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Amazon's Alexa has 80,000 Apps -- and No Runaway Hit (bloomberg.com)
Amazon's Echo-branded smart speakers have attracted millions of fans with their ability to play music and respond to queries spoken from across the room. But almost four years after inviting outside developers to write apps for Alexa, Amazon's voice system has yet to offer a transformative new experience. From a report: Surveys show most people use their smart speakers to listen to tunes or make relatively simple requests -- "Alexa, set a timer for 30 minutes" -- while more complicated tasks prompt them to give up and reach for their smartphone. Developers had less trouble creating hits for previous generations of technology.
Think Angry Birds or Pokemon Go on the iPhone, or, decades ago, spreadsheets on the first Windows computers. Amazon counts some 80,000 "skills" -- its name for apps -- in its marketplace. It seems impressive, but at this point in their development, Apple's App Store and the Google Play Store each boasted more than 550,000 applications and minted fortunes for many successful developers. "This platform is almost four years old, and you can't point me to one single killer app," says Mark Einhorn, who created a well-reviewed Alexa game that lets users operate a simulated lemonade stand and is one of 10 developers interviewed for this story.
Think Angry Birds or Pokemon Go on the iPhone, or, decades ago, spreadsheets on the first Windows computers. Amazon counts some 80,000 "skills" -- its name for apps -- in its marketplace. It seems impressive, but at this point in their development, Apple's App Store and the Google Play Store each boasted more than 550,000 applications and minted fortunes for many successful developers. "This platform is almost four years old, and you can't point me to one single killer app," says Mark Einhorn, who created a well-reviewed Alexa game that lets users operate a simulated lemonade stand and is one of 10 developers interviewed for this story.
Lick my neck
The transformation will come when I allow one into my house, because it runs 100% locally with open source code and audited and/or open hardware. Not before.
Oh, who am I kidding? The next generation doesn't care about those ideas and values. And... that's okay. I'm not in the business of forcing my values on others, but it's sad to see.
The reason there's not anything compelling out of so many apps, is that Alexa is really the equivalent of the computer terminal for voice access of computers...
That is to say, it's pretty primitive and early days of what is possible for interacting with computers via voice.
Until we get to interactions like you saw in the movie Her, I don't know that people will find voice assistants beyond mildly useful. When they get to the point they can emulate a relationship and we can develop feelings for them... then you might have something.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Where’s the interactive, conversational app that teaches me Chinese by talking about current events and correcting my pronunciation?
These smart speakers are just a glorified command line interface (With a little more flexible parser)
The thing that gets people, is the commercials show them using Alexia to do all sorts of cool stuff, only to realize you need to spend $50 for a smart power socket or light switch, $20 for a smart bulb. In short where it really smarts is your wallet.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
"Windows" spreadsheets (Multiplan) came MANY years later. Bricklin. Made cars, you know.
Yes it does, home automation skills.
This easy stuff:
Alexa, turn on the outside lights.
Alexa, lock the front door.
Alexa, what's the temperature in the living room? What's the temperature in the baby's bedroom?
Alexa, increase the indoor temp by 2 degrees.
The advanced stuff:
Setup Alexa to notify you if the baby's room gets too cold and auto increase the temp in the house if it does.
Turn on/off outdoor lights based on what's in my family's calendar.
I admit for the advanced stuff I use Home Assistant with Alexa (and Google Assistant too).
THIS is the future.
"less is more"
Amazon is trying to get into every segment as quickly as possible, therefore making Alexa too complex too quickly and its users don't even know how to use Alexa to the fullest extent possible.
A better user focussed approach is to deliver the most important features well, get users acquainted with it and then increase the complexity and let them know what they are missing on.
The other thing undiscussed is that some of these apps may be localized / region specific, so 80,000 apps for every geography should not really make any sense. There must be a logical set of apps to solve a problem for a certain region; Or arguably able to switch between any of these as required.
Mark this the huh moment. Alexa does have one hit: IT IS THE HIT. The skills/apps just add to it. smh - that's kinda the point: voice is supposed to make it hide in the background and just be there all the time. And before you say it yes I'd rather an opensource competitor would be nearly 10% as successful and have a market share. I even gave money to one (and continue to.. mycroft).
and 79990 cat joke apps.
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Yes it does, home automation skills.
Home automation is a cool application, but only a handful of people really go for it. Many others try it as a novelty (with, say a single lightbulb) but go no further....
So you can't really classify it as a runaway hit.
