19 ms·

Amazon Echo Released

117 points by _red 11y ago

CrunchyJams 11y ago
Great - an always-on microphone in my home that sends all of my conversations and interactions directly to Amazon for analysis
- jpb0104 11y ago
  Not exactly. http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201602230 http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=2...
- famousactress 11y ago
  Let's be fair, the product is designed to specifically not do that: "Echo uses on-device keyword spotting to detect the wake word. When Echo detects the wake word, it lights up and streams audio to the cloud, where we leverage the Alexa Voice Service to recognize and respond to your request."
  - sillygoose 11y ago
    Right, and we can just take their word for it because.. Don't Be Evil?
- mkoryak 11y ago
  yeah, kind of like your cellphone.
  - pdkl95 11y ago
    What cell phone? Of course, given that a lot of the HN crowd currently derives their income from surveillance and/or walled-garden based business models ("analytics", "big data", "software as a service", etc), I expect to be down-voted for suggesting that it is a bad idea to trade your future for a few shiny (and sometimes useful) toys. I hope everybody that uses Amazon's microphone - or, as you say, a cell phone - realize that you're creating the surveillance state. Right now there is a large effort to normalize surveillance socially, and instead of fighting for you right to privacy, we have a threat full of people talking about how wonderful the bait tastes.
    - walterbell 11y ago
      We need AGPL algorithms and training datasets for voice recognition, plus user-programmable open-source firmware for on-device wake word recognition. If we can end the false privacy-convenience tradeoff, then the technology can be applied for goals defined by users rather than select business interests. Nuance's Dragon NaturallySpeaking is a mature proprietary product that runs locally on Windows. It has an SDK for custom integration, http://www.nuance.com/for-developers/dragon/client-sdk/index.htm http://www.nuance.com/for-developers/dragon/client-sdk/index...
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
Trisell 11y ago
If I had told George Orwell that people would pay for the right to have an always on microphone in their house, he would have said, "That's to far fetched even for me. I'll stick with the government forced TV in the living room."
- ddlatham 11y ago
  Is there a reason you trust this device less than the computer with a microphone that you carry around in your pocket all day?
  - darklajid 11y ago
    Not the GP: One of these advertises 'always listening'. The other one doesn't. One is an established device to actually talk to (usually) one other person, of your choice. The other one records you to send the information ~elsewhere~. One is - in theory, let's leave the three letter stuff out - protected by quite a lot of battle-tested laws. The other one is so much harder to judge.
    - ddlatham 11y ago
      Do you trust the advertising/documentation/claims? If so, Echo advertises that it is listening for its wake word and doesn't transmit the audio until that is used. It sends the information to a service of your choice. If not, why would you trust that the other device's microphone doesn't activate and send your audio remotely? What laws protect you from your phone/tablet that don't apply to the Echo?
      - darklajid 11y ago
        If I'd be a trusting person, I probably wouldn't have this exchange with you. I don't have social network accounts (except for a ~mostly~ readonly Twitter thing), I don't use Google Now etc. Now, I admit that this just shows that I'm not part of the target market - just like the thread's author I assume. I don't claim that people are stupid if they buy into Echo, I just don't see why on Earth you would want to. "why would you trust that the other device's microphone doesn't activate and send your audio remotely?" As explained above: All voice activated features have an off button and I try to keep an eye on things/removing services/disable whatever I can. The distinction here is that one device works perfectly fine if you can convince yourself that it doesn't listen to you. The other one doesn't. "What laws protect you from your phone/tablet that don't apply to the Echo?" IANAL - but tapping your phone is something that the law is rather specific about and it is usually well protected. You can argue that the use of the phone's microphone outside of a call would be really not 'phone' related, but I'd hope (erm.. maybe I do have more trust than I'm aware of myself here?) that a court would find the invasion worse. Again: One is a device that is meant for private communication under your control. The other one is a microphone in your living room that is sold to stream your audio (yes, I understand the wake word concept) to random corporations. And in the end it's a matter of limiting exposure. I _do_ think that the phone can be abused. It's just not practical to avoid one in my daily life. I take precautions and accept the risk. Without bashing Echo fans, I personally just wouldn't see the benefit and therefor cannot accept the risks. Bottom line: Having a phone with a microphone and then buying another microphone for the living room isn't a case of 'Ah, all is lost anyway' for me. I don't think the comparison makes sense/leads anywhere.
ranman 11y ago
Disclaimer: I work for AWS (not Amazon but part of Amazon). I like the idea that this is backed by a service that has an API that can call out to other APIs. It has an "app store". I think you can sign up for the SDK already: https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/devices/echo https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/devices/echo It's one of the only devices in my home I use as often as my cell phone. I look forward to the day when I can push information back to the echo using apps like tripit: "ranman your flight is leaving in 2 hours, should I call an uber or give you the train schedule?" "It's lunch time, want to see what's in the neighborhood you haven't tried recently?" "You have an incoming skype call from X" "Welcome home, want me to turn on the news?" The only downside is that it depends on always on and fast connectivity. I'm not particularly concerned about the privacy of it all (I do recognize the concerns other people have) but I would be interested in learning more about how the privacy is handled. The other interesting device in this category is the Jibo: https://www.jibo.com/ https://www.jibo.com/ but I haven't seen any of the details on the developer side of that yet.
- Navarr 11y ago
  I do love my Echo, it's just.. it's entirely Amazon ecosystem and that really limits its usefulness for me. As an amazon employee I'm sure you're probably bought into the Amazon ecosystem. Maybe you even have a fire phone? :p But I'm primarily an Android user. I'm just imagining what a device like the Echo would be if backed by Google Now. It would be ten times more powerful, easily. My girlfriend's primary complaint was "it can't even recommend me a book" (Because Amazon was.. well.. a book seller!)
