A glimpse of a SmartHome

The Echo is Amazon's latest futuristic gadget experiment. It's
one part Bluetooth speaker and one part personal voice
assistant. And it blew my mind



You control the Echo with your voice; you can tell it to do things
like play music, read news briefs aloud, add items to your to-do
and shopping lists, and tell you the weather. In other words, the
Echo is like the realization of HAL 9000 in a black canister, only
without the frightening pulsating red camera eye, and not nearly
as intelligent.


The $199 ($99 for a limited time if you're an Amazon Prime
member) wonder tube is intriguing because it's one of the first
of what will surely be many AI gadgets duking it out to control
the connected home.
Apple has Siri ; Google has, uh... Google Now; and Microsoft has
Cortana . Now, Amazon has its own personal voice assistant —
only it's not trapped inside of a smartphone.

The Echo is a very promising piece of technology. When Siri
launched on the iPhone 4S in 2011, she was limited in what she
could do. She wasn't the snappy context-aware darling we know
today. The Echo's Alexa is like Siri was a few years ago: She
only knows a few tricks.

And that's perfectly fine with me right now. The Echo's a better
Bluetooth speaker than I expected and using your voice to
control music feels intuitive and natural . To me, that's already
worth $99 (I'm a Prime member).

Would I like it if Alexa could tell me more pertinent information
like if I'm going to be late to work or to read my unread email
while I'm brushing my teeth? Hell yes. Wouldn't it be great if I
could tell Alexa to order Chinese take-out or turn on the lights or
TV. Absolutely, and that's the dream.

The Echo's not there yet, but Amazon says the plan is to get
developers onboard to create devices that can connect to it and
work with Alexa. The Echo is untapped potential. It's an infant
and with proper developer support could blossom into a serious
smart hub for the home. For example, the Echo could change the
way we shop online. While you can buy songs right now, it's
possible, as my colleague Samantha Murphy Kelly suggests, that
a future update to the Echo could let us actually order things off
Amazon. After all, Amazon is in the business of selling goods.
Even at $199, the Echo offers a lot of value; the UE Boom costs
the same and it's only a Bluetooth speaker. And if you're not a
Prime member, why not become one ($99 a year) so the Echo
drops to $99? You'll get the Echo, two-day shipping on
thousands of items, Prime Instant Video and Prime Music for
$198. It doesn't make any sense to buy the Echo for the full
$199 at all when you can get Prime and Echo for the same price.
I'd love to buy an Echo, but there's only one thing preventing me
from doing so: Amazon hasn't invited me to buy one yet. And for
some people who did get invited and decided to take the
plunge — well, their Echos aren't shipping until this summer. The
Echo shows you a pleasing glimpse of our connected future, but
Amazon is taking its sweet time painting the full picture. If
Amazon doesn't start shifting the Echo's smart home
connectivity into high gear, Apple's HomeKit and Google's
" Works with Nest " program could leave it eating their dust.

Source: mashables