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Google Chirp To Rival Amazon Echo
An anonymous reader writes: Google is working on a competitor to the Amazon Echo, the smart speaker that has proved to be a sleeper hit for Amazon. The device, which will resemble an OnHub router, has not been officially named yet but is internally known as the Chirp. It has long been suspected that Google was working on a voice-controlled speaker that could integrate with Nest, since Google acquired Nest two years ago. While the Chirp isn't ready for release at next week's Google I/O developer conference, it will most likely receive honorable mention as the conference will highlight voice control, personal assistance, and virtual reality.
That must be why I never heard of that thing before today!
...you must be the one sleeping. Under a rock.
What? Sleeper hit? I don't know anyone that owns one outside of my office, the one we have in the office is for testing and it sucks. I hear them talking to it all the time and continually repeating themselves trying to get it to figure out what they actually mean.
Voice 'activation' or 'recognition' SUCKS currently. These types of devices ride a VERY SHORT hype train just like Siri did, and then no one at all cares. I suspect that the general public doesn't give a flying fucking about any voice recognition anymore.
Now tell me ... WHY DO I NEED a voice controlled speaker to integrate with my thermostat and fire alarm ... two things that I NEVER touch. You set the temp and you leave it, it heats or cools the house as needed, if you have a good thermostat (note, the Nest devices are actually pretty shitty as far as 'smart devices' go.) it has sensors in each room that detects occupancy and temp and adjusts the temp based on the rooms people are in.
No one cares about voice recognition in its current, almost absolutely useless state. Its nothing more than a broken toy. The only people who are telling you Amazon has a 'hit' is Amazon.
Stop slashvertising and get a cluepon. Echo isn't impressive, if you can find anyone with one of these 'sleeper hits' for more than a week, ask them how much they use it ... and then I dare you to find me the person who doesn't regret wasting the money after the first month is over.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Chirp is software to program Ham Radios.
When will these oversized companies with their own army of lawyers actually CHECK to make sure they aren't stepping on someone else's toes?
I'm sure Google will sue the programmer of the other software.... even though he had it first.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Apple should just buy Google and put an end to the silliness already.
Winston Smith! You can do better than that. Your hands are barely reaching your knees.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Two things I've never heard of. Competing!
I got in early on the Echo and we've yet to find a good use case for it. It's a decent speaker for playing Amazon Prime music and will answer SIMPLE questions. But for the most part, it cannot answer the questions we throw at it. We use Google or Siri in those cases.
Since it listens to everything said in the room, I'd be less comfortable with Google eavesdropping on my life than I am with Amazon.
Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.
How else are you going to watch your house burn down from 300 miles away unless you've got it crammed to the gills with the latest home automatation gimcrackery?!
These internet-connectimacated micropaphones are obviously the latest HOT product from the NSA. They also are handy for Russian & Chinese haxx0rs to steal your precious secrets.
Now instead of the local miscreants ringing your doorbell and running away, bored global jackaninnies can sonically assault you with Ministry at 3 AM, flick your lights on and off and turn off your beer fridge so your beer gets warm.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
So what happens in a few years when they kill the product and leave everyone who bought one out in the cold? Yea, no thanks. Google is has a bad rep for killing anything that isn't an instant hit in the market. Their online products are bad enough but at least there you usually don't pay for it, and you can migrate to something else. Hardware you're just screwed, especially if it relies on a backend service.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
They're all so happy their surveillance jobs are being made much easier for them.
I brought my Echo into the office, and it's been able to recognize at least 5 separate people with no issues from across the room. At home, it recognized everyone's voice, kids and adults. Three people in the office have bought one after using mine.
So your anecdote, like mine, means nothing overall.
I had to bring my Echo in because my kids were continuously asking Alexa for jokes, which gets unbelievably annoying.
I know the world is streaming, but why, oh, why don't they include a radio receiver? Many stations stream, but almost universally that doesn't include sports broadcasts. My wife uses a radio to listen to baseball when she's doing other things and can't watch the TV.
If not for that one shortcoming, we would probably get one.
We have an Echo (which we use quite a bit.... timers, alarms, news, weather, spelling, etc.) but for music.... the built-in speaker is low-fi and not satisfactory to me. So I bought an Echo Dot as soon as they came out, specifically because it had a line-out connection. That one, I use to listen to music here in my office (I have a very nice audio system in here), and I find the dot very satisfactory indeed in that role, although I do use the other features as well.
There do seem to be a lot of user-level haters; which leads me to believe there are a lot of people who've never actually used one. The claims that it has been a marketing failure are laughable; There is some approximate sales information, indications are that the product is doing quite well. Speaking as a user, I can understand why. We (my SO and I) find it very handy.
My objections to Echo / dot are about the developer ecosystem, the voice recognition implementation, and the secure server issues.
The "canned phrase" collection approach to command recognition is the very antithesis of any attempt to reach for "AI." It would have been wonderful if there was either a local interface so you could provide smarter processing, or if Amazon would actually provide smarter processing on their own. Between that, which is really a pretty crippling issue, and the requirement for an secure server with a +$ certificate for anything other than testing, Echo is not appealing to me as a development platform.
I've been watching MyCroft; that looks like it might have some potential.
Both presently suffer from online-only operation; the speech handling is dead if there is no connection. Hopefully that will be resolved in MyCroft's case, as it's actually an open system and they have mentioned that they're interested in pursuing local STT. My cheapo GPS ca. 2013 has reasonable general purpose offline speech recognition. However that was done, I would hope the underlying code would be better today, and I would love to see the capability in MyCroft, or Echo, or whatever. Being tethered to an active network is not a good thing.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
As you are clearly not very familiar with the Echo, a clarity that arrives due to your ridiculously truncated list of "thing Echo can do", I'll kindly give you two tips you can generalize from:
First, if you want it to answer to "Echo", then change the settings in the control app so it does. Duh. There are other interesting settings and enablments in there too.
Second, actually learn what it can do for you. Others have; so can you.
For instance, you want a good classic rock playlist that isn't a subset of prime music? Then create a playlist from your own library of carefully selected classic rock. If you don't have such a library, then your complaint is wholly ridiculous. MY classic rock playlist is freaking awesome. Because, you know, I built it out of tunes I really like. Depending on prime music... that's depending on some taste metric that will be an amalgam of Other People's Opinions selected from whatever tunes are actually on prime music (read, not the good stuff that might still sell decently) and, like you, that's definitely up for lighting my fire. Unlike you, however, I figured that out by myself and spent ten seconds Googling to see how to remedy the problem. :)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
For home installed government listening devices.
I just can't stop thinking that's what they're really about.
I own one and , me and my wife are extremely happy with it. It is not something that is crucial in our lives but we definitely enjoy being able command music with just our voice. It understands us very well even with our accents. I got it as a gift and use it mainly for music, news and podcast. It is so convenient to not have to stop whatever you are doing and just bark at someone to play this song, or get news or the latest of your favorite podcast. I also occasionally get news on Xur (Destiny) since I enabled that app.
I am looking forward on getting it integrated with Alarm.com (upcoming) since our house is already fitted with one. I will recommend it specially for old people and people with disabilities, they will be life changing. I love how my parents immediately figured out how to use it since the voice interface is very intuitive. It is not for answering questions but useful for timers, setting up a shopping list, listening to news and music. Place it at the center of the house (specially with how open designs are more popular now) and you can just shout at it from anywhere.