  - nogridbag 11y ago
    It is a bit limited if you compare it directly to something like Google Now (or OK Google?). But I think once more developers get involved we'll see some cool things. For instance, a frequently mentioned feature is "What time does McDonalds close?" which Echo currently can't answer. But perhaps pretty soon we'll have a Yelp app which can do that.
  - ranman 11y ago
techscruggs 11y ago
I have two at my house and absolutely love them for the simplest tasks: weather, time, timer & shopping list. It's other features are fun, but I haven't found more useful than grabbing my smartphone. For me, it's a more useful Siri.
twistedanimator 11y ago
I would like to know the ways in which people who already have an Echo use it. I have had one for months now and all I use it for is listening to music while I prepare dinner. Lately, the music has begun to stutter and that irritates me so much that I say "Alexa goodbye" and pull the plug out of the wall.
- Navarr 11y ago
  Alexa is my primary alarm now. It was also common for a time to ask it what the time was or what the weather was when preparing in the morning (our bedroom is our living room).
- nogridbag 11y ago
  I use it daily to check the weather forecast, manage my shopping and todo list, and set timers (mainly when cooking) while I'm just walking around my apartment. I also bought the Philips Hue Lux bulbs for the cool factor ("Alexa, turn off all the lights") - but the jury's still out on them. If I had to actually use their Philips Hue android app to turn the lights on and off I would flip out. Echo actually makes them usable. Once they open up the SDK, there's lots of things I'd love to add which will make my life easier. It was a great buy at $99. I would have even liked to buy an additional one for my bedroom. At $179 it's a tougher sell - I would have to think twice about it. I also noticed they're selling the remote control separately for an extra $30.
- koala_man 11y ago
  (Disclosure: I work on competing NLP) I ended up putting mine in the bedroom. The only commands that I've found weekly+ uses for are: - Turn the lights on/off - What time is it And that's pretty much it. Only the latter works reliably. I would have definitely have used the home automation more, but the Amazon recommended WeMo switch that works perfectly from the WeMo app only works half the time from Echo. It's a fun toy though. Guests always get a kick out of "Alexa, tell me a joke" and "Alexa, play some party music", and I still enjoy the occasional futuristic feeling when I e.g. listen to something interesting on NPR in my car and have Echo take over when I get home. However, as much as I enjoy NLP and early adoption, I really struggle to find practical, non-gimmick uses for it.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
cromantin 11y ago
I can't wait for the times when i would ask my wife "where are my sneakers?" and in 10 minutes amazon would send me email for buying brand new sneakers with drone delivery in 5 minutes.
jm4 11y ago
I have been using one for a few months. It's still a novelty at this point, but it's a neat device. The voice recognition is great and it works from very far away. I can change songs or adjust volume from 20 feet away with no problems. If nothing else, it works very well as a music player and Bluetooth headset. The instant answers, unit conversions, etc. are convenient in the kitchen, although they could improve on this front. Alexa doesn't always understand the question and seems to screw up sports scores and schedules pretty frequently. It seems about as good as Siri but not as good as Cortana. I have never used Google Now so I can't compare to that. Amazon pushes out frequent updates and integrations with third parties - Audible, Pandora, IFTTT and some home automation systems just to name a few. They definitely seem committed to Alexa. Overall, I like Alexa. I wouldn't say it has changed my life or anything and I'm not sure how much I would miss it if I didn't have it, but I'm glad I do if you know what I mean. It is definitely still an early adopter device. It will be exciting to see where it goes as they add more features. I already feel like I'm in a sci-fi movie from as recent as the late 90's where I talk to the house computer. Neat stuff.
simonswords82 11y ago
So how do I get one of these in the UK? :)
smackfu 11y ago
How we use ours: * "Alexa, what's the weather look like?" (every day) * "Alexa, set a timer for 10 minutes" * "Alexa, what time is it?" (we don't have any clocks in our living room.) * "Alexa, play some 80's music." (this works great if you just want some music playing) Also, it's a pretty good Bluetooth speaker. Yes, you can do most of this stuff on an iPhone with Siri, but this kind of button-less voice control is just better.
- koala_man 11y ago
  >you can do most of this stuff on an iPhone with Siri, but this kind of button-less voice control is just better Have you tried the newer Android phones with the same kind of button-less voice control?
  - smackfu 11y ago
    No, I haven't. How do they work if you can't look at the screen? Siri tends to be bad about that. Like "how's the weather" gets a response of "Here's the forecast:" and shows it on the screen. One of the things with Echo is that it doesn't have a screen, so everything has voice responses.
    - sp332 11y ago
      If Google understands the content it's presenting, like weather, it will read it out loud to you. If a wikipedia article is the first result, it will read the entire first paragraph out loud.
    - notatoad 11y ago
      google now will try it's best to answer questions out loud if they were asked that way. Your weather example works, but in general it's inconsistent enough that i can't assume it will give me an audible answer, and I usually limit myself to speaking only questions or commands that i know to work.
      - dragonwriter 11y ago
tomjacobs 11y ago
Imagine what happens when a computer hears everything you say. And tells you what it thinks you want. Sorta like: http://theinternetthinks.com/ http://theinternetthinks.com/
click170 11y ago
An interesting situation would be if one person got the device knowing their room mate was privacy conscious. The other person has now lost their reasonable expectation of privacy in their own home and might not even know it.
- ohitsdom 11y ago
  How would they not know it? The device interaction is through voice/sound.
- smackfu 11y ago
  You do not have privacy from your roommate. They could easily set up a bug just like they could set up Echo.
aaronbrethorst 11y ago
