Amazon Echo Part 2: Let's catch a glimpse of the future:

Around last November, Amazon announced their talking-joking-music-playing cylinder which they called Echo; I even wrote a blog questioning the wisdom of porting a virtual assistant from one's mobile phone to a stationary wifi-reliant device.  The said cylinder has been made available to the public for $179, and has been dutifully sitting in my living room since June, and well, the experience is something very similar to the Star Trek movie from the 80s.

While it is true that almost everything Alexa can do, Siris can do faster, there is just something about the voice-controlled nature of the Echo that made it especially charming. I can walk into a room saying, "Alexa, News." or, "Alexa, what's the weather like tomorrow." or I can take a look at my Smartphone, the result isn't going to differ much. The same goes with environmental control features in conjunction with Belkin WeMo switches, and/or Philips Hue. I can either say, "Alexa, turn on/off Wemo Switch." or I can pull out my Smartphone and use the WeMo app to achieve the same result. But there is something especially satisfying about telling "Alexa" to turn on the light, and when she replied, "okay."

For the uninitiated, WeMo is a product-line of WiFi-enabled switches from Belkin that allows one to remotely control the connected household appliances and lights using Smart Phone app. It accomplishes this by hijacking the power source. For people with limited sights and mobility, Amazon Echo can mean the difference between being able to turn on the light by oneself or not. I've had friends asking me if I have become too lazy to flip a switch, to which I replied, I do laziness for a living.

Of course, whether Amazon Echo is worth $179 would depend on whom you ask. If the person is impervious to the charm of a machine trying to simulate human interaction, and if the said person has reasonable dexterity and mobility, he/she may be better off with a high-end smartphone, because Echo's hardware is far from impressive, I think it has the similar class of hardware spec to an iPhone 4; (ARM Cortex-A8 from Texas Instrument). The impressive part of the Echo lies with the software hiding in the cloud always waiting for you to call her name, "Alexa."



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