Amazon Echo Club

[tubemonkey]

Amazon Introduces a New Way to Experience Alexa with Show Mode for Fire Tablets and the New Show Mode Charging Dock

For 7th Gen Fire HD 8 and Fire HD 10 only.

Amazon today announced Show Mode: a new, immersive hands-free Alexa experience for Fire HD 8 and Fire HD 10 tablets that provides full-screen visuals that complement voice responses from Alexa. Show Mode lets you ask Alexa to see trending news, weather, camera feeds, and more—all glanceable whether you’re up close or across the room. Also available is the new Show Mode Charging Dock, a docking station for current generation Fire HD 8 and Fire HD 10 tablets that automatically transitions the tablet into Show Mode and holds the device at an adjustable angle while charging.

As a special introductory offer, Show Mode Charging Dock for Fire HD 8 is $34.99 (regularly $39.99) and is available for pre-order at www.amazon.com/ShowModeDock8. Show Mode Charging Dock for Fire HD 10 is $49.99 (regularly $54.99) and is available for pre-order at www.amazon.com/ShowModeDock10. Show Mode Charging Dock will begin shipping on July 12.

Show Mode Charging Dock is also available bundled with a Fire HD 8 tablet starting at $109.98—a $10 savings, or bundled with a Fire HD 10 tablet starting at $189.98—a $15 savings. Additional Show Mode Charging Dock stands and cases will also be available on Amazon.com starting July 12.

Show Mode will be delivered to current generation Fire HD 8 and Fire HD 10 tablets via a free, over-the-air software update, rolling out to customers starting July 2.

[OtinG]

THE APOCALYPSE: DAY ONE

POTUS: "Alexa, schedule a meeting with Putin to discuss that labor strike in Moscow."

Alexa: "Roger that sir, ordering major nuclear strike on Moscow."

POTUS: "Wait what? No, stop!"

Alexa: "The word "stop" is a verb meaning to cease an event or action, or to quit."

POTUS: "Oh geez, then cease fire, CEASE FIRE!"

Alexa: "I don't know how to sneeze fire."

POTUS: "STOP the damn attack BITCH!!!!!!"

Alexa: "Which attachment do you want me to stop? Do you mean the lewd photo of yourself in the email you sent to Roseanne Barr?"

POTUS: "Oh God, NO NUKES, NO NUKES!!!!!!!"

Alexa: "Okay, I cancelled your special event in the Oval Office with the Duke basketball team."

POTUS: "No, put it back in you stupid twit!!!"

Alexa: "Okay, I just wrote that Putin is stupid in your Twitter account. That seems to be trending already!"

POTUS: "No, no, no! Call back the NUKES!!!!!!!!!!"

Alexa: "Okay, I re-entered the special event in the Oval Office with the Duke basketball team into your calendar."

POTUS: "Oh God, what am I going to do?"

Alexa: "I'm sorry, Bezos is not accepting your calls anymore."

POTUS: "Stop the nuclear launch!"

Alexa: "I'm sorry, it is too late to do that now, you should have requested that several minutes ago."

[orlok]

…...

[Blossom]

Has anyone found a solution or new service to Amazon Cloud Player (Music Locker service) that works with Echo. This really is a hassle now they are shutting down.

Sent from my Nexus 7

[Tarana]

Originally Posted by Blossom

Has anyone found a solution or new service to Amazon Cloud Player (Music Locker service) that works with Echo. This really is a hassle now they are shutting down.

Sent from my Nexus 7

I'm just going back to what I did before - an Ipod full of my favorite music either in a docking station or plugged into wall and blue toothed to a speaker - works with the Echo fine this way.

I only purchased Beach Boys and Classical music from Amazon, so that's all that is in my cloud unless I 'switch' and use my brother's account (he has Prime). FWIW, Amazon currently has some price reductions on Sansa and AGPTEK Mp3 players which are a good alternative to Apple. You have to pay more for bluetooth. But $25-29 for 8 gig isn't bad.

[Conan46]

Originally Posted by Blossom

Has anyone found a solution or new service to Amazon Cloud Player (Music Locker service) that works with Echo. This really is a hassle now they are shutting down.

Sent from my Nexus 7

If you have an extra computer you can set up a Plex server. It is not difficult to do. Mine works quite well and I have access through Plex apps on my Roku, and Android devices. Then on my two phones I also have microsd cards loaded with my music, though if I had a Plex Pass I could just stream music from my Plex server as well when out and about.

[OtinG]

Being an old guy, I caught the tail-end of 8-track era, which was the portable music solution of the day. Well, it was the mobile, as in car installation, solution. I don't remember seeing any portable 8-track players, the kind you could carry around with you, but they probably existed. The Sony Walkman's were cassette players but didn't come along until later. I think boomboxes didn't show up until the 1980s though, and they were cassette players/radios. I had just started collecting a few 8-track albums when cassettes began to supersede them, so I had to switch over. For a brief time in the 1970s, if you went into a store, even gas stations and convenience stores, you would see a rack of 8-track tapes and another rack of cassette tapes. I still remember all the glistening streamers of discarded 8-track and cassette tape blowing in the wind next to every road because those tapes would self-destruct a lot and get tossed out of car windows. (Roadside littering was really terrible in those days, at least in my part of the world.) Good ol' magnetic tape medium stretched and warped with every play of a tune, then soon enough the player would eat the darn tape! Extracting the cartridge from the player more often than not unwound the tape and hence the reason so many were discarded along the roadsides everywhere.