I've had an Echo for a couple months. I bought it for $99 as a Prime customer. Generally, I'm very happy with it, but I don't think I'd be as satisfied at the $180 price point. Good: - The hardware is really well designed. - Being able to listen to NPR affiliates elsewhere in the country is awesome (Seattle's KUOW affiliate is bad, but my hometown stations of MPR and The Current are great). - The Prime Music and Pandora integration is generally pretty cool, although the Prime Music selection is a bit thin at times. - Timers and kitchen measurements are helpful. Bad: - The iOS app is absolutely horrendous. Imagine the worst web/native hybrid app that you've ever seen, now set your expectations down another order of magnitude. I cannot understand how a company with as many resources as Amazon—especially one that did such an amazing job on the hardware—could create such an utterly horrible mobile companion app. - The Echo has trouble understanding my girlfriend (a complaint I've heard from a couple other Echo users) - You call it Alexa, not Echo. The box says Echo, but you will never interact with it as such. Can you imagine Steve Jobs saying: "here's our big feature for iOS 5, it's called Siri, but you'll interact with it by calling it Yoko"? - No really, the iOS app is awful. Like, I'll go out of my way to avoid ever having to open it.
- joshuapants 11y ago
  > The box says Echo, but you will never interact with it as such. Can you imagine Steve Jobs saying: "here's our big feature for iOS 5, it's called Siri, but you'll interact with it by calling it Yoko"? Um, you say Siri instead of "iPhone" so I think they're doing exactly the same thing as Apple.
- nkozyra 11y ago
  > You call it Alexa, not Echo. The box says Echo, but you will never interact with it as such. Can you imagine Steve Jobs saying: "here's our big feature for iOS 5, it's called Siri, but you'll interact with it by calling it Yoko"? I think you're looking at this the wrong way. The product is the iphone, the human-interaction agent is Siri The product is the echo, the human-interaction agent is Alexa
  - tsurantino 11y ago
kstrauser 11y ago
Good! I signed up for the beta on a whim and got one just in time for Christmas, so that was a family present to all of us. At first, we spent a lot of time yelling random orders and questions at it, and that was fun. But after a while, it just faded into the background of our living room and became something that Just Works, like the TV and DVR. How much time do you spend consciously thinking about your TV versus taking it for granted? That's how Alexa is for us now. Our most used apps: - Alexa, set a timer for 10 minutes. (Our new standard kitchen timer) - Alexa, play [...]. (Lots of music in Amazon Prime.) - Alexa, turn the lights on. (Interfaces with the Hue lighting system to brighten the living room.) I could live without it, but I could survive without a lot of the tech that makes everyday life a little easier. I'm glad I don't have to, though.
garagemc2 11y ago
So was it not released before?
rajadigopula 11y ago
Just out of curiosity, if I want to change the track, Do I need to shout hard the wake word when a song is already playing at full volume? My first test if I get the device is to change the wake word to "baby" and play Justin Bieber's number.
- koala_man 11y ago
  At full volume, probably. At a normal volume, it's pretty good at picking up the wake word (which by the way can just be "Alexa" or "Amazon") at just a slightly raised voice. It then lowers the volume to hear what else you're saying.
- mooxie 11y ago
  You don't have to shout. With its multiple microphones Alexa is pretty good at hearing you over the music. There is also a remote with a built in mic in case you want to control it from a ways off or there is a ton of background noise. Sadly you cannot change the wake word. 'Alexa' or 'Amazon' are the two available wake words.
frik 11y ago
18.543 reviews in 5 days? (19th-23th June) That's a lot. The customer reviews section was previously hidden during the closed beta test, though the review section was accessible with the right URL and just a few weeks ago there were only 4 mixed reviews. I wonder how many amazon customers got a free sample as one wrote: "SO happy we got to sample one of these playtoys, first! What a disappointment!"
- t0mbstone 11y ago
  Amazon sent me an email asking me if I wanted to review it, so I did. They probably asked every single person who bought one of the pre-release Echo devices.
- jm4 11y ago
  Amazon blasted out an email to early users a few days ago soliciting reviews so that could explain it. I have had Echo for 6 months and I imagine many of the other reviewers have as well. I got a 50% discount for being a Prime member. I'm not aware of any free samples simply for being a Prime member and good customer. My Amazon account is over 15 years old with an absolutely massive purchase history across nearly every product category and I have been a Prime member since the beginning. I'd like to think I would have been in line for a free sample if that was a thing.
  - frik 11y ago
    Thanks for the info, that explains it. > My Amazon account is over 15 years old (...) As a long term Amazon customer too I doubt Amazon cares. They nag me with their Prime subscription opt-in dialog every time like I am a new first time user. Though I couldn't care less about a subscription model - I use Amazon as a online storefront to buy physical and digital goods on demand.
jakejake 11y ago
I feel like I need to get with the times. I have an aversion to talking to computers. Though when I try using it once in a while to dictate a text, I'm always surprised and amazed at how well it works.
buffportion 11y ago
A cautionary tale: Echo starts recording when it hears the "wake" word ('Alexa' or 'Amazon'), but it can mistake other words or parts of speech for a wake word (for example, consider how close the phrase "he likes her" is to "Alexa"). Browsing through the history I have found snippets of conversations that Echo had no business listening to, and which the recorded subjects certainly did not wish to send to Amazon.
- shepardrtc 11y ago
  I've had Echo ever since it was first released for Prime members. I live in a small studio apartment. Not once has it ever accidentally turned on. Not from me, guests, or the tv.
  - rgoodwintx 11y ago
    I've had maybe 3-4 times in the same period, but they were understandable. Like "a mess of" triggered it once. We just laugh and move on. I do think the "always listening" argument has some merit, because it seems to me it must keep a buffer of sound to recognize so that it always catches the "A" part of Alexa. But that's not "always listening to everything", versus "always listening for a very specific initial trigger sound".
  - pdkl95 11y ago
    Do you have complete tcpdump logs to prove this, or are you assuming it works that way Amazon said so? What about new versions of the firmware?
    - TheTravCav 11y ago
      You can go to http://echo.amazon.com/ http://echo.amazon.com/ and see the entire history of recordings with the option to delete any.
      - pdkl95 11y ago
        Why is this hard to understand? The map is not the territory! Any data you didn't record yourself may not be complete. If you controlled the firmware of a device that surreptitiously records more than it should be recording, would you show those "extra" recordings to the mark nicely chronologically sorted with the legitimate recordings? If you were a criminal (or government agency) attacking these devices with bad firmware or buffer overrun, would you have even the slightest care about making sure echo.amazon.com is updated to show your eavesdropping? // only five karmas and a username that is a googlewhack (!) bringing up exactly 5 posts and nothing else smells a bit like JTRIG
