The future arrived early
Steve Chazin
Vice President of Products at Alarm.com | Smarthome | Home automation | Smart health | Generative AI
I was one of the lucky ones who managed to score a new Amazon Echo early...and I have to tell you I am impressed! First, this isn't what I thought Amazon could create - a super fast, seamlessly integrated personal assistant. This is Amazon not just copying Apple's simple and delightful user experience, but actually going beyond it.
You ask "Alexa" (or you can call her "Amazon") to play a song, or take a note, or turn off the lights, or check the weather, or traffic, or play an audio book...and it happens...in seconds. There is no delay at all - it almost seems like it is anticipating your request.
Further, you can ask her to reorder something you already purchased at Amazon (we reordered dog food for Lucy) and it reads back your order waiting for a simple "Yes" from you to place it. From the time we thought about needing dog food to the time it was in our home was like 2 days...and we never approached a computer, or iPhone or Apple Watch.
Did I mention the speaker/microphone array in this thing sounds great? When you get her attention a cool blue light "looks" in your direction then runs off with your request. Pretty cool stuff.
I've been demoing Amazon Echo (they should have just called it Alexa) to all my friends and family and while there are still a few rough edges everyone has come away impressed by what the device and the cloud (in this case AWS) can do when they are paired in this way. I tell people this is what I expected the future to be like and it has finally arrived. Amazon needs to steal a page from Apple marketing and start showing the world what this can do. I don't have that many friends ;)
Just learned today that anyone can now purchase Amazon Echo (there is no more waiting list), so here is a handy link if you are so inclined.
Chief Marketing Officer at Open Raven
9yHey Steve Chazin - Can anyone give a command to Alexa or can you setup permissions? Also, if you tell Alexa to order something for you through Amazon, how does it know who is authorized to make purchases?
Senior Brand, Campaigns and Growth Marketing Leader
9yAndy, we have one at home with our two loud boys and big dog and it has been very good. It even understands when my 5 year old asks questions, which I have not seen with any other voice recognition software. Plus, with the Simon Says feature, it's really fun to go hide somewhere with the remote and have "Alexa" have conversations with the kids.
Senior Director of Procurement Services at University of Maine System
9yHi Steve. Enjoying our Echo here as well, though have only been able to scratch the surface. I will echo (ahem) your comment about the listening skills. The device does remarkably well, but is not infallible. One evening my wife was talking to her sister on the phone when Alexa thought she heard a request to tell a joke (beyond our Echo - we know no Alexa or talk about one...) It was pretty funny - well the joke was lame, but Echo piping up was funny in the moment. For now, the way that the voice recognition engine parses requests is pretty one dimensional. It seems to do well with <tell me why/where/how> or <do this one thing>, but not so well with <tell me why this happens when this occurs>.
Multi-Disciplinary Product Leader | Data Monetization | Analytics | Big Data | B2B | SaaS
9yThe Telescreen is here.
Senior Product Marketing Manager | Google (2x) | Intuit | GoDaddy | Start-up Survivor | 10+ Years of Product Marketing Experience for SaaS, AI, IoT, Fintech & Cybersecurity | B2B & B2C Product Launches
9yIt works awesome. I've been super impressed with mine. The experience, not this device in particular, is the future.