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Amazon's Echo: a $200, Multi-Function, Audio-Centric Device
An anonymous reader writes Amazon today quietly unveiled a new product dubbed Amazon Echo. The $200 device appears to be a voice-activated wireless speaker that can answer your questions, offer updates on what's going in the world, and of course play music. Echo is currently available for purchase via an invite-only system. If you have Amazon Prime, however, you can get it for $100. I've put in a request for one; hopefully we'll get a hands-on look at the Echo soon. It looks useful and interesting for random searches, and for controlling devices, but one small speaker (interesting driver arrangement notwithstanding) doesn't bode well for "fill[ing] any room with immersive sound," as Amazon's promo materials claim.
Now we got two giants churning out failure after failure
It looks a lot like Ivee (http://www.helloivee.com) which was Kickstarted a while back. Ivee costs much less, and integrates with home automation gear (Hue, Nest, etc.), which is useful. It doesn't stream internet audio, though. So it'll be interesting to see how they compete.
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
Echo as in, Echo the Fires miserable failure? Because if that's what you're trying to do... good job!
Seriously, it seems that recently Amazon must have fired the guy with all the common sense.
The real question is how much money can Amazon actually lose each month selling really bad electronics and the rest of their services below cost?
Remember when these guys just sold books and CDs? That actually worked for them.
This would be perfect if it only had a faithful synthesis of Majel Barrett's voice.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Masters of only one (Let Kindle Slide). Online Shopping. I simply do not understand all of these devices that Amazon is trying to pimp. Phones? Tablets? I love shopping at Amazon but their brain dead hardware makes zero sense.
I scored an invite, though don't have the device yet. Looks to be useful for searches while working on cars, with greasy hands where you don't want to grime up your laptop. Mount an Echo on the garage wall, and search away!
You just shout "SLICE! CHOP! SLICE!" at it and it makes fruit slicing noises and tells you afterwards how well you did. When you're not using it, it quietly keeps a compressed log of human presence information and keyword flags that get sent to Amazon's supercustomers. Just like the Kinect, but no Xbox required. Awesome innovation.
Cloudiot: A person who does not see offsite storage as a way to lose control over access to his or her own data.
Based on prior history of Amazon's ability to tie hardware and software into devices I would hold off on the purchase.
Amazon Prime costs $99 a year, and this device is $100 off if you have that...
If you go to amazon.com, you'll see a ginormous advert taking a big chunk out of the very top of the page.
#DeleteChrome
Sorry, out of mod points.
Gee - 30-some comments and not one about privacy concerns. An always-on mic in my house? I think not!
Suppose, you are disciplining your child, or singing in the shower, or having a tender moment with your spouse... The device listens — and is connected to the cloud "getting smarter".
Will it start offering suggestions? Will it start reminding us to wash hands — if it hears flushing, but not running water in the sink? Will it call police upon detecting "domestic violence" — and wouldn't Amazon some day be sued for not doing so?
The Big Brother we were warned about nearly 100 years ago, does not necessarily need to be entirely for monitoring — the watching interface could also deliver weather reports and other useful information.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
If you actually scroll down the page a http://www.amazon.com/oc/echo you'll see it actually has two speakers, a "woofer" and a tweeter.
More interesting is the array of 7 mics. Should be possible to get some good positional audio capture and noise reduction that way.
I picked up an el-cheapo bluetooth speaker/mic a while ago, and it works decently enough. I can see people paying 10x more for a "premium" version of something like http://www.amazon.com/Wireless... I suppose... "Real" speakerphones for conference rooms with good NC and AEC are pretty expensive.
I'd like to say WTF? Over.
No thanks. I'm not willing trade even more privacy by paying Amazon $200 to listen in to everything I do just in case I might want it to display something on the screen for me.
All indications on this device is it is going to be tightly wound into Amazon's services. Unless it has an open API as well, it's going to be dead in the water, because me telling amazon to "Remind me to get milk tomorrow" is not very useful when it has no integration to my Google or Apple calendar.
The second barrier is, all this thing can do can already be done by Google Now. So you are competing with a device people already have in their pocket.
Anyway it will be interesting to see if it works out for Amazon.
It is said the average human life of 76 produces 1.5 years on the toilet. I'd like to believe I've done some good thinking and improving during that goodly bit of quiet time.
If we can do nothing else productive with our cumulative years on /., we ought to be able to convince folks to type in their own url. Crikey!
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
So if I'm at home AND I'm in the same room with it AND I don't have my phone in my pocket AND it's otherwise quiet in the room, I can totally ask it stuff. SIGN ME UP!
This will be so great for all those times that I'm standing alone in my living room with my hands full and I suddenly need to know "what's 28 degrees fahrenheit in celsius?"
Seriously, Amazon, just throw this useless piece of shit into the bargain bin with the Microsoft Kin and the Google Nexus Q and the Facebook Phone and oh yeah the Amazon Fire Phone. Call me in a few months when they announce what the write-down is on this turd.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Your every spoken word reverberates back at the Amazon.com mother roach.
Just like your every spoken word on your cellphone and computer microphone goes to Microsoft, Apple, and/or the NSA.
Did Amazon think that 3com's Audrey aka the web appliance did fail hard enough?
and because pressing a button on your phone that's in your pocket will be more work than you're willing to put in to remember a task.
www.slightlycrewed.com - Because aren't we all?