dsugarman 11y ago
product will not work well if you have an Alexa in your family
mpdehaan2 11y ago
I like my echo a lot. I mostly use it to ask it the weather forecast and control my Hue lights (Alexa, turn on the living room lights, dim the office lights to 50% percent, etc). Rather unexpected, I find I like to ask it to tell me jokes too. it has a rather large library of particularly terrible jokes that I like :) The shopping list feature is nice when trying to keep things paperless (or at least, I never find my notes). It's now possible to have IFTTT email you the list when you ask what's on your list. As a bluetooth speaker, I don't find myself using it a whole lot, but has a wide range of options from TuneIn to IHeartRadio and there is a lot on Amazon streaming too. I'm looking forward to seeing them add new features and they come out with new features about every single month. It's not the most neccessary thing by any means, but it is a nice step towards Jetson-land and it's fun to have around. It also learns voices better over time and has a nice "training" app in the phone app I'd suggest using 3-4 times. Neat stuff. Oh - Alexa support is super awesome, most questions get answered by real humans super fast, and then they implement some of those things!
- sparrish 11y ago
  My kids love the jokes too. And I've not had to answer a single "Dad, how do spell..." question since we received it.
pgrote 11y ago
I was one of the first people to get an Echo when they were offered to prime members at $99 in November 2014. It has quickly become a great device for our family. Some of our thoughts: * The integration with third party services has put it into a new realm of usefulness. * I am still disappointed I cannot tell it to read me a book from anything but Audible. I would love to say, "Read Hamlet from Guttenberg." * The connection between Echo and Prime Music is sensational. If you like genres of music over specific artists, it really shines. * If you have kids, the Echo is a blast for them to interact with. Endless questions from your kids is great to hear. * It would be awesome if they opened it up more. I could see it being a game master for family games of trivia or spelling contests. * I'd say we use the Echo for 3-4 hours a day with a majority of the time used to stream music. "Amazon, play Kidz Bop 28" is a common refrain. * When playing scrabble we use it as a timer. * We've never used it to order anything from Amazon. * We do use it to compile shopping lists. I was surprised how quickly this became an essential part of our household. So easy to say, "Amazon, add olive oil to shopping list." * You can choose between Alexa and Amazon as they wake word. We use Amazon since it is easier for the kids to register with the Echo. * You cannot change the wake word from those two. * We use the Android app for non voice control and it has gotten much better recently. * The news function could use a ton of work. I don't want to hear things I am not interested in from NPR. * It listens to everything. If you happen to mention Amazon in conversation it'll pick it up, even if you are 2 rooms away. * At $99 it is a device I'd recommend to almost any family. At $179 I couldn't justify buying one. Anyway, they have a winner for families if the price point was lower. I am very glad we got ours for $99.
- arturadib 11y ago
  This. We use it in our family mostly as a jukebox with occasional Siri-like fun (I'm now in the habit of asking for news updates from NPR every morning). As Jack Dorsey said, Echo is the future.
phinkle 11y ago
The first review about a wife buy Echo for her husband with Parkinson's warms my heart. Its so inspiring to see how technology has such a great impact on people's lives! Definitely would recommend reading as a pick-me-up for the day.
mrcrassic 11y ago
The Echo is awesome; my girlfriend and I have had it for the last few months and LOVE being able to just play music by telling it to play. It's also an AMAZING bluetooth speaker; seriously, it's so fucking loud and on point. It's worth every penny.
fishtoaster 11y ago
I got one of these for work with my office decorating budget because I thought it would be cool to hack on it. Maybe even set it up to do silly dev-related tasks like "Alexa, how many users are active right now?" and "Alexa, comment 'looks good' on Janet's pull request." What I found, though, was that it was a divisive product. 50% of the office thought it was neat, 40% didn't care, and 10% hated it with a surprising passion. Privacy concerns were brought up, but the biggest complaint was just that it was "creepy." We ended up unplugging it and leaving it in a corner because it wasn't worth making people uncomfortable for a largely useless toy.
FlaceBook 11y ago
It still amazes me that people actually pay money for the opportunity to have one of these things listening to what goes on in their home 24/7.
spacefight 11y ago
Has anyone analyzed the outgoing connections yet? What TLS cipher suites are being used?
piyush_soni 11y ago
Sincere Question: Can it do anything my 'always on' Google Now can't? (At least there was nothing in the two promo videos they show on their webpage)
- echosmith 11y ago
  Turn lights/switches/home-automation stuff on/off. Read stuff from Audible. One command music streaming. (Google Now will bring up a link for you to click) Shopping. (Reorders prime items from Amazon) Coming Soon: Integrates natively with all sorts of apps - (There's an SDK in the works)
  - piyush_soni 11y ago
    Wouldn't it need you to buy compatible devices for the home automation to work (If yes, the phone would do that as well - there are 'app' controlled lights/other fixtures). And Google Now does do one command music streaming (I do that everyday - "Ok Google, Play Music" - and it starts playing). Audible and Reordering past Amazon orders - Some people may find value in that. I don't listen to audio books or reorder stuff in general from them.
Finbarr 11y ago
I find their home page design aesthetic for these product announcements very unusual. They make it look like an email, leaving large amounts of whitespace on the page. I wonder how well this converts to purchases for them.
uslic001 11y ago
I really enjoy my 99 dollar Echo. I am also not sure I would have bought it at the higher price. I have had it since last November and still use it daily. I love that they keep slowly adding functionality to expand its uses without overwhelming me. After using it so much at home I often miss it at work. I may have to get one for work at my next Prime renewal date.
robg 11y ago
Mostly useless. The AI is really bad. I get the weather and maybe a few music stations from asking. Otherwise, a lot of promise wasted and not convinced it will get anywhere exciting anytime soon. Asking "Alexa" not "Echo" is very silly.

