3 ms·

It annoys me that everyone wants you to play inside their walled garden. It's especially annoying with all of these smart speakers that function perfectly fine

It annoys me that everyone wants you to play inside their walled garden. It's especially annoying with all of these smart speakers that function perfectly fine as Bluetooth speakerphones. I would much rather they augment my existing phone service.

mc32 9y ago
There was a time aol, yahoo and msn were made to play nice and interop, will that soon be the case with these new messaging platforms?
- Jtsummers 9y ago
  As I recall, that was a very brief period and then they all went their own ways again with an arms race to prevent people from connecting to their networks without the official clients. Google used XMPP initially with Google Talk, but then turned off federation (was it ever on? I recall it was, but that was a long time ago). We've had greater than a decade now of poor interop between messaging platforms. This is unlikely to change as long as these platforms are owned by people with a vested interest in controlling the experience (tying it to their hardware or other services or ad networks, primarily).
  - dboreham 9y ago
    Federation did work. I had it configured on our server.
nashashmi 9y ago
Amazon echo is their attempt at a smart phone without a screen.
- cptskippy 9y ago
  That's not how anyone should look at a smart speakers because it's fundamentally flawed. A smart phone is a very intimate and personal device. A smart speaker is the exact opposite of that. It needs to be easily multiuser out of the box. The Echo worked because it was user oblivious but the new communication features break that model and are decidedly user specific and functionally retarded.
  - lukejduncan 9y ago
    I love my echo, but I hate that it thinks it's user oblivious. Take "alexa play music" which will play recommended artists based on your listening history. All it plays is garbage (in terms of my tastes) because 1) my wife LOVES cold play and listens to that a lot 2) my mom lived with us for a few months to help with kids and now it thinks I reaaaaly like Christian rock (I don't). So music recommendations, a key feature, is worthless. Plus, if you have an audible or Spotify account it's definitely tightly coupled to user profiles. I can play my Spotify songs on Echo from my phone by selecting "My devices" but my wife can't, so she has a speedster Bluetooth speaker she uses because it's just easier for her. Amazon Echo is pretty good, but it's biggest most annoying flaw is the way it handles multiple users as if they are one.

mc32 9y ago

There was a time aol, yahoo and msn were made to play nice and interop, will that soon be the case with these new messaging platforms?

Jtsummers 9y ago
As I recall, that was a very brief period and then they all went their own ways again with an arms race to prevent people from connecting to their networks without the official clients. Google used XMPP initially with Google Talk, but then turned off federation (was it ever on? I recall it was, but that was a long time ago). We've had greater than a decade now of poor interop between messaging platforms. This is unlikely to change as long as these platforms are owned by people with a vested interest in controlling the experience (tying it to their hardware or other services or ad networks, primarily).
- dboreham 9y ago
  Federation did work. I had it configured on our server.

nashashmi 9y ago

Amazon echo is their attempt at a smart phone without a screen.

cptskippy 9y ago
That's not how anyone should look at a smart speakers because it's fundamentally flawed. A smart phone is a very intimate and personal device. A smart speaker is the exact opposite of that. It needs to be easily multiuser out of the box. The Echo worked because it was user oblivious but the new communication features break that model and are decidedly user specific and functionally retarded.
- lukejduncan 9y ago
  I love my echo, but I hate that it thinks it's user oblivious. Take "alexa play music" which will play recommended artists based on your listening history. All it plays is garbage (in terms of my tastes) because 1) my wife LOVES cold play and listens to that a lot 2) my mom lived with us for a few months to help with kids and now it thinks I reaaaaly like Christian rock (I don't). So music recommendations, a key feature, is worthless. Plus, if you have an audible or Spotify account it's definitely tightly coupled to user profiles. I can play my Spotify songs on Echo from my phone by selecting "My devices" but my wife can't, so she has a speedster Bluetooth speaker she uses because it's just easier for her. Amazon Echo is pretty good, but it's biggest most annoying flaw is the way it handles multiple users as if they are one.