[nhangen]

The voice recognition technology is so much more reliable and flexible than I've found Siri to be. It has an API that allows developers to build apps for it, and is updated every week with new voice commands and features that make it even more interesting and useful.

I resisted for a long time, then bought an Echo, and I loved that so much that I bought a dot, then another, then a 3 pack for my kids for Christmas. It's great for timers, alarms, playing music, news, browsing Amazon, and so much more.

Being portable helps, especially with speakers that work so much better than phone speakers do.

FWIW, I'm a 38 year-old father of 3. I think that if you bought one, you would find yourself delighted (and surprised) by how fun it can be.

[drak0n1c]

The last startup I worked at the server dev brought in an Echo and set up a basic analytics app that queried the database so we could ask it for user activity over the last 24 hours, or the last week.

[drdrey]

what do you mean by "browsing amazon"?

[nhangen]

Shopping for items that pop into my head.

"Alexa, order a _____."

"I found 7 items matching ___..." and proceeds to go through the list.