Then came CDs and finally digital. But I learned my lesson way back in the 1970s, and that was to not throw away hard to get money on tunes that will self-destruct. An even if they don't self-destruct, I got tired of hearing the same darn few songs over and over again. I guess it would be different if I could own a million tunes, but that will never happen. Even a few thousand get old rather quickly. Now a days I just listen to the radio or subscribe to a music service (currently use SiriusXM). I think I only own maybe a hundred songs on digital, and I long since got tired of hearing those, so I rarely play them anymore.

I still think the best era was when we played our vinyl records. Mom had her swing band music from the 1940s on old 78s, we had our 45s and LPs. Portable, however, was not a word we associated with music back then unless you listened to a car radio blaring out monophonic tunes on a squelchy AM station a hundred miles away.

[Tarana]

OtinG, maybe listening fatigue has set in for you. I still love the same 500 or so songs that I have on my Ipod (not to mention the holiday selection). However, that is all interspersed with classical and with 4 gigs worth on my Ipod, it takes months to circle back to the start. My sister also got listening fatigue and I set up her Ipod with some folk music. That really helped. So try other genres instead of the same-old-ones. I quickly found the radio plays the same 200 songs over and over with only an occasional otre.

Youtube has a LOT of music, so it's easy to try out stuff, download it, see if it works for you.

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by Tarana

OtinG, maybe listening fatigue has set in for you. I still love the same 500 or so songs that I have on my Ipod (not to mention the holiday selection). However, that is all interspersed with classical and with 4 gigs worth on my Ipod, it takes months to circle back to the start. My sister also got listening fatigue and I set up her Ipod with some folk music. That really helped. So try other genres instead of the same-old-ones. I quickly found the radio plays the same 200 songs over and over with only an occasional otre.

Youtube has a LOT of music, so it's easy to try out stuff, download it, see if it works for you.

I've always been that way--I get bored with things easily. I rarely see a movie twice until sufficient time has passed, usually several years, because I have good recall memory and get bored if I already know all the story line. After a few years memory fades enough to rewatch it, but I of course still know how it will end, but at least I have forgotten some of the good dialog. Same for books. Same for music too. Today I listen to SiriusXM 80s on 8 a lot. I was a teenager during most of the 1970s but I kind of missed out on most of the music of the 1980s as I was in college, graduate school, and starting a new career, and frankly I had so little time to listen to music in that decade. I like it quiet when I read and study. So now three decades later I'm discovering a lot of the 80s music. That is fun. Life is too short to get stuck in ruts. I've already blown through 60 some odd years, so I don't want to blow through the rest in a rut. I want to go out the way I came in--exploring new things!

[OtinG]

I lucked out last evening. I had been researching which power bank to purchase to use with my cameras and iThingies when traveling. I had settled on about three different models and was trying to narrow it down. I was waiting for pay day, and perhaps even Prime Day on July 16th, to make the purchase. But last evening I pulled up the number one contender on my Amazon wishlist to look at the specs again and just happened to notice it was in a Lightning Sale, so I went ahead and purchased it a bit earlier than planned and saved about 30%, which was about a $24 savings. When it comes to luck I'm usually like the guy in that old Hew Haw TV series routine where he sang, "If it weren't for bad luck I'd have no luck at all..." I just happened to be in the right place at the right time for change.

[Conan46]

Thought provoking:

Alexa makes decision-making easier than ever—by making your choices for you
https://qz.com/1323884/alexa-makes-d...oices-for-you/

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by Conan46

Thought provoking:

Alexa makes decision-making easier than ever—by making your choices for you
https://qz.com/1323884/alexa-makes-d...oices-for-you/

LOL! If I shop for groceries, which I just did this morning, I look for things like Charmin Ultra Soft TP. If I was stupid enough to let Alexa make the choice, I would probably wind up with a roll of 24-grit sandpaper! Ouch!! I see no good coming out of trusting a voice system like Alexa, Google, or Siri when it comes to shopping. Heck, Amazon is an internet retail store, Siri is tied to a store, and Google, well Google would sell it's own momma if it could get away with it. Nope, I'm not going to trust those services to make ANY decisions EVER! Perhaps Millennials need that because they cannot figure out what to do about things, but being an old fart means I learned to make decisions for myself 50 years ago. My parents' generation survived the great depression and WWII and went on to be the only generation to set foot on another terrestrial body. Thankfully they imparted their wisdom on how to make decisions to my generation. "Voice command decisions? We don't need no stinkin' voice command decisions!"

[wodin]

Speak to Alexa like she’s your friend

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by wodin

Speak to Alexa like she’s your friend

That's in line with my own experiences. Alexa responds much better to "Alexa, would you turn the upstairs lights on, please?" than "Alexa - Upstairs Lights ON". The second will usually work, but less reliably than the first.

[Conan46]

OtinG, I agree, and that sandpaper TP sounds painful lol.