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What are the best alternatives?

eva1984 10y ago
This is an open question
dominotw 10y ago
something that doesn't make me say this really long sentence to access the app 'Alexa tell app X to start my car' Something that supports actual conversation which means not having the user respond immediately . For example its impossible to build a cooking app that walks me through the recipe because 'conversation' is over within X seconds. Of course you could do weird hacks like maintaining conversation on the server side based on sessionid, but that still requires user to constantly prefix their conversations with 'tell app X ..' These basic UX limitations make it impossible to build any serious application that can do more than 'joke of the day' type of stuff. All the apps in alexa app store are totally useless 'fart noise of the day' type of garbage.
- dastbe 10y ago
  I think that's a product vs platform issue, especially having to prefix everything with the application. since you are building your own product, you get to avoid the routing problem entirely.
sgwealti 10y ago
The "Ok Google/Google Now" voice interactivity (or whatever the official name is) on Android phones is much better than Amazon's Alexa/Echo. It actually remembers context from sentence to sentence so you can say "What is the population of Chicago" and it will answer. Then you can say, "How long would it take me to drive there?" And it understands that you are still talking about Chicago. Every interaction with Alexa is command, response, and that really limits what you can do with it.
- jon-wood 10y ago
  There's nothing about Alexa's API that would prevent doing that, it already has the concept of a conversation and I think we'll see raid improvement in how people make use of that.
  - sgwealti 10y ago
    I agree. I'm just surprised that none of the base functions provided by Amazon take advantage of it. Compered to google it feels really basic and limited. I saw this as the owner of two Alexa's who uses them a lot. I'm constantly frustrated by the limitations even though it works well for certain things.
jp8000 10y ago
https://www.ibm.com/watson/developercloud/conversation.html https://www.ibm.com/watson/developercloud/conversation.html is one.
digital_ins 10y ago
This, for travel, for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_kw_vlCpcw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_kw_vlCpcw Disclosure: I work at the co that builds this

eva1984 10y ago

This is an open question

something that doesn't make me say this really long sentence to access the app 'Alexa tell app X to start my car' Something that supports actual conversation which means not having the user respond immediately . For example its impossible to build a cooking app that walks me through the recipe because 'conversation' is over within X seconds. Of course you could do weird hacks like maintaining conversation on the server side based on sessionid, but that still requires user to constantly prefix their conversations with 'tell app X ..' These basic UX limitations make it impossible to build any serious application that can do more than 'joke of the day' type of stuff. All the apps in alexa app store are totally useless 'fart noise of the day' type of garbage.

dastbe 10y ago
I think that's a product vs platform issue, especially having to prefix everything with the application. since you are building your own product, you get to avoid the routing problem entirely.

sgwealti 10y ago

The "Ok Google/Google Now" voice interactivity (or whatever the official name is) on Android phones is much better than Amazon's Alexa/Echo. It actually remembers context from sentence to sentence so you can say "What is the population of Chicago" and it will answer. Then you can say, "How long would it take me to drive there?" And it understands that you are still talking about Chicago. Every interaction with Alexa is command, response, and that really limits what you can do with it.

jon-wood 10y ago
There's nothing about Alexa's API that would prevent doing that, it already has the concept of a conversation and I think we'll see raid improvement in how people make use of that.
- sgwealti 10y ago
  I agree. I'm just surprised that none of the base functions provided by Amazon take advantage of it. Compered to google it feels really basic and limited. I saw this as the owner of two Alexa's who uses them a lot. I'm constantly frustrated by the limitations even though it works well for certain things.

jp8000 10y ago

https://www.ibm.com/watson/developercloud/conversation.html https://www.ibm.com/watson/developercloud/conversation.html is one.

digital_ins 10y ago

This, for travel, for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_kw_vlCpcw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_kw_vlCpcw Disclosure: I work at the co that builds this