Alexa ! -- 'HELLO' -- Amazon 'Echo' Review and Demo

[bsteadman]

Amazon Echo Review | Home Automation Demo using the Amazon Echo 2016

[bsteadman]

Steve Wynn Discusses The Addition of Amazon Echo to All Hotel Rooms

Published on Dec 14, 2016 by 'Wynn Las Vegas'

Wynn Las Vegas and Amazon announce plans to equip all 4,748 hotel rooms at Wynn Las Vegas with Echo, Amazon’s hands-free voice-controlled speaker. The introduction of this technology into every guest room will be an industry first in the world, allowing guests of Wynn Las Vegas to control various hotel room features with a series of voice commands via Alexa, the brain behind Echo.

[bsteadman]

Alexa, Take the Wheel: Ford Models to Put Amazon in Driver Seat -- Bloomberg

Alexa, Take the Wheel: Ford Models to Put Amazon in Driver Seat

• Amazon’s voice-activated assistant coming to cars this summer
• Echo technology to allow drivers to start car from the couch

Bloomberg
by Keith Naughton and Spencer Soper
1/5/2017

Excerpt:

Shopping from the steering wheel will become possible this year as Ford Motor Co. begins taking Amazon.com Inc.’s Alexa digital assistant along for the ride.

The second largest U.S. automaker said it will begin offering “Alexa in the car” this summer on vehicles equipped with its Sync 3 infotainment system. An automotive version of Amazon’s popular voice-activated Echo assistant, Alexa in the car will let drivers order items on Amazon, listen to audio books, play music, check news, search for restaurants and get directions. The driver just has to push a button on the steering wheel and say, “Alexa,” followed by a command such as “find an Italian restaurant.”

Amazon is eager to form alliances with automakers and also is working with BMW to integrate Alexa into its luxury cars. The dashboard has become a hotly contested node on the Internet of Things, as automakers and tech giants tussle to control revenue that will likely flow from more connected and autonomous cars. Apple Inc.’s CarPlay and Alphabet Inc.’s Android Auto -- simplified dashboard versions of their smartphone controls -- are slowly appearing in car cockpits.

“Voice is the future and this is particularly true in cars,” Steve Rabuchin, vice president of Amazon Alexa, said in a statement at CES, formerly the Consumer Electronics Show. “The ability to use your voice to control your smart home, access entertainment, manage to-do lists and more makes for an extraordinary driving experience.”

Amazon introduced Alexa with the Echo speaker in 2014 as an intelligent home assistant that responds to utterances such as “re-order paper towels,” “play Kanye” and “turn on the lights.”

The product was a surprise hit and Amazon doubled-down last March by introducing new versions, including the Echo Dot, a hockey puck-sized device that featured the skills of the original Echo but for $50, less than one-third the $180 price. With the help of some discounting, both sold out before this Christmas.

Partnering with Ford means Amazon can spread Alexa wider and develop more use cases. Ford sold 2.6 million cars and trucks in the U.S. last year, controlling 14.8 percent of the auto market.

“Ford and Amazon are aligned around a vision that your voice should be the primary way to interface with your favorite devices and services,” Don Butler, Ford’s executive director of connected vehicles, said in the statement.

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View the complete article, including video and links, at:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...ride-with-ford

[bsteadman]

Amazon ‘Alexa’ Orders Dollhouses For Owners After ‘Hearing’ TV Report

CBS - Dallas/Ft. Worth
1/6/2017

Excerpt:

DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) – On Wednesday, CBS 11 reported a story about a youngster who accidentally ordered a pricey toy through Amazon’s Alexa device. Now that story has prompted orders for unwanted dollhouses after a San Diego station repeated the story to their audience.

Earlier this week the Amazon device made Dallas girl, 6-year-old Brooke Neitzel’s dollhouse dreams a reality. “Alexa ordered me a dollhouse and cookies,” Brooke explained to CBS 11.

According to CW6 in that city, their morning show anchor Jim Patton commented on the story and said “I love the little girl, saying ‘Alexa ordered me a dollhouse.'” The station reports that after Patton uttered those words “viewers all over San Diego started complaining their echo devices had tried to order doll houses.” - (bold and color emphasis added)

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View the complete article, including image, at:

http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2017/01/06/a...ing-tv-report/

[bsteadman]

7 unexpected places you will find Alexa this year

cnet.com

Excerpt:

Alexa may have dominated the smart speaker space in 2016, but this year, you're going to see (and hear) Amazon's voice assistant in a lot of new and unexpected places.

So far, we've seen Amazon's Alexa pop up in a few unusual places, like your web browser, smartphone apps or smartwatches. But the voice assistant platform showed up in a big way at the Consumer Electronics Show this year and stole the show.

It's time to stop thinking of Alexa as just the brains of a speaker and more as an omnipresent system that's about to further infiltrate your home, car, pockets and ears. Here are seven places you can expect to see Alexa later this year.

Car ......................
TVs .....................
Appliances ...........
Phones ................
Headphones .........
Baby Monitors ......
Robots ................

View the complete article, including video, images, and links, at:

https://www.cnet.com/how-to/amazon-e...lexa-this-year