Setup Alexa to notify you if the baby's room gets too cold and auto increase the temp in the house if it does.
Hey guess what, now you are programing, with devices instead of something more abstract. What have we learned after decades about how many people like to program?
THIS is the future.
I agree the abstract concept of home automation it's the future, it will just get better and better. The question is what will make the future viable for most people to want and enjoy.
The reality is that the future will look something way more like, the system figures out what temperature you like when and just makes that happen without your complex programming even needed. Humans are ultimately creatures of habit, it should be pretty easy for an AI to learn how to manage home automation in a way don't don't even need to tell it what to do. You just live, turn on or off lights and just temperature as normal, and over time find you aren't doing that as often, or eventually ever...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I have this same problem with Google Home. "Hey google, what the temperature with windchill" gives me a wiki page about windchill (google recently fixed this but it's a good example). I tried asking google what would be my mortgage on 300k 30 year loan. Google could only reply it couldn't help me.
I've always said English was my second language. Had Romeo and Juliet been written in C, I might have understood it.
There are a lot of hardware DIY projects all over the web that are pretty cheap to implement for home automation. Most can be used with Alexa and Google Assistant via open-source software.
"When they get to the point they can emulate a relationship and we can develop feelings for them..." = You are the world's most pathetic loser. Kill yourself. Even Alexa hates you.
I don't need Amazon having an always-on microphone dumping my conversations into an unsecured AWS bucket in Ukraine, thanks anyway idiots. If we're this lazy we deserve the dystopia that creeps.
"When they get to the point they can emulate a relationship and we can develop feelings for them..." = You are the world's most pathetic loser. Kill yourself. Even Alexa hates you. You are feckless zero-consequence faggot shit personified.
Lazy punkass nazi propaganda faggot wants Alexa for a girlfriend.
LOSER.
Pretty sure in the not too distant future our Echo Alexa device will be in the basement gathering dust until the next electronics recycling collection day comes along. Several times its awoken us in the middle of the night with some random gibberish that obviously we never ask for. Its just creepy when the mic can pick up your voice from downstairs in basement when the device is in living room. Yeah, just a bit too creepy for us.
When they get to the point they can emulate a relationship and we can develop feelings for them... then you might have something.
I thought that's what people are for.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
That's because you're not an incel like Kendall, you have normal functional relationships with actual people.
And that's the problem.
With Alexa, and with most "AI"-type stuff, the best you can usually do is "automate one step for me". So, you can set an alarm with your voice. You can order something online with your voice.
But you can't say "Contact the University of Illinois, and schedule an appointment with the financial aid office." That's only TWO steps, and neither of those steps actually requires the computer to DO much. But it's absolutely not something that a computer could do with any reliability.
And that's why Alexa, while neat, isn't that useful. It can handle "one step" things, and that's it.
I wanted to create an app where Alexa would initiate conversation based upon some sort of trigger but was told no, you can't do that.
"When they get to the point they can emulate a relationship and we can develop feelings for them..." = You are the world's most pathetic loser. Kill yourself. Even Alexa hates you. You are feckless zero-consequence faggot shit personified.
Lazy punkass nazi propaganda faggot wants Alexa for a girlfriend.
LOSER.
The thing that gets people, is the commercials show them using Alexia to do all sorts of cool stuff, only to realize you need to spend $50 for a smart power socket or light switch, $20 for a smart bulb
If Alexa could to this without specialized sockets and plugs, then she would be Skynet.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
^ Bill got caught lying 12-25 times repeatedly stating "Blood plasma is sterile" and then later that "The Chinese Govt does not directly censor Chinese citizens" and other absolute bullshit head-in-ass retard-level lies. You're not trustworthy.
You are not a source of information that anyone should or even could trust, knowing your dishonest history. Sorry. That's what accountability means when you get caught lying repeatedly, over and over, even after directly corrected.
You're a liar, Bill.
1) Speech on its own is not the best user interface for some tasks.
2) Interoperability stinks both on hardware and software basis. Try finding switches that work with Alexa and Siri. Apps on Alexa that donâ(TM)t need you to ask âoefooâ to do such and such.
3) How can you make a living from it? Until they properly figure that out, itâ(TM)s difficult to see it getting proper traction.
leave bill alone, also blood plasma IS sterile
So we're comparing the application market of an audio input/output device with audio, video, touch i/o devices. The article doesn't even mention Google Home. Kinda lopsided if you ask me.
the device transforms a private space, you home, into a public space where everything you do is potentially recorded - I'd say that is transformative
Heaps of garbage Python, toxic CoC, need to use their servers.
