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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.
This would be perfect if it only had a faithful synthesis of Majel Barrett's voice.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Echo as in, Echo the Fires miserable failure?
I was hoping for Echo and the Bunnymen, actually. I guess the Bunnymen cost extra.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
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.
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.
Alexa mod parent troll
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Except its kickstarter, so some douchebeard will keep all or most of your money while mailing you a Debian CD in return.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
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.
"Douchebeard" is my nomination for word of the year.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it