Posts tagged with "Amazon Echo"

Logitech Launches Amazon Echo-Harmony Integration→

Earlier this week, Logitech announced support for a new Alexa skill that lets Echo owners control their Harmony hubs and associated devices and services.

Today Logitech announced a new Amazon Alexa skill that enables voice control of your entire living room entertainment experience using a Logitech Harmony Hub with Alexa-enabled devices such as the Amazon Echo or Echo Dot.

When the skill is enabled on Amazon Echo or Amazon Echo Dot, you can start and stop Harmony Activities, control your entertainment devices, or even turn directly to your favorite channels, hands free, using only your voice. Harmony users can simply say “Alexa, turn on the TV,” or “Alexa, turn on Netflix” to control the TV as well as other entertainment and smart home devices, and Harmony makes it happen.

As those who listen to Connected may know, I’ve spent the past few months building a home automation setup based on the Amazon Echo and Alexa (more on this in the future). Connecting my TV to voice commands was the missing piece.

Here’s Dan Moren, writing for Six Colors:

I set up a similar system a while back, using a combination of other services like IFTTT and Yonomi, but Logitech’s first-party integration definitely puts it in the reach of anybody with an Echo and a Harmony Hub who doesn’t want to muck around with nitty-gritty technical details.

Logitech’s integration mostly delivers what I could already do with those other services, but there are a couple of nice additions. For one thing, it gets rid of the “trigger” nomenclature imposed by IFTTT. Additionally, it lets you declare “friendly names” for your devices, so even if your Harmony Activity is “Watch Apple TV” you can just say “turn on Apple TV”, or you can use “turn on game console” or “turn on Xbox.” Other smart home devices that work with the Harmony Hub, like Hue lights, can also be triggered, though of course the Echo already has built-in control for those devices as well.

This sounds great. I ordered a Harmony hub + remote yesterday, and it’s coming next week.

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Todoist Launches Native Amazon Echo Integration→

Since moving back to Todoist, I’ve been looking for a way to easily add tasks using the Amazon Echo, which has become a staple in our household for a variety of voice commands. Today, the Todoist team has rolled out a native Amazon Echo integration that lets you create tasks and manage your todo list just by talking to Alexa.

Nathan Ingraham, writing for Engadget:

It works much like you’d expect: you can ask Alexa to add items to the various lists that you have in your Todoist account, and you can also ask it to tell you everything that’s on your to-do list for that day. And Alexa works with Todoist’s natural language processing, so you can ask it to add things to your list “tomorrow” or “next Wednesday” and it’ll know just what you’re asking it for. It’s not clear if you’ll be able to tell Alexa to add items to specific projects or to-do lists in your account – they probably get added to whatever your default list is for you to sort out on your phone or computer.

The Todoist blog has more details on how the integration works:

Over the past months, we’ve worked closely with Amazon as part of a limited participation beta of their Alexa integration platform, and we’re thrilled to be able to share the results with you today.

And:

When dictating a task, Todoist’s smart date recognition will automatically recognize and add any due date you say. For example, saying, “Alexa, add pay the rent every first of the month to my to-do list,” will automatically add a recurring task to “Pay the rent” to your Todoist, due on the first day of every month. The task will disappear from your Alexa To-do list until the day your task is due.

Essentially, Todoist can now sync its Inbox list with the Echo’s own todo list; the Echo’s built-in shopping list also gets recreated inside Todoist as an ‘Alexa Shopping List’ project. This allows you to say “add task to my todo list” instead of using a specific Todoist terminology. There are some caveats (you can’t specify Todoist projects, for instance), but this looks like a solid first step.

I configured Todoist with my Amazon Echo earlier today, and everything was up and running in less than two minutes. The Amazon Echo’s excellent voice recognition helps Todoist understand natural language queries for due dates, and I’ve been positively impressed with the speed and consistency so far. I think I’m going to be using this very often.

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Amazon Music Unlimited Launches in the US→

Amazon announced its long-anticipated streaming music service, called Amazon Music Unlimited, with a focus on Echo integration and pricing. According to Dan Seifert of The Verge:

…while Spotify relies on its intelligent music recommendation and discovery as a draw and Apple pushes people towards its service with major album exclusives, Amazon is touting Music Unlimited’s tight integration with its Echo devices and Alexa voice assistant as the real differentiator here. Not only do Echo owners have access to a discounted version of the service (though it’s only available on one Echo device at a time), they can request songs from Music Unlimited in a variety of ways just using their voices.