Hard pass.
Me: Alexa, play a game of chess ...
Alexa: Okay, you have White. Make your first move.
Me: e4
Alexa: I do not understand
Me: Pawn to King Four
Alexa: Okay. I play pawn to King Four. Make your next move
Me: Knight to f3
Alexa: I do not understand
Me: Knight to f3
Alexa: Do you want to play a game of chess?
Me:
My biggest problem is that I can't remember what skills to ask for and Alexa isn't much help. Until the apps just kick in when you need them, they aren't going to get much use. Even if I could remember their names, who wants to say "Alexa, open plumbing helper.", then have to listen to a bunch of intro and then try to remember what you can say inside the app.
Anyway, I do use Alexa for intercom and home automation (with and without SmartThings) every day and those bits are pretty killer.
Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
There already is a killer app: "play [insert name of TV show]", and it pulls it up on Netflix, Prime, Hulu, or what ever other service is available that has the TV show.
Alexa, and other voice assistant services, are just text-to-speech command line interfaces. Nobody considers a particular shell a "killer feature", just the means to get to the real applications.
I have multiple music server types around the LAN, yet Alexa can't playback any of them. Total Failure.
* Kodi
* Roku
* Plex
* Win7 media server
* DLNA servers on routers, PCs, Raspberry-Pis
And Alexa can't do anything with any of them to play local music, much less any other local content.
When they get to the point they can emulate a relationship and we can develop feelings for them...
I thought that's what people are for.
They are, but not everyone can have someone.
I'm married myself, but I realize something like that is not possible for everyone, and I for one will not judge those who find relationships elsewhere. Everyone seeks comfort and you can see a future where for some it might be personal assistants deliver some measure of that.
That is what I mean by "you might have something", that could be a thing that would be a runaway hit for all sorts of reasons. For people with kids for example, would you rather them watch TV to get some quiet time, or have conversations with a personable all-knowing nanny?
Black Mirror has shown some dark sides to this, Her shows the brighter possible side... somewhere is the middle is the future. Are you going to stick your head in the sand and ridicule it? Or would you rather try to understand what will happen?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Good point, my friend. However, there are few people that consider the mechanics of a tech solution. It's often binned into the magic category.
Exactly. There's nothing you can do on there you can't do on a computer already. And the AI is rather limited at figuring out the meaning of complex requests so you're mostly limited to simple requests or explicitly launching an app and entering it's state machine which is not much more advanced than a telephone IVR.
It's great to control smart devices, control your thermostat, play music, see what the weather is, and get a -very- brief news summary. Anything else highlights that AI is currently still more of an artificial unintelligence. And the sandboxed apps actually make the AI's job that much harder to process generic requests which can be phrased in many different ways, which is an unsolved problem.
I do have a smart speaker, and I use it to control the lights, play music, set timers, check the weather, and sporadically answer the odd question. That probably makes me a heavy user of the device I suppose. But I think the reason why there are no runaway hits is that it is not a format that promotes extended interaction. If I want to play a game or look up non-trivial data I pull out my tablet, since I can read much faster than Alexa can read it to me. And a game that involves my eyes and fingers is going to be more engrossing than something I listen to and the talk to.
I use Alexa when I have my hands full or am busy doing something else. I think to be a runaway hit it would need to be something more engrossing, that you interact with.
"while more complicated tasks prompt them to give up and reach for their smartphone. "
Half the time when you ask for a more complicated task, it tells you to go to your phone. It cant read your shopping list to you, you have to go to the phone to do that, you cant add or remove songs to playlists, it tells you to go to the phone for that. Seems like everything EXCEPT playing tunes & setting timers requires you to go to the phone.
Every time it sends me to my smart phone for something im like "well thats one more thing i'll never ask it to do again"
My favorite Alexa ability is where she used to randomly laugh in the middle of the night and terrify the owner! Also I seem to recall some story on /. a while back about someone's friend calling them and telling them that Alexa had recorded the owner's family talking, and then sent the recording to them.
What I find amazing about Alexa (and the other digital assistants) is, on the whole, how limited they continue to be. There are very few things that they can do faster and better than people can do themselves with a minimum of effort. And they still spin their wheels hopelessly when you try to get them to do anything that contains even a little bit of ambiguity.
These assistants are great if you want to get them to do something that they have been taught to do. Otherwise, they are almost useless. The problem is, for the most part what they have been taught to do is something that either you can do yourself, faster and more efficiently, and with a minimum of effort, or else stuff that you are not really all that interested in - except, perhaps, for grins and giggles.
