Amazon Echo Club

[cc_in_oh]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Amazon’s Alexa can’t be asked to forget what you ask it to remember

Sounds like another giant leap forward in the field of Artificial Stupidity. Did they contract the project out to Microsoft and make them whittle it down to a totally inadequate 10M lines of code?

[Tarana]

I forgot where the other thread for Echo is, but this month, The Velveteen Rabbit, is free from Audible until May 31.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by Tarana

I forgot where the other thread for Echo is, but this month, The Velveteen Rabbit, is free from Audible until May 31.

Thanks for posting

The other thread is here -- Amazon Echo -- but it's seldom used so I don't mind if you post it here. I'll post this offer in the deals thread for Audiobooks.

FYI - if go to the opening post of this thread, you'll find all sorts of links and references, including the link I posted above.

[Catlady]

Bad Alexa!

(Bloomberg) — A couple’s private conversation was mysteriously recorded by their Amazon Echo device and sent to one of their contacts, igniting privacy concerns about the voice-activated gadgets the online retailer wants to make as commonplace in homes as televisions.

The two found about it when they received a phone call two weeks ago from one of the husband’s employees telling them to "Unplug your Alexa devices right now. You’re being hacked," news station KIRO 7 reported. Amazon.com Inc. said in a statement to the station that it was an "extremely rare occurrence."

Full story here.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by Catlady

Bad Alexa!



Full story here.

When not actively being used, my Echos display the red ring of deafness.

[tubemonkey]

Google Home ships more units than Amazon Echo for the first time

...uh oh

Google's smart speaker has finally caught up with the Amazon Echo in the area that matters most -- sales.

The Google Home came out more than two years later than the Echo and significantly trailed in capabilities, customer awareness and sales. But it's gradually caught up in capabilities, to the point that the question of which one is better is the subject of many an office debate. Finally, in the first three months of 2018, things are looking up.

Worldwide shipments of Google's line of smart speakers -- including the Google Home Mini and Google Home Max -- pulled ahead of Amazon's Echo line of smart speakers for the first time. It shipped 3.2 million (compared with Amazon's 2.5 million) units in the first quarter of 2018.

The percentage of sales going to the US dropped to less than half thanks to expansion into other regions and increased uptake of smart speakers in countries such as China and Korea.

[tubemonkey]

Fewer parents name baby girls Alexa after Amazon Echo debut

Naming your daughter after a voice assistant isn’t catching on — in fact, just the opposite has occurred. Since 2015 when Amazon introduced the Echo smart speaker with its now ubiquitous “Alexa” wake-up command, the incidence of newborn girls named Alexa has tumbled, Recode reports.

In 2015, Recode says, 6,050 baby girls were named Alexa. According to statistics from the Social Security Administration analyzed by Philip Cohen, a sociology professor from the University of Maryland, 33 percent fewer parents — just 3,883 — named their baby girls Alexa in 2017. The name dropped from 311 of every 100,000 baby girls in 2015 to 207 per 100,000 female babies in 2017.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos told the world how the name for Amazon Echo device’s cloud-based voice assistant originated in 2016 during a public interview at the Washington Post’s Transformers Conference, USA Today reports.

Bezos said he and his friends pretended to be Star Trek characters, playing in their elementary school years. A talking computer crew members addressed as “Alexa” in the Star Trek series was Bezos’ inspiration when the time came to decide on a name for the Echo voice assistant.

[tubemonkey]

Alexa is now hands-free in the Amazon Music app on Android and iOS

Amazon has started rolling out an update to the Amazon Music app for Android and iOS devices that adds hands-free Alexa capabilities. These apps gained Alexa last year but you had to press an Alexa button on the screen each time you wanted to make a request. With this update, as long as the Amazon Music app is on-screen, you can now say “Alexa” and make a request without touching anything.

Once your app receives the update with hands-free Alexa, you’ll see a full-screen notice the first time you launch the app after the feature has been enabled. The feature will be enabled by default, but you can turn it off in the app’s settings. It’s best to wait for a tone to sound after saying “Alexa” before making your request, instead of stringing the wake-word and request together, like you’re probably used to with Echo devices.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

When not actively being used, my Echos display the red ring of deafness.

My two Dots are unplugged unless I'm streaming music.

[Conan46]

People worry about Alexa spying on them, but Amazon has nothing on people compared to the amount of info Google collects. When you add Android, Chrome, Search, and especially Gmail, no one else has so much information on individuals. I have concerns about the info Alexa may collect, but putting a Google Home device in the house is really just icing on the cake for Google's massive info gathering.

[Tarana]

The Bone Farm by Dean Koontz streams free from Audible on Alexa until May 31. You can also buy it for $1.31. It's a novella, book 0.5 of Jane Hawk series.

[dandelioncottage]

Does anyone know a way to opt-out of using Echo for phone calls without having to call Amazon? I'd like to occasionally add new Alexa skills, but I can't get past signing up for calling/messaging in the app.

[Conan46]

Originally Posted by dandelioncottage

Does anyone know a way to opt-out of using Echo for phone calls without having to call Amazon? I'd like to occasionally add new Alexa skills, but I can't get past signing up for calling/messaging in the app.

I wish I had never set mine up for calling. How stupid of Amazon to not have an easy way to shut it down The only thing I could find was blocking people in my contacts list.

[DreamWriter]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

When not actively being used, my Echos display the red ring of deafness.

The Dot in my living room was constantly being triggered by the television, so voice activation is turned off on that one now. I use the Echo remote to ask it questions or give commands.

[Catlady]

Amazon has a deal on the WeMo Mini Smart Plug--$10 using the promo code WEMO10. It's a limited-time offer, but I didn't see an end date. Also, you can use the promo code for only one smart plug.

Offer page here; product page here.