The service also differentiates itself from Spotify, Apple Music, and others with a feature called Side-by-Side that adds artist commentary to certain albums.

For now, Amazon Music Unlimited is available only in the US, but it is scheduled to be released in the UK and Germany later this year according to 9to5Mac. After a 30-day free trial, Amazon Prime members can subscribe to Music Unlimited for $7.99 per month. Non-Prime customers pay $9.99 per month (the same as an individual Apple Music subscription), unless they have an Amazon Echo, in which case the service costs just $3.99 per month. Amazon plans to offer a family plan that can be used by up to six family members for $14.99 per month, the same as Apple Music’s family plan, but it’s not yet available.

Music Unlimited looks like a great deal for Echo owners, but apart from the cost advantage and Echo integration, it remains to be seen how the service’s music selection, playlists, and other core features stack up against competing services.

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Sonos Adding Support for Amazon Echo and Spotify

In a March blog post announcing layoffs, Sonos CEO John MacFarlane made cryptic comments about bringing voice control to Sonos that specifically called out Amazon’s work with the Echo. According to The Verge and Variety, Sonos unveiled plans today to integrate Sonos with Amazon’s popular line of voice-controlled products beginning in 2017. A video released by the companies shows a family using an Amazon Echo Dot to play music, skip tracks, get artist information, and pause music. It is unclear from reports whether the Amazon integration is limited to Amazon’s music products or will be available to use with other services too.

Variety is also reporting that Sonos has struck a deal with music streaming service Spotify to allow Spotify customers to stream music to Sonos speakers directly from Spotify’s mobile app. Spotify will begin beta testing the new integration in October.

In February, Sonos added support for Apple Music in its own app. With these latest deals Sonos appears to be taking a Netflix-like approach to ensure it remains relevant by integrating with as many services and platforms as possible. The strategy makes a lot of sense given today’s highly competitive music streaming landscape.

For more on the Amazon/Sonos announcement, check out the video after the break.

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Comparing Siri and Alexa→

Rene Ritchie at iMore, in an article titled “Siri vs. Alexa is hilarious to people outside the U.S.”:

Imagine if, on a weekly basis, you saw or heard “Xinghua” being compared to Siri. But “Xinghua” was available only in China and only to people who spoke Mandarin. How meaningful would those comparisons really be to you in the U.S.? That’s about as meaningful as headlines comparing Amazon’s virtual assistant, Alexa to Apple’s Siri are to the vast majority of the world’s population.

Right now Alexa is solving only for people in America who speak English. That’s an incredibly small subset of what Siri, which just recently added Hebrew and several other languages in several other reasons, solves for.

With all due respect to Rene, I think this is a disingenuous way of defending Siri from the comparisons to the Amazon Echo’s Alexa.

It is, of course, a fair complaint that the Amazon Echo is not available in countries outside the United States, and that it can only understand US English.1 But I do not think it is legitimate to imply that the Echo’s geographic and lingual limitations somehow undermines the advances that the Echo offers in other areas such as its integrations with services which is seeing it receive praise from all-corners of the industry in recent months.

A large part of the praise of the Amazon Echo is because in 18 months it has gone from a product that didn’t exist, into one that many in the US find incredibly useful. Also significant is that in those 18 months it has evolved rapidly, adding great new features that make it even more useful. That is why people are comparing it to Siri, which launched in 2011 and has undoubtedly improved, but at a much slower pace and in less substantial ways (multi-lingual support aside).

I’m an Australian and I don’t think this Siri vs Alexa debate is “laughably US-centric”, I think it’s important, even if I can’t personally use Alexa. Just last week, Google announced that it will be releasing a very similar product later this year, and credited Amazon for their pioneering work with the Echo. I am certain Apple has taken similar notice of Amazon’s (seemingly successful) efforts with the Echo, and if Apple acts on those observations, then everyone with access to Siri will benefit.

So I’m not laughing, I’m grateful, if a little envious that my friends in the US are (yet again) getting a taste of the future before me. But I know it’ll reach me soon enough, whether it’s via Apple, Google, Amazon, or even Microsoft.

  1. I regularly make these kinds of observations/complaints about various products and services. Two years ago I even spent days researching and putting together this extensive examination of just how far ahead Apple was in terms of the availability of media content in countries around the world, so I understand this frustration very well. ↩︎
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