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Alexa is a wonderful idea in search of a serious use case. It does timers, tells the weather, and, uh, shouts at me from Ring when someone is at the door. Han
by pnathan 2y ago
Alexa is a wonderful idea in search of a serious use case.
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.
- MR4D 2y agoA great timer - especially in the kitchen! But my iPhone does the same. And for $120 per year, that’s a good chunk of my iPhone cost every 4 years. E-waste, here we come!
- weaksauce 2y agoa 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
- chrisweekly 2y agogood tip but it's even simpler: "Hey Siri, 10 minute pasta timer."
- weaksauce 2y agoeven better!
- drivingmenuts 2y agoAre you cooking it about a minute less than it says on the package?
- ravenstine 2y agoIt's kind of amazing how quickly it went from being a part of The Future TM to feeling like tech from the 1980s.
- tzs 2y agoIt'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.
- pnathan 2y agoInteresting. I really invested heavily into the Alexa system. It is super cool and futureistic! I have dots, the wallplug, echo show, studio, etc. I just wish Amazon had invested in the usability of it more!
- melling 2y agoI play music on it every day. It’s connected to my Apple Music account
- pnathan 2y agoI found that it only recognizes something like 30-50% of the bands/songs/composers I like. really aggravating. and last I checked, there was supported web ui or cli to play music from my other devices outside of the (horribly slow) Alexa app. IT COULD BE SO MUCH BETTER.
- fuzztester 2y agoaka a solution in search of a problem
- fuzztester 2y agoaka a solution in search of a problem. very common in our industry of software. then the hypemeisters (vcs and marketers) pick up a likely candidate for hyping, and give it all the boost they can. sometimes, by sheer luck, and of course by the old boys' network, it works. I mean the profitability part, not the usefulness part. llms are a case in point.
- fullstop 2y agoIf 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.
- steveBK123 2y agoThis 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.
- ninetyninenine 2y agoTurning on and off all the lights. Light switches are obsolete in my house. When I need to take a piss and it's pitch black I don't fumble for the switch when I get out of bed. I just tell alexa to turn on the lights.
- henrikschroder 2y agoOk, 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? Because that's what they're asking.
- ninetyninenine 2y agoHeck no. Just saying that it's uses aren't frivolous. I would pay a one time fee for it though. Like buying a product.
- aeonik 2y agoThis works just until other people start sleeping in the same room, or if the Internet drops out.
- jemmyw 2y agoMotion 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.
- pnathan 2y agoYeah, I missed that bit. 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.
- dyauspitr 2y agoHas someone tried to get ChatGPT working with Alexa?
- baxtr 2y agoamazon is great when it comes to operations. Delivering a broad range of goods cheaply, reliably and quickly to your doorsteps? Check. Developing a great digital product? None has ever worked for them.