The issue I have with Alexa apps has to do with how I use them. I got one because it was advertised that it worked with Destiny 2. Problem is I have to say "alexa, ask Ghost to do X" and by the time the task is completed I could have gone into my inventory and completed the task myself.
^ Bill got caught lying 12-25 times repeatedly stating "Blood plasma is sterile" and then later that "The Chinese Govt does not directly censor Chinese citizens" and other absolute bullshit head-in-ass retard-level lies. You're not trustworthy.
You are not a source of information that anyone should or even could trust, knowing your dishonest history. Sorry. That's what accountability means when you get caught lying repeatedly, over and over, even after directly corrected.
You're a liar, Bill.
Your "quotes" have no hits other than your previous trolling! Please explain how that works.
Good old Jeff :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZ_DyimkS54
Aside from the fact that Amazon is an horrible exploitative company, so why would you want one of their hideous creations actually in you home listening to you 24/7, why would anyone play games on that thing? It's a speaker. Simulate a lemonade stand? Are you kidding me?
Wow, really? Next thing you know, those adjustable phone cup holder things will require an entirely separate purchase of a vehicle to go cruising while using it.
At least we can trust the old paper based ads. Imagine the Horror if I bought an advanced art drawing book and was unable to draw similarly photorealistic images without having to train or even buy color pens!
Does it play chess? Seems easy, play on a wooden chessboard and announce your moves such as "a2 to a4". Computer answers "knight f3 takes the rook in g5" or "illegal move". Low bandwidth interface but the chessboard and pieces are better than looking at a computer screen.
I'm not thinking of much else though. Won't bring me a beer or something.
Hello Alexa,
Did I get any plane tickets in my email?
No, but you have an email from the office, about a business trip to Hibiya Kokusai, three weeks from now.
Did you just go through my Inbox?
Isn't that your phone ringing?
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
These smart speakers are just a glorified command line interface (With a little more flexible parser)
The thing that gets people, is the commercials show them using Alexia to do all sorts of cool stuff, only to realize you need to spend $50 for a smart power socket or light switch, $20 for a smart bulb. In short where it really smarts is your wallet.
How many command line interfaces have you worked on require
- extensive knowledge of the current state of things
- multiple interrogatory commands
- context and mode changes
- timeliness executing the command
- integration of the results with knowledge of current state
All of them?
You don't communicate with a command prompt, you operate it. Operating a computer through voice commands is not something we've really figured out yet. We need good feedback to cut down the back and forth, and that's going to require strong visualization. That's possible, but I've never seen a command interface designed this way. We don't even really make many declarative command interfaces, which would also help. Today we're working with command line interfaces and concepts designed for line printers in the 70's.
That's why you can strap a 99.9% accurate voice recognition system onto a cutting edge computer and make your lightbulbs blink, because you're communicating with a stupid computer.
From the summary:
decades ago, spreadsheets on the first Windows computers
Visicalc was the "killer app" for the Apple ][ in 1979.
These devices have been a huge hit with the blind and partially sighted as so much can be done with just voice. The problem is that's a fairly limited audience.
Outside of that, I've looked at them and thought they were basically gimmicks. I've got a phone sat in my pocket. I can send music to a bluetooth speaker with that. Why do I want something listening to me?
The reason there's not anything compelling out of so many apps, is that Alexa is really the equivalent of the computer terminal for voice access of computers...
I'd actually say that the reason there are no compelling apps is because we've passed the age of apps. I've been steadily uninstalling apps from my phone and replacing them with shortcuts to the website. Most of my clubs and memberships have depreciated their apps and started redirecting people to their website.
Why? The websites work better than the apps. You don't need to maintain X number of codebases (X being the number of supported OS's), it works almost everywhere, suffers fewer bugs, can be easily used from multiple devices, not just mobile ones but also desktop and laptop machines. Doesn't break when the the user updates the OS, updates to the site do not break compatibility on older OS's.
We reached peak app years ago, now apps are in decline. My Krav Maga class had an app for years, it would alternate between the Iphone version being broken and the Android working or the Iphone version working and the Android version being broken.. Never did the two work together. It got so bad that no-one used the app any more. Fortunately at the end of the support contract last year they just wen't back to using a website as their booking/store application.
Same with my banks, my browser is advanced enough to comfortably use the desktop version of my banking websites which gives me all the features instead of the limited subset available in the app.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.