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Amazon today announced that you no longer need an invitation to buy the Amazon Echo. In case you don’t remember what this thing is, it’s a $180 personal assistant speaker that’ll feed you the information you crave by simply speaking. It’s a ubiquitous model, meaning it’s always listening and waiting for your commands.
Derek has been using his for quite some time, and he’s been pretty pleased with it. Alexa — the name of the artificial intelligence being running the show behind the scenes — can deliver news, read your messages out loud, tell you the weather, play music read your books and more. It does so with an extra sensitive microphone and loud speakers, too, so you can issue commands from across the room and hear the result with ease.
The one feature Amazon’s keen on is its everlasting connection to the cloud, which is how it’s always up to date about news and weather, as well as why it’s always gaining new features and functionality without you having to do much. Just hook it up to the internet and you’ll probably never have to touch the thing again.
Unfortunately the units won’t ship until July 14th, but at least we’re finally assured that a retail release is happening. Be sure to place an order right here if this sounds like something you could use.
[via Amazon]
:crickets:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8E_zMLCRNg
Good News, Amazon Echo found is recommending you listen to the band The Crickets based on your music selection.
We have a copy of Buddy Holly and The Crickets in stock and can send it to you with free shipping if your a member of Amazon Prime. Would you like to try a 30-Day Free Trial of Amazon Prime?
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f4qUyv8PW0M
Got it when it first came out, but when I read early reviews, sold it for a really nice profit without even opening it because most of what it was able to do at the time I was able to do already.
Then again, if I wouldn’t have done that, I’d never have gotten a Wear watch.
So now I have mixed feelings about having sold my Echo. (It’s dull when I go to caves ;) )
If they dropped the price by $160 I might concider one.
$100 well spent. Now if only Google could release one better…
I would have spent $100 for the device, but I am not I am not willing to go $180. They should have sent an invite if they wanted me to have one.
My boss got one of these last week. He’s seems impressed with it. The microphones are very sensitive (you can be in another room) and the speech recognition is near flawless.
That said, if I got one, I don’t know what I’d do with it.