117 points by _red 11y ago

Great - an always-on microphone in my home that sends all of my conversations and interactions directly to Amazon for analysis

jpb0104 11y ago
Not exactly. http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201602230 http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=2...
famousactress 11y ago
Let's be fair, the product is designed to specifically not do that: "Echo uses on-device keyword spotting to detect the wake word. When Echo detects the wake word, it lights up and streams audio to the cloud, where we leverage the Alexa Voice Service to recognize and respond to your request."
- sillygoose 11y ago
  Right, and we can just take their word for it because.. Don't Be Evil?
mkoryak 11y ago
yeah, kind of like your cellphone.
- pdkl95 11y ago
  What cell phone? Of course, given that a lot of the HN crowd currently derives their income from surveillance and/or walled-garden based business models ("analytics", "big data", "software as a service", etc), I expect to be down-voted for suggesting that it is a bad idea to trade your future for a few shiny (and sometimes useful) toys. I hope everybody that uses Amazon's microphone - or, as you say, a cell phone - realize that you're creating the surveillance state. Right now there is a large effort to normalize surveillance socially, and instead of fighting for you right to privacy, we have a threat full of people talking about how wonderful the bait tastes.
  - walterbell 11y ago
    We need AGPL algorithms and training datasets for voice recognition, plus user-programmable open-source firmware for on-device wake word recognition. If we can end the false privacy-convenience tradeoff, then the technology can be applied for goals defined by users rather than select business interests. Nuance's Dragon NaturallySpeaking is a mature proprietary product that runs locally on Windows. It has an SDK for custom integration, http://www.nuance.com/for-developers/dragon/client-sdk/index.htm http://www.nuance.com/for-developers/dragon/client-sdk/index...
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

Trisell 11y ago

If I had told George Orwell that people would pay for the right to have an always on microphone in their house, he would have said, "That's to far fetched even for me. I'll stick with the government forced TV in the living room."

ddlatham 11y ago
Is there a reason you trust this device less than the computer with a microphone that you carry around in your pocket all day?
- darklajid 11y ago
  Not the GP: One of these advertises 'always listening'. The other one doesn't. One is an established device to actually talk to (usually) one other person, of your choice. The other one records you to send the information ~elsewhere~. One is - in theory, let's leave the three letter stuff out - protected by quite a lot of battle-tested laws. The other one is so much harder to judge.
  - ddlatham 11y ago
    Do you trust the advertising/documentation/claims? If so, Echo advertises that it is listening for its wake word and doesn't transmit the audio until that is used. It sends the information to a service of your choice. If not, why would you trust that the other device's microphone doesn't activate and send your audio remotely? What laws protect you from your phone/tablet that don't apply to the Echo?
    - darklajid 11y ago
      If I'd be a trusting person, I probably wouldn't have this exchange with you. I don't have social network accounts (except for a ~mostly~ readonly Twitter thing), I don't use Google Now etc. Now, I admit that this just shows that I'm not part of the target market - just like the thread's author I assume. I don't claim that people are stupid if they buy into Echo, I just don't see why on Earth you would want to. "why would you trust that the other device's microphone doesn't activate and send your audio remotely?" As explained above: All voice activated features have an off button and I try to keep an eye on things/removing services/disable whatever I can. The distinction here is that one device works perfectly fine if you can convince yourself that it doesn't listen to you. The other one doesn't. "What laws protect you from your phone/tablet that don't apply to the Echo?" IANAL - but tapping your phone is something that the law is rather specific about and it is usually well protected. You can argue that the use of the phone's microphone outside of a call would be really not 'phone' related, but I'd hope (erm.. maybe I do have more trust than I'm aware of myself here?) that a court would find the invasion worse. Again: One is a device that is meant for private communication under your control. The other one is a microphone in your living room that is sold to stream your audio (yes, I understand the wake word concept) to random corporations. And in the end it's a matter of limiting exposure. I _do_ think that the phone can be abused. It's just not practical to avoid one in my daily life. I take precautions and accept the risk. Without bashing Echo fans, I personally just wouldn't see the benefit and therefor cannot accept the risks. Bottom line: Having a phone with a microphone and then buying another microphone for the living room isn't a case of 'Ah, all is lost anyway' for me. I don't think the comparison makes sense/leads anywhere.

ranman 11y ago

Disclaimer: I work for AWS (not Amazon but part of Amazon). I like the idea that this is backed by a service that has an API that can call out to other APIs. It has an "app store". I think you can sign up for the SDK already: https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/devices/echo https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/devices/echo It's one of the only devices in my home I use as often as my cell phone. I look forward to the day when I can push information back to the echo using apps like tripit: "ranman your flight is leaving in 2 hours, should I call an uber or give you the train schedule?" "It's lunch time, want to see what's in the neighborhood you haven't tried recently?" "You have an incoming skype call from X" "Welcome home, want me to turn on the news?" The only downside is that it depends on always on and fast connectivity. I'm not particularly concerned about the privacy of it all (I do recognize the concerns other people have) but I would be interested in learning more about how the privacy is handled. The other interesting device in this category is the Jibo: https://www.jibo.com/ https://www.jibo.com/ but I haven't seen any of the details on the developer side of that yet.

Navarr 11y ago
I do love my Echo, it's just.. it's entirely Amazon ecosystem and that really limits its usefulness for me. As an amazon employee I'm sure you're probably bought into the Amazon ecosystem. Maybe you even have a fire phone? :p But I'm primarily an Android user. I'm just imagining what a device like the Echo would be if backed by Google Now. It would be ten times more powerful, easily. My girlfriend's primary complaint was "it can't even recommend me a book" (Because Amazon was.. well.. a book seller!)
- nogridbag 11y ago
  It is a bit limited if you compare it directly to something like Google Now (or OK Google?). But I think once more developers get involved we'll see some cool things. For instance, a frequently mentioned feature is "What time does McDonalds close?" which Echo currently can't answer. But perhaps pretty soon we'll have a Yelp app which can do that.
- ranman 11y ago

techscruggs 11y ago

I have two at my house and absolutely love them for the simplest tasks: weather, time, timer & shopping list. It's other features are fun, but I haven't found more useful than grabbing my smartphone. For me, it's a more useful Siri.

twistedanimator 11y ago

I would like to know the ways in which people who already have an Echo use it. I have had one for months now and all I use it for is listening to music while I prepare dinner. Lately, the music has begun to stutter and that irritates me so much that I say "Alexa goodbye" and pull the plug out of the wall.

