Electronics

[Mz iMac]

ECHO

The $200 gadget lets you takes voice-activated photos and videos and is aimed at helping with your wardrobe choices.

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[Desertdi]

It's REALLY gonna tell me what to wear ???????    Sounds like my first husband........................

[Tinkrbl44]

@Mz iMac

Huh ?

[gardenman]

I wouldn't think this would sell, but then you look at Instagram and you find thousands of young women taking photos of their "outfit of the day" (ootd) so maybe that's the target audience. I guess it would work well for that purpose, but it's a somewhat limited audience.

[Mz iMac]

That thing is perfect for "Millennials."

I'll stick w/my 2nd gen DOT....thank you very much.

[jaxs mom]

I signed up for an invite a few days ago. Although I doubt I'll buy one. I have Siri on my mac and iphone and Siri actually plays my itunes playlists. 

[apple1964]

I have the Alexa dot and I use it for a alarm to wake me up in the morning. And to give me the weather and the traffic reports. That is about all i do with it . I do not need another one.

[kcladyz]

And a new one came out again. this one is a computer screen and alexa can show you things. Kinda stipid tho

[kcladyz]

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@apple1964 wrote:

I have the Alexa dot and I use it for a alarm to wake me up in the morning. And to give me the weather and the traffic reports. That is about all i do with it . I do not need another one.

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Same here. I use it for weather, cooking timer,  music as I get ready for work

[gardenman]

I can see more functionality in the new Echo Show than the selfie one, but that could just be me. I could see it being pretty useful if you're following a recipe on YouTube or something similar. "Alexa, play making rye bread on YouTube for me." Then you can tell her to pause at each step or go back and replay the last minute or so if you get a bit lost.

There's also a new thing called Jibo that's coming out from someone. It's kind of a hybrid robot/Echo and could be interesting. It has a camera and recognizes you as you enter the room and talks to you. It has expressions and some limited upper body type movement along with a display screen in the place of a face. It's a bit more interactive as it reaches out to you instead of waiting for you to talk to it. That could become tedious after a while though. I dare say it'll hear, "Shut up Jibo"  a lot. 

We're going to see pretty much an unending stream of devices to talk to for a while now. Echo was the first and laid the groundwork for everything else that's following. Jibo is pushing the limits a bit in constantly being on and looking around the house to see people. It's got advanced recognition capability and can recognize and talk to people by name.

I could see some interesting applications for a Jibo for pet owners. If you have a dog you don't want on the sofa and he sneaks up on the sofa when you're not there, you could possibly have Jibo keeping an eye on him to make sure he doesn't. "Bad dog! Get down from that sofa!" It could also see which dog gets into trouble, or is barking if  you've got more than one. The same could apply to children or teenagers if you left them alone for a few minutes. "Jibo, who broke my lamp?" "Amanda broke your lamp."

Jibo could become an expert witness in trials in the not too distant future if it saw someone breaking into your house. It's ability to accurately identify individuals could turn it into an eyewitness to the crime. I'm not sure how you'd swear in a JIbo, but it could theoretically pick out a suspect in a lineup and testify against them in court. "Jibo, do you recognize the person who entered your house on 12/14/2019?" The Jibo looks around the room and then replies, "Yes. Here's his image from that day and the matching image from today"  and up on the little screen pops the two images.

I'm not sure I want a swiveling head constantly on camera in my house in the form of a Jibo, but the technology for such devices is still in its infancy and we'll see more and more such devices all of the time. The potential for these devices is just now starting to be tapped into and with the never-ending growth in processor speed and the new 5G broadband (reportedly 35 gigabits per second) that's coming in 2020, the sky is literally the limit. If you can imagine it, someone is likely working on it now.