Amazon has announced the ‘Amazon Echo‘ virtual assistant device in an attempt to get into the home automation market.
The black tube-like device is designed to sit in a room and be used like the many other virtual assistant systems we see in smartphones and tablets, such as Apple’s Siri, Google Voice and Microsoft’s Cortana. The tube contains a microphone to listen to you and speaker to talk back to you. The system responds to the name ‘Alexa’ and can deliver you news, weather, travel, inane facts or even jokes.
The device sells for $199 for anyone and everyone and $99 for Amazon Prime subscribers. It is on sale, but on an invitation only basis at the moment. It could be said that this device is Amazon’s attempt to get into the emerging home automation market, as the device could very well be told to switch off your lights and turn on your heating in the near future. Amazon has gradually been introducing a number of devices in recent years, most recently it’s terribly unsuccessful Fire Phone, with the hope of coming into profit (something the company has never achieved).
Most of the discussion surrounding this new device has been centred on the seemingly awkward video used to introduce it.
How do his kids understand what the cloud is?
Source: Mashable
It is awkward because it tries in 4 minutes to show what you can do with it. A family where in 4 minutes it is shown to be so depended on a small box that talks, it’s more than awkward. It’s alarming and also sad. Maybe also a little creepy.