Author Topic: Do you have an Amazon Echo (Alexa) or Google Assistant? Do you like them?  (Read 1592 times)

Hello everyone :)

Today has been an unfortunate day,  A soda bottle exploded in my game room causing massive amounts of spray and truly a complete and utter disaster.  Luckily the spray went up and seemed to only hit thing from the top so many of the games inside shelves weren't touched.  But many amiibos were.  But luckily the amiibos were easily cleaned.  So many other things like consoles got drops on them.  It was a nightmare to clean them all.   Than my TV broke from getting wet and when I went to fix it,  I was electrocuted pretty severely by the capacitor or whatever the big metal thing is.  I didn't wear rubber gloves and I was dumb but I will learn from this mistake.  Now my finger feels like I dipped it in a fire. Which effects my gaming :( 


But my main question is,  Do you own an Amazon Echo, also known as an Alexa?  You can ask it questions and tell it to do stuff like play music and dim the lights.  They are pretty neat for a very modern contempary setting and really pop a living room and make it very techy and nice :D.    I have one coming today, and i'm very excited.   





Their are smart lamp and color changing smart bulbs that Alexa can change color on or dim or shut off with voice command.  You can also get garage door actuators, and other types of bluetooth smart things that can alter your life with voice command.  You can turn on most smart tvs too.   I mostly bought mine to ask Alexa questions about things.   


I hope eveyrone has a happy day.



I got one as a gift a few years ago, and had it active for a few weeks before the thing started to creep me out. I don't trust that it isn't listening to everything I'm saying, especially since Amazon would love nothing than to know everything about me so they can sell me "exactly what I need!" I unplugged it and don't have any intention of using it again.

shadowzero

PRO Supporter

That sucks.  May I suggest Earl Grey Tea, hot. I can't speak for the google one but we got the echo for xmas and really like it.  We are still learning the many facets of Alexa in the home.  It really makes the most sense if you have Amazon Prime.   The first easy integration was being able to just to ask it to play my music playlists from Prime Music.  Now the first thing I did (without doing any research on commands) when ours was setup was say "red alert."  I wasn't disappointed.

shadowzero

PRO Supporter

I got one as a gift a few years ago, and had it active for a few weeks before the thing started to creep me out. I don't trust that it isn't listening to everything I'm saying, especially since Amazon would love nothing than to know everything about me so they can sell me "exactly what I need!" I unplugged it and don't have any intention of using it again.

You're not wrong, but its no different than a smart phone.  MOST of the popular smartphone apps are listening and it is stated in the EULA agreement that no one reads.  But that's nothing new.  Did you know that big companies like Target got to the point several years ago where they could estimate when you may become pregnant before you knew based on your buying trends and frequency?  Women would get maternity catalogs months before becoming pregnant.  In the end, I can at least voice activate my video game playlist from the couch.

I got one as a gift a few years ago, and had it active for a few weeks before the thing started to creep me out. I don't trust that it isn't listening to everything I'm saying, especially since Amazon would love nothing than to know everything about me so they can sell me "exactly what I need!" I unplugged it and don't have any intention of using it again.

You're not wrong, but its no different than a smart phone.  MOST of the popular smartphone apps are listening and it is stated in the EULA agreement that no one reads.  But that's nothing new.  Did you know that big companies like Target got to the point several years ago where they could estimate when you may become pregnant before you knew based on your buying trends and frequency?  Women would get maternity catalogs months before becoming pregnant.  In the end, I can at least voice activate my video game playlist from the couch.


I know, and it's partially why I held off on getting one until 2015. I sometimes consider going back to a regular cell phone, but a combination of needing it for work and the convenience of a few apps I use has kept me from ditching it for a more simple, primitive phone. I'm not a technophobe either, I work in IT; I guess I just hate the idea of my data and personal life being harvested against my wishes.