<story><title>Amazon’s Echo Brims with Groundbreaking Promise</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/10/technology/the-echo-from-amazon-brims-with-groundbreaking-promise.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Touche</author><text>I haven&amp;#x27;t used an iPhone in a while, does Siri have a wake word?  Does it work when the phone is in standby? Android has &amp;quot;Ok Google&amp;quot; but it doesn&amp;#x27;t work when in standby and doesn&amp;#x27;t work from the distance that Echo does.&lt;p&gt;I think that&amp;#x27;s really its killer feature. You are in the pantry and notice you&amp;#x27;re out of basil, you say &amp;quot;Alexa, add basil to my shopping list&amp;quot; and it&amp;#x27;s done. No pulling out your phone, no unlock screens, you just say what you want to happen and it works.</text></item><item><author>peteretep</author><text>&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    &amp;gt; Shopping lists, weather, home automation
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
Funny, I felt the article gave unusually short shrift to Siri, which I use for all of those things, in addition to &amp;quot;What time is it in X?&amp;quot;, alarms, and so on.&lt;p&gt;Siri is not working so well when music plays, and I wish I could easily add skills to it, so if they&amp;#x27;ve cracked that then it&amp;#x27;s something.</text></item><item><author>sisk</author><text>Writing a bit about the Echo has been on my todo list but this article touches on a lot of points I was thinking about. I got it thinking it would be a bit of a gimmick—and to an extent, it still is at times. But, as the author found, it has snuck into facets of my life. Shopping lists, weather, home automation, etc.&lt;p&gt;The thing is, it&amp;#x27;s a natural interface with a decent interaction model. Keyboards, mice, etc, have all become second nature to most of us but they&amp;#x27;re still not truly natural. The Echo feels like one of the first voice-based interfaces that isn&amp;#x27;t a complete gimmick. And the hardware does an amazing job of perking up when I say the wake word and picking me out of a room full of noise.&lt;p&gt;What really convinced me of it&amp;#x27;s value was when I started digging in to writing a skill for it. My grandfather passed recently and my grandmother has horrible eyesight. I wrote a skill that enables my grandmother to ask to start a phone call. She is then asked who she would like to call. Once she says a name, she receives a call on her landline, is greeted, and the call is forwarded to the intended recipient. There was a small learning curve (&amp;quot;you can&amp;#x27;t just say, &amp;#x27;call John,&amp;#x27; you have to ask her to &amp;#x27;start a phone call&amp;#x27;&amp;quot;) but it has worked and has provided an often confused elderly woman with poor eyesight a straightforward way of connecting with her loved ones.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>yoda_sl</author><text>As of the latest iPhone 6, you don&amp;#x27;t even need to have the iPhone plugged. You trained Siri a few times by saying a few sentences and later you can say &amp;quot;hey Siri&amp;quot; and it will start listening.
Apple added some new chip which will be listening for that key sentence and will only react to your voice, not someone else.
So no more funny joke from co-worker nor Podcast and in addition low battery impact.</text></comment>
<story><title>Amazon’s Echo Brims with Groundbreaking Promise</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/10/technology/the-echo-from-amazon-brims-with-groundbreaking-promise.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Touche</author><text>I haven&amp;#x27;t used an iPhone in a while, does Siri have a wake word?  Does it work when the phone is in standby? Android has &amp;quot;Ok Google&amp;quot; but it doesn&amp;#x27;t work when in standby and doesn&amp;#x27;t work from the distance that Echo does.&lt;p&gt;I think that&amp;#x27;s really its killer feature. You are in the pantry and notice you&amp;#x27;re out of basil, you say &amp;quot;Alexa, add basil to my shopping list&amp;quot; and it&amp;#x27;s done. No pulling out your phone, no unlock screens, you just say what you want to happen and it works.</text></item><item><author>peteretep</author><text>&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    &amp;gt; Shopping lists, weather, home automation
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
Funny, I felt the article gave unusually short shrift to Siri, which I use for all of those things, in addition to &amp;quot;What time is it in X?&amp;quot;, alarms, and so on.&lt;p&gt;Siri is not working so well when music plays, and I wish I could easily add skills to it, so if they&amp;#x27;ve cracked that then it&amp;#x27;s something.</text></item><item><author>sisk</author><text>Writing a bit about the Echo has been on my todo list but this article touches on a lot of points I was thinking about. I got it thinking it would be a bit of a gimmick—and to an extent, it still is at times. But, as the author found, it has snuck into facets of my life. Shopping lists, weather, home automation, etc.&lt;p&gt;The thing is, it&amp;#x27;s a natural interface with a decent interaction model. Keyboards, mice, etc, have all become second nature to most of us but they&amp;#x27;re still not truly natural. The Echo feels like one of the first voice-based interfaces that isn&amp;#x27;t a complete gimmick. And the hardware does an amazing job of perking up when I say the wake word and picking me out of a room full of noise.&lt;p&gt;What really convinced me of it&amp;#x27;s value was when I started digging in to writing a skill for it. My grandfather passed recently and my grandmother has horrible eyesight. I wrote a skill that enables my grandmother to ask to start a phone call. She is then asked who she would like to call. Once she says a name, she receives a call on her landline, is greeted, and the call is forwarded to the intended recipient. There was a small learning curve (&amp;quot;you can&amp;#x27;t just say, &amp;#x27;call John,&amp;#x27; you have to ask her to &amp;#x27;start a phone call&amp;#x27;&amp;quot;) but it has worked and has provided an often confused elderly woman with poor eyesight a straightforward way of connecting with her loved ones.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ghaff</author><text>If it&amp;#x27;s plugged in, you can enable an iPhone to respond to &amp;quot;Hey Siri&amp;quot; as a wake phrase.&lt;p&gt;[EDIT: I have an iPhone 6. Apparently the latest models don&amp;#x27;t need to be plugged in.]</text></comment>