View attachment 16456Does anyone else have an Amazon Echo (Alexa)? We got one over the holidays and I must say I’m impressed. It really is a nice piece of technology. More of a toy than a tool right now but I do see the possibility for a big home automation push here: Lights, thermostat, Fireplace, TV, etc…
Originally I bought it because my daughter in-law is named Alexa so I thought it would be funny but we actually use it in the kitchen (it’s a great timer) to get recipes, creates shopping lists, measurement help, and play music. We walk by it on our way to our cars so we get weather, sports, and traffic updates.
You can also use it for spelling, dictionary, and encyclopedia type things. It even tells jokes. When you get one Amazon has a tips and tricks email then send you periodically for new features and uses. This really is just the tip of the iceberg. Set-up was easy
I haven’t seen much Echo advertising but Business Insider has done a couple of articles on it including this one: Get ready for Amazon's third billion-dollar business: Echo
I stand corrected. There is an Echo commercial coming next week for the Super Bowl:
[video=youtube;_y-4pGhRxek]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_y-4pGhRxek[/video]
Echo was also mentioned on the Amazon quarterly call:
Neil Doshi
Two questions, please. And one, it seems like the Echo did perform well. Can you talk more broadly about your Internet of Things ambitions and kind of how Echo plays into that strategy?
Brian Olsavsky
So on the Echo, we like what - how Echo has done. We're really excited about the ecosystem and some of the skills that are being added to Echo, as well as some of the other devices that are taking advantage of Alexa, which is kind of the brains behind Echo.
So we like our device business in general. As you probably saw from the press release, we had a good Q4, where we did almost doubled, or double what we did last year. So very excited about the devices. We like that they pump more energy into Prime and really the whole ecosystem.
Not sure on the Internet of Things, but it's very exciting for devices standpoint. And the brains of Echo are in the AWS cloud. And so, Echo gets new capabilities all the time as Alexa gets better and better.
I'm guessing this is all part of Amazon buying a fabless chip company, but a billion dollar business?
Originally I bought it because my daughter in-law is named Alexa so I thought it would be funny but we actually use it in the kitchen (it’s a great timer) to get recipes, creates shopping lists, measurement help, and play music. We walk by it on our way to our cars so we get weather, sports, and traffic updates.
You can also use it for spelling, dictionary, and encyclopedia type things. It even tells jokes. When you get one Amazon has a tips and tricks email then send you periodically for new features and uses. This really is just the tip of the iceberg. Set-up was easy
I haven’t seen much Echo advertising but Business Insider has done a couple of articles on it including this one: Get ready for Amazon's third billion-dollar business: Echo
I stand corrected. There is an Echo commercial coming next week for the Super Bowl:
[video=youtube;_y-4pGhRxek]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_y-4pGhRxek[/video]
Echo was also mentioned on the Amazon quarterly call:
Neil Doshi
Two questions, please. And one, it seems like the Echo did perform well. Can you talk more broadly about your Internet of Things ambitions and kind of how Echo plays into that strategy?
Brian Olsavsky
So on the Echo, we like what - how Echo has done. We're really excited about the ecosystem and some of the skills that are being added to Echo, as well as some of the other devices that are taking advantage of Alexa, which is kind of the brains behind Echo.
So we like our device business in general. As you probably saw from the press release, we had a good Q4, where we did almost doubled, or double what we did last year. So very excited about the devices. We like that they pump more energy into Prime and really the whole ecosystem.
Not sure on the Internet of Things, but it's very exciting for devices standpoint. And the brains of Echo are in the AWS cloud. And so, Echo gets new capabilities all the time as Alexa gets better and better.
I'm guessing this is all part of Amazon buying a fabless chip company, but a billion dollar business?