Amazon Echo Club

[tubemonkey]

Alexa Now Has Over 10,000 Skills Available

Today we’re happy to share that developers have published over 10,000 skills, making Alexa even better for customers. We’ve been blown away by the innovation and activity in the Alexa developer community. To put it in perspective, we’ve seen a 3x increase in the number of skills available since September 2016 alone. We’ve come a long way in the short time that the Alexa Skills Kit has been available for developers, and we’ve seen a wide range of unique skills that allow customers to do everything from reorder their favorite morning coffee, stay mindful through meditation, control smart home lighting or check their bank account balance.

In November we unveiled a new way for customers to discover Alexa skills and explore the breadth of the Alexa skills catalog. With Alexa skills on Amazon.com, customers can enable skills directly through the website and leave reviews, just like other items on Amazon. Many skills have hundreds of reviews and are rated 4-star or higher by customers. We’ve also added ways for customers to enable and find popular skills, just using their voice.

Alexa Skills

[tubemonkey]

Amazon Developing Advanced Voice-Recognition for Alexa

The Seattle-based technology giant has been developing a feature that would allow the voice assistant that powers its Echo line of speakers to distinguish between individual users based on their voices, according to people familiar with Amazon's Alexa strategy. The sources declined to be identified by name because they are not authorized to talk about the company’s future product plans. An Amazon spokesperson declined to comment.

Alexa, like Apple’s Siri or Microsoft’s Cortana, can interpret and respond to voice commands such as “How’s the weather?” or “What movies are playing tonight?” So far, though, none of the mainstream voice-enabled smart speakers have been able to distinguish who in a household is asking for something. Amazon’s new feature would match the person speaking to a voice sample, or “voice print,” to verify a person's identity, according to a source. A primary account holder would be able to require a specific voice print to access certain commands. A user would, for example, be able to set it so that a parent's voice would be required to make a credit card purchase or turn on the coffee machine through the Echo.

Amazon has been developing this capability, internally called Voice ID, since at least the summer of 2015. It remained on the Alexa roadmap as recently as late last summer, but it's unclear when or if the feature will launch. The underlying technology has been completed; it's just a matter of integrating the feature into Echo products, one of the sources claimed. A number of factors could delay or the feature, including privacy concerns, which have become a greater issue for the company. Amazon recently refused to turn over voice records from an Echo user to Arkansas police investigating a murder which took place last November, saying that such recordings should be protected under the First Amendment.

[wodin]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Amazon Developing Advanced Voice-Recognition for Alexa

I've speculated on the usefulness of this from my very first Echo. I'd think it would be more useful to The Jeff than to me, but I'd still like to see it.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by wodin

I've speculated on the usefulness of this from my very first Echo. I'd think it would be more useful to The Jeff than to me, but I'd still like to see it.

It's very Star Trekkie

[kansaskyle]

One thing the voice recognition should help with is false positives where Alexa thinks it heard the wake word.

I also think it would be cool to be able to plug in multiple skills (e.g., find my phone) based on who it speaking.

[WT Sharpe]

I like that you can now set the Tap to respond to a wake word, but it would be far better if you could set it to respond to a different wake word than the Echo.

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

I like that you can now set the Tap to respond to a wake word, but it would be far better if you could set it to respond to a different wake word than the Echo.

Doesn't it give you a choice between four words? The Echo and Dot both allow you to set the wake word to one of these:

• Alexa
• Amazon
• Echo
• Computer

You change the wake word by using the Alexa app. Go into Settings --> select your device --> Wake Word --> select the word.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by jswinden

Doesn't it give you a choice between four words? The Echo and Dot both allow you to set the wake word to one of these:

• Alexa
• Amazon
• Echo
• Computer

Change the Wake Word

Note: The only wake word available for Amazon Tap is "Alexa."

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Change the Wake Word

Note: The only wake word available for Amazon Tap is "Alexa."

Wow, the Bezo's Bozos developer team strikes again!

And speaking of Bezo's Bozos developer team, I'm very frustrated with playing Pandora radio stations on my Echo. On the Echo, my Jack Radio station, which contains nearly 100 artists, gets stuck on playing just a few artists. It will play the same artist as often as 4 songs out of 10, and it rarely plays more than 5 or 6 different artists in a 2 hour period. That sucks! When I play my Jack Radio station on my Pandora app on my iPad Pro or iPhone 6+ it does a really good job of playing a variety of artists and very seldom repeats an artist within 10 or more songs. It also does a good job of transitioning between the various genres I added (via artists). It will play similar songs clusterd together for a while then transition into another genre. The Echo though, well not so much. And to be honest, even though my Echo has pretty good sound, I think my iPad Pro 9.7 with its four speakers sounds better, at least on the soft rock and pop music I listen too. And the Pandora app does a much better job displaying what is currently playing as well as the history. The Alexa app just plain sucks, and it reboots a lot. "Bad Bezos, bad, bad Bezos!" he says while rolling up a newspaper.

[tubemonkey]

What's New?

NPR One on Alexa

With the NPR One skill, get the latest hourly newscasts, listen to shows like All Things Considered and Planet Money, or ask for recommendations. NPR One is personalized to deliver the stories you want, plus stories you had no idea would captivate you.

Getting started
1. Just ask, "Alexa, enable NPR One skill."
2. Signup for an NPR One account.

To listen to NPR One, just ask…
"Alexa, ask NPR One to play the latest news."
"Alexa, ask NPR One to recommend a podcast."

NPR One

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

What's New?



NPR One

It would be nice if we didn't have to sign up for a gillion accounts. Everything seems to require one. And those accounts rarely do much more than send you a zillion spam emails and notices. I fully expect to go to my bathroom one day and be forced to create an account with my commode before I can use it again. I can't wait fot that spam. I suspect it will contain mostly bathroom humor!

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by jswinden

It would be nice if we didn't have to sign up for a gillion accounts. Everything seems to require one. And those accounts rarely do much more than send you a zillion spam emails and notices. I fully expect to go to my bathroom one day and be forced to create an account with my commode before I can use it again. I can't wait fot that spam. I suspect it will contain mostly bathroom humor!

I have an email account that I use for websites like these. Usually, the only info they want is an email address and password. Signup and forget about it. Every now and then, pop into this email account and delete everything in it.

[Catlady]

Watching my favorite soap opera the other day, which features a character named Alexis. Another character says to her, "Alexis, calm down and tell me what's happening," and Alexa immediately proceeded to give me a flash briefing.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by jswinden

Doesn't it give you a choice between four words? The Echo and Dot both allow you to set the wake word to one of these:

• Alexa
  
• Amazon
  
• Echo
  
• Computer
  

You change the wake word by using the Alexa app. Go into Settings --> select your device --> Wake Word --> select the word.

Edit: I can change the wake word, but the change affects both devices. There's no way to change the wake word for only one device.

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Change the Wake Word

I didn't know that. I thought the change affected both. My Echo has now gone Star Trek. Thanks!