Navarr 11y ago
Alexa is my primary alarm now. It was also common for a time to ask it what the time was or what the weather was when preparing in the morning (our bedroom is our living room).
nogridbag 11y ago
I use it daily to check the weather forecast, manage my shopping and todo list, and set timers (mainly when cooking) while I'm just walking around my apartment. I also bought the Philips Hue Lux bulbs for the cool factor ("Alexa, turn off all the lights") - but the jury's still out on them. If I had to actually use their Philips Hue android app to turn the lights on and off I would flip out. Echo actually makes them usable. Once they open up the SDK, there's lots of things I'd love to add which will make my life easier. It was a great buy at $99. I would have even liked to buy an additional one for my bedroom. At $179 it's a tougher sell - I would have to think twice about it. I also noticed they're selling the remote control separately for an extra $30.
koala_man 11y ago
(Disclosure: I work on competing NLP) I ended up putting mine in the bedroom. The only commands that I've found weekly+ uses for are: - Turn the lights on/off - What time is it And that's pretty much it. Only the latter works reliably. I would have definitely have used the home automation more, but the Amazon recommended WeMo switch that works perfectly from the WeMo app only works half the time from Echo. It's a fun toy though. Guests always get a kick out of "Alexa, tell me a joke" and "Alexa, play some party music", and I still enjoy the occasional futuristic feeling when I e.g. listen to something interesting on NPR in my car and have Echo take over when I get home. However, as much as I enjoy NLP and early adoption, I really struggle to find practical, non-gimmick uses for it.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

cromantin 11y ago

I can't wait for the times when i would ask my wife "where are my sneakers?" and in 10 minutes amazon would send me email for buying brand new sneakers with drone delivery in 5 minutes.

jm4 11y ago

I have been using one for a few months. It's still a novelty at this point, but it's a neat device. The voice recognition is great and it works from very far away. I can change songs or adjust volume from 20 feet away with no problems. If nothing else, it works very well as a music player and Bluetooth headset. The instant answers, unit conversions, etc. are convenient in the kitchen, although they could improve on this front. Alexa doesn't always understand the question and seems to screw up sports scores and schedules pretty frequently. It seems about as good as Siri but not as good as Cortana. I have never used Google Now so I can't compare to that. Amazon pushes out frequent updates and integrations with third parties - Audible, Pandora, IFTTT and some home automation systems just to name a few. They definitely seem committed to Alexa. Overall, I like Alexa. I wouldn't say it has changed my life or anything and I'm not sure how much I would miss it if I didn't have it, but I'm glad I do if you know what I mean. It is definitely still an early adopter device. It will be exciting to see where it goes as they add more features. I already feel like I'm in a sci-fi movie from as recent as the late 90's where I talk to the house computer. Neat stuff.

simonswords82 11y ago

So how do I get one of these in the UK? :)

smackfu 11y ago

How we use ours: * "Alexa, what's the weather look like?" (every day) * "Alexa, set a timer for 10 minutes" * "Alexa, what time is it?" (we don't have any clocks in our living room.) * "Alexa, play some 80's music." (this works great if you just want some music playing) Also, it's a pretty good Bluetooth speaker. Yes, you can do most of this stuff on an iPhone with Siri, but this kind of button-less voice control is just better.

koala_man 11y ago
>you can do most of this stuff on an iPhone with Siri, but this kind of button-less voice control is just better Have you tried the newer Android phones with the same kind of button-less voice control?
- smackfu 11y ago
  No, I haven't. How do they work if you can't look at the screen? Siri tends to be bad about that. Like "how's the weather" gets a response of "Here's the forecast:" and shows it on the screen. One of the things with Echo is that it doesn't have a screen, so everything has voice responses.
  - sp332 11y ago
    If Google understands the content it's presenting, like weather, it will read it out loud to you. If a wikipedia article is the first result, it will read the entire first paragraph out loud.
  - notatoad 11y ago
    google now will try it's best to answer questions out loud if they were asked that way. Your weather example works, but in general it's inconsistent enough that i can't assume it will give me an audible answer, and I usually limit myself to speaking only questions or commands that i know to work.
    - dragonwriter 11y ago

tomjacobs 11y ago

Imagine what happens when a computer hears everything you say. And tells you what it thinks you want. Sorta like: http://theinternetthinks.com/ http://theinternetthinks.com/

click170 11y ago

An interesting situation would be if one person got the device knowing their room mate was privacy conscious. The other person has now lost their reasonable expectation of privacy in their own home and might not even know it.

ohitsdom 11y ago
How would they not know it? The device interaction is through voice/sound.
smackfu 11y ago
You do not have privacy from your roommate. They could easily set up a bug just like they could set up Echo.

aaronbrethorst 11y ago

I've had an Echo for a couple months. I bought it for $99 as a Prime customer. Generally, I'm very happy with it, but I don't think I'd be as satisfied at the $180 price point. Good: - The hardware is really well designed. - Being able to listen to NPR affiliates elsewhere in the country is awesome (Seattle's KUOW affiliate is bad, but my hometown stations of MPR and The Current are great). - The Prime Music and Pandora integration is generally pretty cool, although the Prime Music selection is a bit thin at times. - Timers and kitchen measurements are helpful. Bad: - The iOS app is absolutely horrendous. Imagine the worst web/native hybrid app that you've ever seen, now set your expectations down another order of magnitude. I cannot understand how a company with as many resources as Amazon—especially one that did such an amazing job on the hardware—could create such an utterly horrible mobile companion app. - The Echo has trouble understanding my girlfriend (a complaint I've heard from a couple other Echo users) - You call it Alexa, not Echo. The box says Echo, but you will never interact with it as such. Can you imagine Steve Jobs saying: "here's our big feature for iOS 5, it's called Siri, but you'll interact with it by calling it Yoko"? - No really, the iOS app is awful. Like, I'll go out of my way to avoid ever having to open it.

