| Picked up an Echo Dot on Black Friday on a whim and I'm genuinely surprised how much I use it. Last night's tasks: - Got into a dark house with my hands full of bags, "Hey Alexa turn on the living room lights. Play blues music." - Taking my shoes off, "Hey Alexa what's the news" - Cooking, "Hey Alexa what's 12 fluid ounces in cups. Add garlic to my shopping list." - On the way out the door, "Hey Alexa ask NYC Transit what's the status of the 4 train" - Going to sleep, "Hey Alexa turn off the bedroom light. Play white noise. Loop." - Wake up in the middle of the night "Hey Alexa what time is it? What time is my first meeting tomorrow? Cancel my alarm for 7:30AM. Set an alarm for 8AM.". All without shining a screen in my face, which can disrupt sleep cycles. There's a few glitches (sometimes the speech clips, had to reboot it once or twice) but speech recognition is decent (I have a soft-spoken English accent which challenges some systems). Also it's great when alone but kind of awkward talking to the machine when you have company. I can see a lot of mundane tasks switching over to ambient, speech-based interfaces in the future. I'll be adding Alexa Skills development to my skillset over Christmas. |
I've seen a bunch of people mention use cases in their bedrooms, which is great, but they seem to fall apart when you're not single since you don't want the speaker waking your partner up, which is sad since I would like to know what time it is without shining a light in my eyes.