It could be that losing screen is as essential for voice interface as losing keyboard and stylus was for multitouch tablets. Not in a technical sense, but to get both users and developers to embrace new way of interacting and discover what works. I see this working very well with kids, especially if wrapped in a cute toy and an age-appropriate content selection. If nothing else, this device will have terrific accessibility for blind users.
If only NSA didn't spoil the fun by displaying complete disregard for law and common sense! Now people will never trust the hotword detection and assume it can be overridden from remote to listen all the time.
They really should have called this Siri on a Stick. Maybe SOS for short. Amazon SOS sounds better than Echo. What echo?
Wow. Just wow. Some AC probably just made a shitload of cash by tricking mods into upvoting his peronsal referrral link (hint: that's what the ref_=blahblah part is).
http://www.amazon.com/oc/echo works just fine without the referral.
Can't she just read your mind anyway
Its about 5 weeks too late for Amazon - I have had to reduce my spending there since they now charge sales tax.
The only difference, of course, is that we don't expect your cell phone or tablet to relay EVERY word to the NSA. The "Echo" device would appear to do just that. We always suspected that Big Brother was going to subcontract the work; now we know who got the bid!
Not sure if you're saying that makes it OK, or if you just wanted to point that out.
I'm Wiki Bear!
This sig intentionally left blank.
All it needs to say is "Yes Dear" and give compliments, save me a lifetime of grief. Of course, it'll also need to learn how to apologise when it's right... That might be a bit trickier.
"lt;dr" is the correct response to most of my posts.
Firewall the crap out of it. And force it through a proxy server that can manage upload quotas (i.e.: squid)
Now, go ahead and mod me down.
Looks like someone is in need of a spanking.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Right there in the advert is the problem, it says "echo only listens after you say the chosen keyword", yet to hear the keyword echo must be listening in all the time.
So what you've got there is (yet another) remote controlled spying device, This one has 7 mics! Like Fire phone had 4 cameras that watched your every facial expression as you see Amazon products to see how you react to them, this one can listen out for important word like "Lets go buy...[stuff]", "My company just bid [$$$] on contract [business]", "I hate the President", and other important things to listen out for!
Beware, your smartphone already does this. Samsungs and other makers come with apps, Sammys is DSMLawMo that remotely turns on cameras, mics, read files, access the local network, change your network settings, read SMSs, send SMSs pretending to be you that are not shown to you, read apps, run apps.... You cannot turn it off.
These devices are a privacy disaster.
I see what you did there... (when you get a "ref=" part in an Amazon URL, it means it's an affiliate link.)
Nice cheap way to earn a few extra bucks by using your own affiliate link, I see, all in the guise of "web surfing safety".
I don't think it will work without a pretty wide-open connection to Amazon. All of those queries that we saw were not being satisfied by the local box. The shopping list was internet connected. That thing is not going in my house.
Get one of these and then play nothing but movies with terrorists in them right by the mic.
Actually ref= is for the referrer. Amazon uses this to track from which page users are coming from. It's redundant when the HTTP referer is there, but it's still helpful for links shared outside or posted on other websites, etc.
Affiliate links have a tag= URL parameter, not ref=.
Together with a TV this is a perfect telescreen.
If I understand correctly this device will listen to everything you say and send it to Amazon's servers so it can be interpreted as a command. Doesn't anybody realize what a stupid idea this? I don't want a device in my home that surveillances me and directly sends an audio stream to some cooperation.
Is why, when not at home, set a computer to play random video-clips from YouTube - Amazon will have fun figuring out what-is-what.
"We always suspected that Big Brother was going to subcontract the work; now we know who got the bid!" Let me guess, you also believe WTC was an inside job.
Poor man's kinect ?
I apologize. While what I posted is better than that very long URL, I guess www.amazon.com/echo would have been better to mention.
When I type in www.amazon.com, it brings me to http://www.amazon.com/oc/echo/ref_=ods_dp_ae
I have no idea what "ods_dp_ae" is referring to.
more like a wireless microphone and the cloud is listening in.
some drunken folks are arguing about the speed of light in vacume vs water.
bartender gets weary of the pedantic noise and nods the folks over to Echo and say "Oh wise one... what is the speed of light in vacume vs water?"
the crowd goes silent as it speaks. "answer is... 42!"
How will they make money, no one here reads the articles anyways.
Have gnu, will travel.
No, no thank you.
Amazon now, officially ties Google for creeping me out.
Critical design failure in that bot, where are we supposed to stick our cock ?
Alexa, what's the best way to be tax-efficient?
Alexa, what were Mummy and Daddy whispering about on Christmas Eve?
Requiem for the American Dream
Yeah, what a dumbass; everyone knows that standard passenger airliners always fire under-body missiles before flying into buildings.
Leave it to the world's largest book seller to combine 1984 and Brave New World into one product. Personally, I'm holding out for the brain implant from Mozilla.
You do know that even when not in operation, it listens to every sound in your home. Might as well have Bezos come in a plant bugging devices .
Samsung already has voice activation on their galaxy. Why do we need another copy cat device from amazon. If your going to plug in amazon's new bugging device, why not plug in your iPhone and use "hey siri" At least apple isn't listening in on your household conversations 24/7
Additionally, why by from amazon. Their prices are higher than most other vendors and most vendors offer free shipping so why pay amazon for that. I save thousands of dollars a year by searching bing, Google eBay etc for what I want to buy and avoiding high priced amazon. That smiley face on their box is bezos laughing all the way to the bank at all the consumers that over paid on his site.