Last month, Amazon announced that sometime this fall or winter it would put its Echo-connected speaker digital assistant, Alexa, on mobile devices — as long as they were made by, you know, Amazon. That time has come, with Alexa officially making its debut on the Amazon Fire tablet this week. [More]
Alexa
Amazon Joining Spotify, Apple With New Music-Streaming Service
By 10.12.16 — Updated: 11.1.16
As it was predicted, so it has come to pass: after rumors heated up last week that Amazon was close to launching a music-streaming service to rival Spotify and Apple, the company announced today that its on-demand offering Music Unlimited is ready for the masses. [More]
Google Launching Home AI Competitor To “Accidental Winner” Amazon Echo This Week
By 10.3.16
If growing up on Star Trek: The Next Generation reruns taught us anything, it’s that the future would be brought to us by computers that could recognize our voice commands and do whatever we asked. And while none of the products on the market today sound like the late Majel Barrett-Roddenberry, we are still surrounded by machine-generated female voices that answer our questions, queue up our favorite tunes, and dim our room lights on request. But the dominant player in that space is one that, just a few years ago, nobody would have expected — because it’s Amazon, not Google, connecting homes. [More]
Apple Reportedly Looking To Create Competitor To Amazon Echo
By 9.23.16
With the iPod, iPhone, and iPad, Apple led the charge to make new personal digital products accessible, popular, and now all but necessary. But the electronics giant may now be playing catch-up to Amazon in the connected-home market, as the e-tailer’s Echo device and its various spinoffs become more affordable and functional. Now comes news that Apple is looking to build a connected-home speaker/assistant of its own to go head-to-head with Echo. [More]
Amazon’s Alexa May Get The Ability To Talk Without Being Spoken To First
By 9.12.16
As it stands right now, Amazon Echo is the well-behaved child your grandparents might have approved of: it doesn’t speak until spoken to. But soon Alexa could be piping up to offer information without being prompted first. [More]
Amazon Alexa Goes Mobile, But Only On Amazon Tablets
By 9.8.16
Amazon’s 2016 strategy seems to be “put Alexa everywhere possible.” The digital assistant has been popping up in all manner of hardware of late. The newest is both the most and least surprising: the most because it’s finally a mobile device, but the least because it’s one manufactured by Amazon itself. [More]
Lenovo Says It’s Talked With Amazon About Bringing Alexa To PCs
By 9.1.16
We’ve gotten used to Amazon’s voice assistant Alexa adding new capabilities to her repertoire, like buying Prime-eligible products, paying credit card bills, ordering pizza, and then leading workouts to exercise off said pizza, but thus far she’s done it all from within the Amazon’s line of devices like the Echo and Echo Dot. That might be changing. [More]
Amazon Echo Will Let You Control Sonos Speakers
By 8.30.16
The Amazon Echo has a decent voice-controlled “assistant” in Alexa; too bad the speaker itself isn’t so great. Meanwhile, Sonos makes decent, web-connected speakers but without any voice control. You see where we’re going with this? [More]
Amazon Echo Users Can Now Set Spotify, Pandora As Their Default Music Service
By 7.7.16
Until now, if you wanted to tell Alexa to play a certain song using a music service other than Prime Music, you’d have to say something like, “Alexa, play ‘Hotline Bling’ by Drake on Spotify.” Those days are gone, as Amazon Echo users can now set their default music services to either Spotify or Pandora. [More]
You Can Now Tell Amazon’s Alexa To Order Millions Of Prime-Eligible Items
By 7.1.16
Do you want to order a pallet of cat food and some bendy straws on Amazon? If not, don’t judge. If you do, it won’t matter if you’ve purchased those items in the past: Amazon’s virtual assistant Alexa will no longer be limited to just reordering stuff you got before. [More]
An Emotion-Detecting Echo Speaker: Helpful Or Going Too Far?
By 6.13.16
Alexa, the virtual assistant inside Amazon’s Echo speaker — and its smaller versions — can order you a pizza, but can she tell that you’re upset when she confuses pepperoni with ham? Not yet, but the e-commerce giant is apparently working on giving Alexa the ability to gauge users’ emotions. [More]
All Those Smart Devices That Listen To Your House May Be Unlawfully Violating Kids’ Privacy
By 5.26.16
“The walls have ears” used to be a metaphorical expression. These days, as the era of the Internet of Things dawns and marches on apace, it’s becoming a little more literal every day. And while that’s all well and good for the adults who buy and install a device in their home, it might not be quite so legal for the house to listen to their kids. [More]
“Chirp” Is Google’s Answer To Amazon Echo; Could Be In Your Home Later This Year
By 5.12.16
The Amazon Echo can do just about everything — order pizza, pay your credit card bill, and answer all your spur-of-the-moment questions, among other things — but can it compete with other connected home speakers? That’s something Google is poised to find out with its own connected-device that could launch later this year. [More]
Amazon’s Alexa Now Available On A Device That Isn’t The Echo Speaker
By 4.28.16
Alexa is spreading her personal assistant wings. The Amazon Echo mainstay is now available on its first device not produced by Amazon: the Triby, a connected message board of sorts for your home, office, or other destination. [More]
Amazon Improves Developers’ Ability To Use Alexa In Their Own Devices
By 3.23.16
While most of us only hear about Amazon’s personal assistant Alexa when it comes to the Echo speaker — and its new smaller versions — app developers have been able to tap into the tech via the Alexa Voice Services tool for their own devices, like alarm clocks or speaker systems. However, the capabilities available through the service weren’t as robust as those found in the Echo — until now. [More]
Amazon Teams Up With Fitbit, Makes Alexa A Fitness Guru
By 3.17.16
Amazon Echo’s personal assistant, Alexa, can serve as your financial advisor by paying your Capital One bill, your personal chef by ordering Dominos, and now she can act as your personal trainer. The smart speaker now works with health tracking company Fitbit to provide users with details about their daily fitness routine. [More]
Alexa Surprises Amazon Echo Owners By Obeying Commands She Heard On The Radio
By 3.11.16
While it’s surely useful to direct the Amazon Echo’s Alexa to turn down the smart lights, what happens if the digital personal assistant starts hearing other voices commanding her to complete tasks? She just might obey, as one radio show recently found out after it aired a segment covering the Amazon Echo. [More]
Amazon Debuts New, Smaller Alexa-Enabled Devices: Echo Dot, Amazon Tap
By 3.3.16
Alexa is getting a few friends, two, to be exact. Amazon today launched the Amazon Tap and Echo Dot, smart speakers that incorporate personal assistant and know-it-all Alexa technology in smaller version of the company’s traditional Echo speaker. [More]
