Amazon Echo

Mine comes tomorrow! (Yeah!)

I will be out to dinner in NYC tomorrow, so I won't get to meet Alexa until Thursday (BOO!)

I know, first world problems...

We just got our iAlexa, and it is awesome. I wish it output more bass though.

I like echo, but hate the limit to two names. I'm not going to have my brother's employer as the wake word. The only alternative sounds a lot like my son's name, so she sometimes wakes up when we're addressing him.

I've also noticed that she refuses to listen to children, which is good.

Just saw these a few weeks ago. Interested in seeing what people who have one already think.

sometimesdee wrote:

I like echo, but hate the limit to two names. I'm not going to have my brother's employer as the wake word. The only alternative sounds a lot like my son's name, so she sometimes wakes up when we're addressing him.

I've also noticed that she refuses to listen to children, which is good.

Yeah. We're pretty much incapable of having one, for name reasons.

Stele wrote:

Just saw these a few weeks ago. Interested in seeing what people who have one already think.

+1

Nearly got one of the early, cheap batches, but didn't re-up on prime and missed out. Would love to hear how useful/annoying it is to have around.

I love my echo. We have no naming issues here. It is a permanent fixture in the kitchen that only leaves when I take it to use while exercising. Being able to reorder items I have ordered on Prime without touching anything is great (and a little dangerous!) I also like having an easy hands free timer when my hands are messy from cooking. My kids are able to use it if they want. Not to mention the sound quality is pretty good when listening to music. They also just keep adding more features. I haven't even started messing with the If This, Then That integration. Pandora also gets used fairly frequently.

Oooooh, they have ITTT integration? I need to look into that.

Abu5217 wrote:

Oooooh, they have ITTT integration? I need to look into that.

What does that mean?

sometimesdee wrote:
Abu5217 wrote:

Oooooh, they have ITTT integration? I need to look into that.

What does that mean?

https://ifttt.com/wtf

Amazon Echo for $130 (Prime Membership required) Today only.

Edit: Already sold out (but you can get on the waitlist)

With all the glowing reviews from you people and the fact that my gf plays music all time from her phone I can see us using this. Big time.

However, the price blows and based on all my experiences with Amazon I'll wait for a refresh on the device.

...

We'll probably end up with one at Christmas.

It's part of the Prime sale today only, Garion.

Bah. We tried getting one before the claimlist filled up, but it jammed; when the page refreshed eventually, it was full.

Edit: Apparently Kittylexy thinks that the name issue won't be a big deal, since I mainly call her pet names

Yeah the names right now are an issue.. thankfully we don't say amazon that much around the house but when we do its always listening lol.

Amazon really needs to add another name or two to the mix.

Tanglebones wrote:

Bah. We tried getting one before the claimlist filled up, but it jammed; when the page refreshed eventually, it was full.

Edit: Apparently Kittylexy thinks that the name issue won't be a big deal, since I mainly call her pet names

I love it. Maybe you could expand your repertoire when you get one.

Robear wrote:

It's part of the Prime sale today only, Garion. :-)

Huh?

Everyone can buy one now. The sale price is only for today. I'm confused...

Certis wrote:
Tanglebones wrote:

Bah. We tried getting one before the claimlist filled up, but it jammed; when the page refreshed eventually, it was full.

Edit: Apparently Kittylexy thinks that the name issue won't be a big deal, since I mainly call her pet names

I love it. Maybe you could expand your repertoire when you get one.

More likely I'll just stop the pet names, and nothing but the real name from now on, just to frustrate the device

I noticed that for some reason, Echo seems to think I'm half a mile away from Boston. I don't know how to correct it. It usually doesn't matter, but the weather can be slightly different.

My son (almost 4 years old) has just started talking to it(her)
"Alexa tell me a joke"
Alexa tells the joke.
"Alexa that was funny, daddy has been working, and I made this, and Pi is crying, and the sun is out, and we went on the slide..."
bee-bum (the I didn't get that noise.)

He will just ramble on to it like it is a person, it is hilarious. She doesn't always pick up he is talking to her as he doesn't say her name the clearest but it is very entertaining .

If I got to choose a name, I'd get a Star Wars edition of the Echo - "Artoo, fire up the converters!"

I've had one for a while now and I wanted to contribute to this thread, but I got dragged away by a SWAT team for saying the word "Qur'an" too loud and have spent the last four months in a gulag. ::rolleyes::

Anyway, now that I'm out, I for one welcome our new Amazonian overlords. When I first got it I was, like most, surprised that the voice recognition worked as well as it did as often as it did, but slightly underwhelmed that there just wasn't much you could DO with it yet other than make music requests or use it as an alarm clock. They've steadily added features since then, though, so I'm relatively optimistic that this will actually reach some of its potential before the inevitable next hardware revision.

The real game-changer for me was Google Calendar integration. Being able to ask "what's on my calendar today?" while getting dressed feels like the future. I'm moving to a new apartment in a week and a half and am ordering some Philips Hue wi-fi lightbulbs so that I can be all,

I do have a laundry list of features I'd love to see implemented, though, from simple things like being able to set the alarm to wake up with music to more complicated things like Google Voice integration or massively expanding IFTTT support.

Right now Alexa only acts as an "if" for IFTTT, not a "that," and only a handful of pre-existing commands (like adding things to your to-do or shopping list) can act as triggers. So you can't (for example) set it to notify you when you get an email by setting up an "IF email THEN Alexa says 'you've got mail.'" recipe. And using to-do and shopping lists as triggers limits the number of recipes you can set up at once and means anything you set up that way is always going to feel like a hack.

If they allow you to set up custom commands that can act as IFTTT triggers, that's what will really blow Alexa's functionality wide open. Seems like it shouldn't be too difficult to do....

Hooray! Echo now supports Spotify!!!

http://www.engadget.com/2016/02/04/a...

For those wondering if putting an always-on microphone, controlled by a corporation, into your home is a good idea:

The government just admitted it will use smart home devices for spying

Surprising no one.

Just more FUD. In the case of the Echo, your voice is simply the input akin to a mouse click or a finger tap on a phone. What executes is what I buy on Amazon, what songs play on Pandora or how long a set a timer for.

Also, as we've seen in the past (and referenced in the article), companies are becoming more security conscious.

So I finally got my hands on one and I already may need to turn it off.
My 5yo will not stop asking Alexa for jokes.

Otherwise, my wife and I like it. Plus we got a couple Hue lights and set up the whole thing.
So far, so good.

lunchbox12682 wrote:

So I finally got my hands on one and I already may need to turn it off.
My 5yo will not stop asking Alexa for jokes..

It's pretty funny when the child in question is 3 and can't enunciate properly enough to get the robit to tell the joke =)

lunchbox12682 wrote:

So I finally got my hands on one and I already may need to turn it off.
My 5yo will not stop asking Alexa for jokes.

So what you're saying is it's replaced you as the source of Dad jokes?

Kurrelgyre wrote:
lunchbox12682 wrote:

So I finally got my hands on one and I already may need to turn it off.
My 5yo will not stop asking Alexa for jokes.

So what you're saying is it's replaced you as the source of Dad jokes?

Pretty much.
I wouldn't mind, but it drives the wife nuts.