consider something like this. But having this thing actively listening without any control over the information being sent back to amazon? No thanks.
 
I especially like the line about the device that it's always getting smarter and adds functionality over time... I wonder if this is where Skynet starts.
 
Merc1138 said:
Bingo.

Seemed interesting, and I was tempted since I can get it for $100. Then I remembered that I don't use the stuff built into my phone, why in the world would I use this thing with amazon listening to an open mic in my home all day long? This is a privacy issue the same way that kinect is a privacy issue on the xbone. If this were being handled entirely device-side, and I could be certain somehow that it wasn't phoning home then I might consider something like this. But having this thing actively listening without any control over the information being sent back to amazon? No thanks.
Click to expand...

OTOH some people can't use their phone's feature enough and its capable of listening all day too.

Anyone with a phone they don't powerdown when not in use or uses webmail, especially gmail, shouldn't be complaining.
 
LOL. This thing is always on, listening to everything that is going on in your home. And since it is connected to your Wi-Fi, which is connected to the Internet, well, the governments of the world, I'm sure, would love all of us to own one.
 
These usually work fine in a quiet testing environment, but suck ass in the real world.

Try using it while a commercial is playing on TV or multiple people in the room are talking, like your kids eating breakfast while you're trying to tell it some little thing.

Then you have the issue of:
1) It misunderstands what you told it
2) You can't remember all the commands of stuff it CAN do
3) It has quite limited functionality

My HTPC in theory can already "OK GOOGLE" doing the same crap, but in the real world it just isn't really useful.

They will sell a lot based on people's perceptions of how cool it is, and then perhaps hope of what it might one day become, but ultimately its going to die as a fad as expectations are let down.
 
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