The Technology Vent and Rant Thread

[DiapDealer]

Wow! I DO have a bit of trouble with syncing position from time to time, but "read my book" has never failed me. I hope it's not contagious!

[badgoodDeb]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Wow! I DO have a bit of trouble with syncing position from time to time, but "read my book" has never failed me. I hope it's not contagious!

I’ve not tried having Alexa read to me, but has the OP tried including the word Audible? Like, “Alexa, read my Audible book A Wrinkle in Time”?

(I forgot which Time book was mentioned, so I tried to play along!)

[issybird]

Originally Posted by badgoodDeb

I’ve not tried having Alexa read to me, but has the OP tried including the word Audible? Like, “Alexa, read my Audible book A Wrinkle in Time”?

(I forgot which Time book was mentioned, so I tried to play along!)

Yep. Although I put Audible after the title, as in, "Alexa, read from Cocktail Time from Audible." It used to work.

OK, just tried it, got The Time Machine again. I think I'll archive it (I'll never listen to it again anyway) and then see what she comes up with!

[issybird]

Originally Posted by issybird

Yep. Although I put Audible after the title, as in, "Alexa, read from Cocktail Time from Audible." It used to work.

OK, just tried it, got The Time Machine again. I think I'll archive it (I'll never listen to it again anyway) and then see what she comes up with!

Well, alrighty! With The Time Machine archived, asking for Cocktail Time gets me The Time Traveler's Wife!

And when I look at my in-progress titles, there's Cocktail Time, with a little over an hour to go....

[Renate]

As with any PGW, I'm not sure if I've ever read "Cocktail Time".
But I put it next on the stack.
Current: "Rogues and Vagabonds", Compton MacKenzies

[badgoodDeb]

How weird that it listens to only one word from your request: "Time", in this case.

I wonder if mentioning the author would help? Not that I normally remember that part, off hand, but ....

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by badgoodDeb

How weird that it listens to only one word from your request: "Time", in this case.

I wonder if mentioning the author would help? Not that I normally remember that part, off hand, but ....

In the original post, it was mentioned that issybird had tried including the author.

Originally Posted by issybird

Sometimes I add the author, usually it's a book I have in progress, no matter; I can't get her to play the right book.

[John F]

Maybe try adding the wording "continue reading"?

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by issybird

but while there are advantages to streaming, especially more granular playback speeds, I'd much rather not have to look at a glowing screen to restart it every time she times out.

I realize I may have made assumptions before. What is the device you're attempting to listen on if it's not being streamed via something like an Echo/Dot (logged into Audible)?

[issybird]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I realize I may have made assumptions before. What is the device you're attempting to listen on if it's not being streamed via something like an Echo/Dot (logged into Audible)?

I'm trying to listen directly to the Dot, i.e., asking Alexa to play my book. But when she won't (here's another mix-up, playing "The Republic for Which It Stands" instead of "Five Children and It", "It" seeming to be the operative word!), I cue it up on my Fire Tablet and stream it to the Dot for playback.

[badgoodDeb]

I’m sorry for your troubles, but I’m ROFL at “It”!

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by issybird

I'm trying to listen directly to the Dot, i.e., asking Alexa to play my book.

Hmm... that is my exact setup. For the record: when I say "Alexa, read my book." Her response (on the Dot) is "Getting your selection from Audible. Resuming <x>".

EDIT: The only thing I would suggest is temporarily disabling the Kindle Assistive Reading feature (if it's enabled). That's the one that allows Alexa to read any of your kindle books in her voice. Just to see if it's interfering with the usual Audible voice commands.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by badgoodDeb

I’m sorry for your troubles, but I’m ROFL at “It”!

LOL! I really do see the funny side of this -- especially since as glitches go, I can work around it easily enough.

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Hmm... that is my exact setup. For the record: when I say "Alexa, read my book." Her response (on the Dot) is "Getting your selection from Audible. Resuming <x>".

EDIT: The only thing I would suggest is temporarily disabling the Kindle Assistive Reading feature (if it's enabled). That's the one that allows Alexa to read any of your kindle books in her voice. Just to see if it's interfering with the usual Audible voice commands.

Thanks. At this point, I'm going to surrender. I'm near finishing the two books she won't play and maybe after this, she'll be better.*

*Although I'm not counting on it. She was driving me nuts over the summer as she announced every. single. Yankees. game. five minutes before it started, as well as every addition and removal from the DL. I wouldn't have liked it even if the Yankees hadn't had such a lousy season. But even though I removed from my account every single update notification possible, she persisted. I avoided the nuclear option of no notifications at all, as I do like finding out when a package has hit the driveway. The worst case scenario would have been no delivery notifications but continued Yankee updates. Given recent glitches, I'd be afraid of not getting something back I do use, as with Alexa's reading Kindle books.

I wasn't alone on the sports update issue. While it wasn't the cause of the game announcements, it seems once Reuters has got you, it won't let go. Googling my problem revealed a lot of fellow sufferers and there was no fix.

[DiapDealer]

Fair enough.
Feel free to hit me up behind the curtain if ever you need/want to further debug the issue.

All of my tech seems to be behaving for the most part this morning.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Fair enough.
Feel free to hit me up behind the curtain if ever you need/want to further debug the issue.

Thank you.

I don't suppose you know how to convince Amazon that I really am a small/medium and not XXL?

Another of those issues where I do see the funny side and it really doesn't matter. My best guess is that Amazon looks at my shoe size and assumes feet that big must support a much larger woman. Just call me Sideshow Issy.