<story><title>Amazon enables free calls and messages on all Echo devices with Alexa Calling</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/09/amazon-enables-free-calls-and-messages-on-all-echo-devices-with-alexa-calling/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>FullMtlAlcoholc</author><text>&amp;gt; The one that has jumped out at me first is called “Drop In” — which lets you make a call to someone without them even answering the phone first.&lt;p&gt;I wish that the product person  who pushed this as an &amp;quot;innovative&amp;quot; idea lives a short, brutish, and painful life where he&amp;#x2F;she dies alone.&lt;p&gt;EDIT: That&amp;#x27;s too mean spirited.&lt;p&gt;If you want to peer in on your elderly parents, webcams are a better idea because you&amp;#x27;ll put them in a position that captures a wide angle or buy a 360 degree camera as opposed to this which only seems to pick up video in the direction it&amp;#x27;s facing.&lt;p&gt;What person would ever want this &amp;quot;feature&amp;quot;? We have webcams for people who don&amp;#x27;t mind exhibiting themselves. People overwhelmingly prefer to text others rather than talk over the phone or facetime when given the chance. Even when you visit someone in person, you don&amp;#x27;t drop in, unannounced like a peeping tom. You knock on the door to announce your appearance, exactly analogous to ringing the telephone before listening in and watching.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t like it because the world&amp;#x27;s largest retailer has the marketing and advertising muscle to normalize this behavior by preying upon our fears, our irrational behavior, and our cognitive biases. Look at the social stigma one faces if you don&amp;#x27;t have a facebook account and you&amp;#x27;re under 35. Not just that, but you will get harassed by border and customs agents if they ask for your social media account and you don&amp;#x27;t have one, setting off red flags.&lt;p&gt;In the near future, I can see this feature becoming a requirement for remote workers with insecure managers.&lt;p&gt;EDIT: This will definitely become a feature on sites like Upwork so that buyers can make sure developers are billing them the correct hours, even though the prices are dirt cheap already.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cpcb</author><text>I just placed a pre-order for 2 of the Echo Shows mostly for this Drop In feature.&lt;p&gt;My wife and I are about to be first-time parents and for us, this is a pretty exciting product for parents compared to the other devices out there in this space.&lt;p&gt;For the &amp;quot;drop in&amp;quot; feature specifically, my plan is to leave one Show in the nursery and one for my parents. They like to call us a lot, and with this device, I should be able to whitelist their device and let them &amp;quot;drop in&amp;quot; on the nursery and whatever we&amp;#x27;re doing at the time. I think a lot of people have a problem with the privacy aspect, but for us, I don&amp;#x27;t see why we would have a problem with my parents seeing the nursery at any given time, esp with the 10sec window to decline. And then once the baby is older, we&amp;#x27;d move the Show to the kitchen for music, looking up recipes, etc.&lt;p&gt;I think there&amp;#x27;s going to be a lot of parents looking hard at this device. The intro video Amazon made is mostly for this use case as well: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=WQqxCeHhmeU&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=WQqxCeHhmeU&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Amazon enables free calls and messages on all Echo devices with Alexa Calling</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/09/amazon-enables-free-calls-and-messages-on-all-echo-devices-with-alexa-calling/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>FullMtlAlcoholc</author><text>&amp;gt; The one that has jumped out at me first is called “Drop In” — which lets you make a call to someone without them even answering the phone first.&lt;p&gt;I wish that the product person  who pushed this as an &amp;quot;innovative&amp;quot; idea lives a short, brutish, and painful life where he&amp;#x2F;she dies alone.&lt;p&gt;EDIT: That&amp;#x27;s too mean spirited.&lt;p&gt;If you want to peer in on your elderly parents, webcams are a better idea because you&amp;#x27;ll put them in a position that captures a wide angle or buy a 360 degree camera as opposed to this which only seems to pick up video in the direction it&amp;#x27;s facing.&lt;p&gt;What person would ever want this &amp;quot;feature&amp;quot;? We have webcams for people who don&amp;#x27;t mind exhibiting themselves. People overwhelmingly prefer to text others rather than talk over the phone or facetime when given the chance. Even when you visit someone in person, you don&amp;#x27;t drop in, unannounced like a peeping tom. You knock on the door to announce your appearance, exactly analogous to ringing the telephone before listening in and watching.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t like it because the world&amp;#x27;s largest retailer has the marketing and advertising muscle to normalize this behavior by preying upon our fears, our irrational behavior, and our cognitive biases. Look at the social stigma one faces if you don&amp;#x27;t have a facebook account and you&amp;#x27;re under 35. Not just that, but you will get harassed by border and customs agents if they ask for your social media account and you don&amp;#x27;t have one, setting off red flags.&lt;p&gt;In the near future, I can see this feature becoming a requirement for remote workers with insecure managers.&lt;p&gt;EDIT: This will definitely become a feature on sites like Upwork so that buyers can make sure developers are billing them the correct hours, even though the prices are dirt cheap already.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>FreakyT</author><text>&amp;gt; What person would ever want this &amp;quot;feature&amp;quot;?&lt;p&gt;Look up research on &amp;quot;media spaces&amp;quot; if you&amp;#x27;re interested in the practical applications of this kind of feature. Just one example paper, but there are many more: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.billbuxton.com&amp;#x2F;DGPmediaspace.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.billbuxton.com&amp;#x2F;DGPmediaspace.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Digitally creating a &amp;quot;portal&amp;quot; like this can be considered roughly analogous to connected spaces in real life. So, for example, two break rooms across different campuses of the same company, or a couple in a long-distance relationship that would ordinarily live together if not for whatever was keeping them in LDR mode stand to benefit from this sort of continuous video communication.</text></comment>