OK, now either this is the coolest thing ever, or really creepy. :) I really don’t know how to describe it. It’s like having a personal assistant in the house kinda. Here is a short description from the www.theguardian.com/ The best is to watch the little U-Tube video. After the first vid is a second video which is a Parody of the real one. It’s called “Amazon Echo (Early Beta Version) Let me know if you think this is cool or creepy.
BTW it costs $ 199, and I just went to site and you have to request an invitation to purchase one. http://www.amazon.com/oc/echo ~Steve~
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Alex Hern Sunday 9 November 201411.30 EST
Amazon’s Echo defies easy description. Actually, that’s not quite true: the easy way to describe it is “creepy as hell”. What’s trickier is explaining what it is.
“Can you hear me now”?
The Echo (below) is a 20cm-tall black cylinder, that sits in your home and listens to everything you do. You will want it to do this, if Amazon’s marketing is to be believed, because it will be able to answer questions like, “who is Abraham Lincoln?” and perform simple tasks such as adding ice cream to your shopping or playing a Taylor Swift track. (You have to say the “wake word”, “Alexa”, before it will act on what it hears).
The device is like a hyped-up Siri or Google Now for your whole house. And it does have some impressive technology behind it, packing two speakers and seven microphones into its small case. But still, anyone who is comfortable with the idea of an always-on, Wifi-enabled obelisk listening to everything they say will probably be the first to die in the inevitable cyberwar of the 22nd century.
And that’s before we get to the fact that one of Amazon’s selling points for the device is that it’s “always getting smarter”. (Isn’t this how Terminator starts?)
But don’t think that just because you keep Echo out of your home that you’re safe. The same always-listening technology is already in a number of high-end mobile phones, from Apple’s iPhones to the latest Android phones from Google and Motorola (although it needs to be explicitly turned on before it will work). Even devices which you don’t purchase with the explicit aim of letting a major technology company track everything you say are still keeping an eye on you.
More Here
This is Echo For Real
Amazon Echo (Early Beta Version)
This is a spoof. Really funny. :)
~Steve~ H/T My Kid