joshuapants 11y ago
> The box says Echo, but you will never interact with it as such. Can you imagine Steve Jobs saying: "here's our big feature for iOS 5, it's called Siri, but you'll interact with it by calling it Yoko"? Um, you say Siri instead of "iPhone" so I think they're doing exactly the same thing as Apple.
nkozyra 11y ago
> You call it Alexa, not Echo. The box says Echo, but you will never interact with it as such. Can you imagine Steve Jobs saying: "here's our big feature for iOS 5, it's called Siri, but you'll interact with it by calling it Yoko"? I think you're looking at this the wrong way. The product is the iphone, the human-interaction agent is Siri The product is the echo, the human-interaction agent is Alexa
- tsurantino 11y ago

kstrauser 11y ago

Good! I signed up for the beta on a whim and got one just in time for Christmas, so that was a family present to all of us. At first, we spent a lot of time yelling random orders and questions at it, and that was fun. But after a while, it just faded into the background of our living room and became something that Just Works, like the TV and DVR. How much time do you spend consciously thinking about your TV versus taking it for granted? That's how Alexa is for us now. Our most used apps: - Alexa, set a timer for 10 minutes. (Our new standard kitchen timer) - Alexa, play [...]. (Lots of music in Amazon Prime.) - Alexa, turn the lights on. (Interfaces with the Hue lighting system to brighten the living room.) I could live without it, but I could survive without a lot of the tech that makes everyday life a little easier. I'm glad I don't have to, though.

garagemc2 11y ago

So was it not released before?

rajadigopula 11y ago

Just out of curiosity, if I want to change the track, Do I need to shout hard the wake word when a song is already playing at full volume? My first test if I get the device is to change the wake word to "baby" and play Justin Bieber's number.

koala_man 11y ago
At full volume, probably. At a normal volume, it's pretty good at picking up the wake word (which by the way can just be "Alexa" or "Amazon") at just a slightly raised voice. It then lowers the volume to hear what else you're saying.
mooxie 11y ago
You don't have to shout. With its multiple microphones Alexa is pretty good at hearing you over the music. There is also a remote with a built in mic in case you want to control it from a ways off or there is a ton of background noise. Sadly you cannot change the wake word. 'Alexa' or 'Amazon' are the two available wake words.

frik 11y ago

18.543 reviews in 5 days? (19th-23th June) That's a lot. The customer reviews section was previously hidden during the closed beta test, though the review section was accessible with the right URL and just a few weeks ago there were only 4 mixed reviews. I wonder how many amazon customers got a free sample as one wrote: "SO happy we got to sample one of these playtoys, first! What a disappointment!"

t0mbstone 11y ago
Amazon sent me an email asking me if I wanted to review it, so I did. They probably asked every single person who bought one of the pre-release Echo devices.
jm4 11y ago
Amazon blasted out an email to early users a few days ago soliciting reviews so that could explain it. I have had Echo for 6 months and I imagine many of the other reviewers have as well. I got a 50% discount for being a Prime member. I'm not aware of any free samples simply for being a Prime member and good customer. My Amazon account is over 15 years old with an absolutely massive purchase history across nearly every product category and I have been a Prime member since the beginning. I'd like to think I would have been in line for a free sample if that was a thing.
- frik 11y ago
  Thanks for the info, that explains it. > My Amazon account is over 15 years old (...) As a long term Amazon customer too I doubt Amazon cares. They nag me with their Prime subscription opt-in dialog every time like I am a new first time user. Though I couldn't care less about a subscription model - I use Amazon as a online storefront to buy physical and digital goods on demand.

jakejake 11y ago

I feel like I need to get with the times. I have an aversion to talking to computers. Though when I try using it once in a while to dictate a text, I'm always surprised and amazed at how well it works.

buffportion 11y ago

A cautionary tale: Echo starts recording when it hears the "wake" word ('Alexa' or 'Amazon'), but it can mistake other words or parts of speech for a wake word (for example, consider how close the phrase "he likes her" is to "Alexa"). Browsing through the history I have found snippets of conversations that Echo had no business listening to, and which the recorded subjects certainly did not wish to send to Amazon.

shepardrtc 11y ago
I've had Echo ever since it was first released for Prime members. I live in a small studio apartment. Not once has it ever accidentally turned on. Not from me, guests, or the tv.
- rgoodwintx 11y ago
  I've had maybe 3-4 times in the same period, but they were understandable. Like "a mess of" triggered it once. We just laugh and move on. I do think the "always listening" argument has some merit, because it seems to me it must keep a buffer of sound to recognize so that it always catches the "A" part of Alexa. But that's not "always listening to everything", versus "always listening for a very specific initial trigger sound".
- pdkl95 11y ago
  Do you have complete tcpdump logs to prove this, or are you assuming it works that way Amazon said so? What about new versions of the firmware?
  - TheTravCav 11y ago
    You can go to http://echo.amazon.com/ http://echo.amazon.com/ and see the entire history of recordings with the option to delete any.
    - pdkl95 11y ago
      Why is this hard to understand? The map is not the territory! Any data you didn't record yourself may not be complete. If you controlled the firmware of a device that surreptitiously records more than it should be recording, would you show those "extra" recordings to the mark nicely chronologically sorted with the legitimate recordings? If you were a criminal (or government agency) attacking these devices with bad firmware or buffer overrun, would you have even the slightest care about making sure echo.amazon.com is updated to show your eavesdropping? // only five karmas and a username that is a googlewhack (!) bringing up exactly 5 posts and nothing else smells a bit like JTRIG

