Amazon Echo Club

[tubemonkey]

You can now set Sleep Timers for Music in Alexa Routines

Amazon has added the ability to designate a sleep timer when adding music playback to an Alexa Routine. It’s a simple change, but one that many people have been wanting for some time. When adding music to an Alexa Routine, in addition to specifying what music should be played and from which music service, there is now a third optional option to set a sleep timer. Oddly, Amazon has limited what specific timer duration can be set by only letting customers choose from 0-4 hours and minute quantities of 5, 10, 15, 30, and 45 minutes. Hours and minutes can both be set independently, so you can set a timer for 2 hours and 15 minutes, but you can’t exceed 4 hours or set an arbitrary number of minutes.

[OtinG]

And here is my latest Alexa reply after she got totally confused on subscribing to a podcast via AnyPod then went off chasing rabbits and annoying me with stupid questions. A simple "STOP" had failed repeatedly to shut her up.

Alexa: Would you like to continue searching for, "Stop you stupid *@#$%"?

She can be totally useless sometimes...

[Purple Lady]

Originally Posted by OtinG

And here is my latest Alexa reply after she got totally confused on subscribing to a podcast via AnyPod then went off chasing rabbits and annoying me with stupid questions. A simple "STOP" had failed repeatedly to shut her up.





She can be totally useless sometimes...

I had to finally say
Alexa: fu@k you

to get it to shut up once when it was getting my command wrong.

To me that's not only useless, it's very annoying.

[wodin]

I've found that swearing at her usually gets her to shut up.

[cc_in_oh]

Originally Posted by wodin

I've found that swearing at her usually gets her to shut up.

It seems that AI has a ways to go before it takes over the world.

(Or could it just be pretending to be monumentally stupid so it can infiltrate our homes without causing alarm?)

[wodin]

Originally Posted by cc_in_oh

It seems that AI has a ways to go before it takes over the world.

(Or could it just be pretending to be monumentally stupid so it can infiltrate our homes without causing alarm?)

That must be it.

[Tarana]

Originally Posted by Catlady

Can anyone help me decide if I want a Fire Stick or a Roku? I currently have a Roku that's about five years old, and was the cheapest model when I bought it. It still works fine, but I want something now for a different TV. I don't really care about using Alexa; I'd prefer using the remote. Any opinions? Thanks.

Fire stick is relatively limited and my neighbor complains about it forgetting its brains. I personally think you are far better off getting a Roku 4. If you already had a Roku 3, which is what I have, it's sort of a toss up whether to upgrade. I bought my mom a Roku 4 and while I like the additional features, I am still happy with the workability of the 3 (I don't do gaming). She uses it to watch news and features on Yahoo as well as Netflix on a daily basis. Plex works on both - I haven't quite figured out how to do the music and audiobooks from my computer yet, but the movies have worked out fine.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by Tarana

I personally think you are far better off getting a Roku 4.

The numbered models are old.
Roku Ultra would be the current closest equivalent to the 4.

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by Purple Lady

I had to finally say
Alexa: fu@k you

to get it to shut up once when it was getting my command wrong.

To me that's not only useless, it's very annoying.

I have reached that point with her many times. I had asked her to find a specific podcast title which I knew from internet searches was available to Alexa via the AnyPod skill. I had just installed the AnyPod skill. She went off on telling me I had to connect to AnyPod but didn't say how. So more internet searching later I muddled through that. Then I asked her to find the podcast so I could get her to subscribe to it. She found everything but the one I was looking for and that is when she went into her fit of questions chasing after rabbits. That is, she was pursuing podcast titles totally unrelated to the one I wanted. The way the morons at Amazon have developed her, Alexa can go into constant question mode that can be extremely annoying because she speaks in long sentences and doesn't seem to listen to commands well during same. And if she is even slightly confused she again goes into a string of wordy questions. In the end I spent over 20 minutes getting her to find and subscribe to the podcast, and the podcast is only about 25 minutes long. Geez, what a useless system. Today I'm going to see if there is an online method to get AnyPod to subscribe to podcasts that circumvents Alexa.

