Reluctant Amazon Alexa owner -- can it be useful?

ententecordiale

I use it as an alarm clock, for reminders, some basic queries such as weather forecasts, audibles as I use that a lot when out and about and internet radio. I find the voice control really handy and she can tell the occasional good joke "why do cows have hooves, because they lactose "

Nasqueron

We have a couple of Google Home Mini that I got free with a phone purchase, we mostly use them for music (playing spotify rather than on a phone or laptop) or asking the weather. I like being able to say



"ok google, play xyz on spotify" and "ok google, volume up"


Or "ok google what's the weather for today"



I wouldn't have bought them however as they're a nice thing but not essential

Farway

My 11 year old nephew use it to get rotten jokes. That's it, the end of thousands of years of human progress just to provide joke to 11 year old;)

Takmon

I have both an Amazon Device and a Google Device and i would say the Google Device is the superior one especially if used on it's own. The Google one is much better at answering questions and finding information online which is always useful and it can also make calls for free to landlines and mobile phones. So for example you can ask it to ring a restaurant and you talk through the device so you can make a booking without having to find the number and pick up a phone.

I also have all my lights, heating and other devices connected so i can control all that. So if i'm sat watching TV i can adjust the heating if i'm cold, switch from the main light to back lighting in the living room, even boil the kettle so when i walk to the kitchen it will be hot when i get there without having to wait.

When i go to bed i can lie down and without having to move turn the light off, turn on a fan if i get hot in the summer or adjust the heating in the winter etc.

It just makes everything slightly easier and more convenient plus you can control things in your home when your not there too.

Some people think it's lazy and unnecessary but we could all light are home with candles and heat only with a log fire but the majority of people don't because it's easier to have light switches and central heating. Just like it's even easier again to have smart devices .

devizes18193

kids radio off tune in , kids games stories , music . If you dont find it of use they will

kinger101

I use mine to launch intercontinental ballistic missiles.

glennevis

Your sister could turn the kids into lab rats. Give them the basic info about what it is, how to turn on and communicate with it then leave them to it. Be interesting to see what the next generation use it for and whether UID has actually advanced in the last 30 years. Just make sure there are no pay services associated with the account or it could be an expensive experiment.

Gers

Mine gets used mostly for the time (in the middle of the night), weather reports / forecasts, playing my Amazon music and radio broadcasts.

I ended up getting mine free from Amazon as there was a technical fault, and then the fault was fixed. :j

esuhl

Thanks all. So far it's been handy to set alarms/reminders. And for answering those random questions that pop in to your head. (Is Greenland in Europe? What's the capital of Lithuania?)


She doesn't really understand complex questions. "What is the longest mountain range that is underwater?" gives responses that ignore the "underwater" part. Sometimes it takes a bit of re-phrasing. And a few times she gave incorrect (or at best, debatable) answers.



Paradoxically, as my sister isn't that into music, it's the only music player in the house... so she has actually put on the radio a few times. I'm impressed that it can play Kane FM a local (not to us) radio station.


The kids haven't had much luck in getting Alexa to understand them. But they just keep on hurling insults at her until eventually she gets it!



Kids: Alexa! You smell!
Alexa: Actually, I'm unfragranced, but you can make a complaint by going to the Amazon website...
Kids: (*squeals of laughter*)


I'm really impressed by the speech-recognition, and astounded at how well it copes with background noise. Speech synthesis is easy to understand and natural-sounding. I can't even begin to wrap my head round how it analyses sound: picking out individual voices above background noise, creating highly compressed hashes/fingerprints from them, querying a huge database over the internet, identifying word-matches, parsing the intended meaning of a sentence, and determining a suitable response... all in a few blinks of an eye.


Techology-wise, it's a brilliant product. It's just not that useful (for us). And there's no getting over the creepiness and potential invasion of privacy.

JP1978

Get your sister to look for Alexa 'Skills' - It will interact with TuneIn Radio and Absolute Radio so will play them rather than the local one you mention.

We now have four in the house and use them as an intercom rather than shouting up the stairs for the kids to go bed etc.