dsugarman 11y ago

product will not work well if you have an Alexa in your family

mpdehaan2 11y ago

I like my echo a lot. I mostly use it to ask it the weather forecast and control my Hue lights (Alexa, turn on the living room lights, dim the office lights to 50% percent, etc). Rather unexpected, I find I like to ask it to tell me jokes too. it has a rather large library of particularly terrible jokes that I like :) The shopping list feature is nice when trying to keep things paperless (or at least, I never find my notes). It's now possible to have IFTTT email you the list when you ask what's on your list. As a bluetooth speaker, I don't find myself using it a whole lot, but has a wide range of options from TuneIn to IHeartRadio and there is a lot on Amazon streaming too. I'm looking forward to seeing them add new features and they come out with new features about every single month. It's not the most neccessary thing by any means, but it is a nice step towards Jetson-land and it's fun to have around. It also learns voices better over time and has a nice "training" app in the phone app I'd suggest using 3-4 times. Neat stuff. Oh - Alexa support is super awesome, most questions get answered by real humans super fast, and then they implement some of those things!

sparrish 11y ago
My kids love the jokes too. And I've not had to answer a single "Dad, how do spell..." question since we received it.

pgrote 11y ago

I was one of the first people to get an Echo when they were offered to prime members at $99 in November 2014. It has quickly become a great device for our family. Some of our thoughts: * The integration with third party services has put it into a new realm of usefulness. * I am still disappointed I cannot tell it to read me a book from anything but Audible. I would love to say, "Read Hamlet from Guttenberg." * The connection between Echo and Prime Music is sensational. If you like genres of music over specific artists, it really shines. * If you have kids, the Echo is a blast for them to interact with. Endless questions from your kids is great to hear. * It would be awesome if they opened it up more. I could see it being a game master for family games of trivia or spelling contests. * I'd say we use the Echo for 3-4 hours a day with a majority of the time used to stream music. "Amazon, play Kidz Bop 28" is a common refrain. * When playing scrabble we use it as a timer. * We've never used it to order anything from Amazon. * We do use it to compile shopping lists. I was surprised how quickly this became an essential part of our household. So easy to say, "Amazon, add olive oil to shopping list." * You can choose between Alexa and Amazon as they wake word. We use Amazon since it is easier for the kids to register with the Echo. * You cannot change the wake word from those two. * We use the Android app for non voice control and it has gotten much better recently. * The news function could use a ton of work. I don't want to hear things I am not interested in from NPR. * It listens to everything. If you happen to mention Amazon in conversation it'll pick it up, even if you are 2 rooms away. * At $99 it is a device I'd recommend to almost any family. At $179 I couldn't justify buying one. Anyway, they have a winner for families if the price point was lower. I am very glad we got ours for $99.

arturadib 11y ago
This. We use it in our family mostly as a jukebox with occasional Siri-like fun (I'm now in the habit of asking for news updates from NPR every morning). As Jack Dorsey said, Echo is the future.

phinkle 11y ago

The first review about a wife buy Echo for her husband with Parkinson's warms my heart. Its so inspiring to see how technology has such a great impact on people's lives! Definitely would recommend reading as a pick-me-up for the day.

mrcrassic 11y ago

The Echo is awesome; my girlfriend and I have had it for the last few months and LOVE being able to just play music by telling it to play. It's also an AMAZING bluetooth speaker; seriously, it's so fucking loud and on point. It's worth every penny.

fishtoaster 11y ago

I got one of these for work with my office decorating budget because I thought it would be cool to hack on it. Maybe even set it up to do silly dev-related tasks like "Alexa, how many users are active right now?" and "Alexa, comment 'looks good' on Janet's pull request." What I found, though, was that it was a divisive product. 50% of the office thought it was neat, 40% didn't care, and 10% hated it with a surprising passion. Privacy concerns were brought up, but the biggest complaint was just that it was "creepy." We ended up unplugging it and leaving it in a corner because it wasn't worth making people uncomfortable for a largely useless toy.

FlaceBook 11y ago

It still amazes me that people actually pay money for the opportunity to have one of these things listening to what goes on in their home 24/7.

spacefight 11y ago

Has anyone analyzed the outgoing connections yet? What TLS cipher suites are being used?

piyush_soni 11y ago

Sincere Question: Can it do anything my 'always on' Google Now can't? (At least there was nothing in the two promo videos they show on their webpage)

echosmith 11y ago
Turn lights/switches/home-automation stuff on/off. Read stuff from Audible. One command music streaming. (Google Now will bring up a link for you to click) Shopping. (Reorders prime items from Amazon) Coming Soon: Integrates natively with all sorts of apps - (There's an SDK in the works)
- piyush_soni 11y ago
  Wouldn't it need you to buy compatible devices for the home automation to work (If yes, the phone would do that as well - there are 'app' controlled lights/other fixtures). And Google Now does do one command music streaming (I do that everyday - "Ok Google, Play Music" - and it starts playing). Audible and Reordering past Amazon orders - Some people may find value in that. I don't listen to audio books or reorder stuff in general from them.

Finbarr 11y ago

I find their home page design aesthetic for these product announcements very unusual. They make it look like an email, leaving large amounts of whitespace on the page. I wonder how well this converts to purchases for them.

uslic001 11y ago

I really enjoy my 99 dollar Echo. I am also not sure I would have bought it at the higher price. I have had it since last November and still use it daily. I love that they keep slowly adding functionality to expand its uses without overwhelming me. After using it so much at home I often miss it at work. I may have to get one for work at my next Prime renewal date.

robg 11y ago

Mostly useless. The AI is really bad. I get the weather and maybe a few music stations from asking. Otherwise, a lot of promise wasted and not convinced it will get anywhere exciting anytime soon. Asking "Alexa" not "Echo" is very silly.