BTW, the same procedure on my Mac or iPad takes perhaps 2 minutes tops, assuming the podcast is available for the Apple ecosystem. But since I have my new Dot gen 3 hooked up to a nice Sony stereo speaker set, I thought the podcast would sound much better than listening to it on my MacBook Pro or iPad. It does, but it takes forever to get to the point where you can listen to a specific podcast that you haven't previously had Alexa locate and subscribe to.

[wodin]

Amazon launches Alexa app for Windows 10 PCs

[Purple Lady]

Originally Posted by OtinG

I have reached that point with her many times. I had asked her to find a specific podcast title which I knew from internet searches was available to Alexa via the AnyPod skill. I had just installed the AnyPod skill. She went off on telling me I had to connect to AnyPod but didn't say how. So more internet searching later I muddled through that. Then I asked her to find the podcast so I could get her to subscribe to it. She found everything but the one I was looking for and that is when she went into her fit of questions chasing after rabbits. That is, she was pursuing podcast titles totally unrelated to the one I wanted. The way the morons at Amazon have developed her, Alexa can go into constant question mode that can be extremely annoying because she speaks in long sentences and doesn't seem to listen to commands well during same. And if she is even slightly confused she again goes into a string of wordy questions. In the end I spent over 20 minutes getting her to find and subscribe to the podcast, and the podcast is only about 25 minutes long. Geez, what a useless system. Today I'm going to see if there is an online method to get AnyPod to subscribe to podcasts that circumvents Alexa.

BTW, the same procedure on my Mac or iPad takes perhaps 2 minutes tops, assuming the podcast is available for the Apple ecosystem. But since I have my new Dot gen 3 hooked up to a nice Sony stereo speaker set, I thought the podcast would sound much better than listening to it on my MacBook Pro or iPad. It does, but it takes forever to get to the point where you can listen to a specific podcast that you haven't previously had Alexa locate and subscribe to.

I normally only use my Dots to listen to music - I have them hooked up to stereos. Today I just asked it to "play tunein radio" and it heard "play some radio". It started playing SXM fantasy sports radio which I have never listened to, but hubby does. We ended up registering the echo device he uses to his email address so I didn't have to see everything he does in the app, but it looks like the devices must still be connected.

I only say "play tunein radio" and it automatically plays whatever station was listened to last. I have had problems getting it to play the stations I want to listen to. Hubby tried multiple ways to get it to play specific stations on tunein radio because I have no patience for that crap (or anything else for that matter &#128521. I try to get it to play "the metal plague" station on tunein and it says that it can only play genre music on iHeartRadio or one of the other music apps I don't use or want. Most of the stations I listen to have the word metal so I can't get it to play any of them. If I want a different station I go into the Alexa app but I really shouldn't have to. I reported this problem when alexa devices first came out and they agreed it was a problem but they never fixed it.

[Tarana]

Originally Posted by ApK

The numbered models are old.
Roku Ultra would be the current closest equivalent to the 4.

I totally agree. Get the latest. Ultra came out after Mom bought the 4. We didn't wait because the major advantage of the Ultra was a 4K or HDR, neither of which any of us have.

BTW, my brother in FL has the Roku stick and it works fine for him. He only wanted to watch Netflix and it works fine for him. Just have to scroll a little slower.

[OtinG]

I tried to finish listening via Alexa on my Dot 3 to the podcast I subscribed to yesterday. I quickly decided that attempting to control podcasts, or even select the precise episode you want to listen too, is a very frustrating task when using voice commands and Alexa. So I'm back to using iTunes on my MacBook Pro because I can play the podcasts in the background and use the keyboard buttons (Fast Reverse, Pause/Play, Fast Forward, and volume) to easily control the podcasts. I can also use the visual lists in iTunes to quickly select which one to play. That is much quicker than using voice commands, and I don't have to yell at Alexa!

[cc_in_oh]

The Best Buy black Fri. preview ad has the new Dot for $25.

Edit> Also Roku Ultra for $50...

[drjd]

Originally Posted by wodin

I've found that swearing at her usually gets her to shut up.

That seems perfectly intelligent.