Dr. Phil's Dreamwidth Journal

Two months ago we got our Amazon Echo (DW) (LJ). Can it really be just two months? I suspect that between Kindle Fires for a couple of years, Prime, and months of heavy use of Amazon Music Library before getting Echo, it's hard to quite divide the time. But we have certainly gotten a lot of use out of the unit.

Perfect? No. Being cloud based, it's dependent on the WiFi/DSL connection. And Tune-In, which provides the radio over the Internet service, is sensitive to the streaming getting interrupted. Unlike a podcast or movie, or Amazon Music, it can't buffer ahead. So I don't know if the connection has more flakies that we know. But... the radio function works great most of the time. And they just added Pandora.

I hadn't even realized it was the two month date. Instead, yesterday I had been offered a link to an Amazon Kindle ebook, which seemed to be some guy's guide to Echo, in lieu of the manual, which doesn't exist. I was amused that it suggested it might be good to learn what Echo could do, while waiting for your Echo to come. And that some might have been given a six month wait. Huh? What?

Curious as to whether demand has jumped so much, or whether they're retooling for coming out of the Beta program, I went to Amazon. Unfortunately, I got a mixed message. The search screen said Echo had a one or two month wait, but when I clicked on the link to the Echo page, Amazon knew I had an Echo, and since you can only buy one right now, there was no sales information. Just product and set up stuff. I had to go to another browser which never had logged into Amazon -- the Linux desktop on my Kindle from Always On PC -- to see the info.

You still need to request an invite. The price is still $199 -- $99 if you have Prime. But if you want that Prime deal, you have to order by Tuesday 7 April 2015.

And that's why I am posting this. Because it's a steal at $99. We had rebate bucks from Discover, so it was free for us.

Anyway, thought some of you would like to know.

Dr. Phil

A month ago (DW) we got our "free" Amazon Echo. Like any good tech paradigm shift, you wonder if it wasn't always like this, even as you can plainly see how long it has actually been.

Echo, if you recall, is the 9" high black cylindrical 2001 Monolith slash HAL9000 device that doesn't come close to running your house, but always on, lurking in the background, waits for its keyword "Alexa" to do a few things which are helpful.

-- Alexa, what time is it? It's 3:38.

-- Alexa, what's the temperature? Currently in Allendale it's 24°F with lots of clouds...

-- Alexa, what's the temperature in Helsinki? In Helsinki Finland it's 34°F with showers. Tonight you can look for snowy, rainy weather with a low of 31°F.

-- Alexa, what's tomorrow's forecast for Helsinki? Right now in Allendale...
Oh well -- its algorithms and voice recognition systems are not perfect. If you are using the Echo app on a Kindle or computer, you can click and get more information. And tell the mothership at Amazon if Echo heard you correctly. If you put in a short pause after the trigger word, you can give Echo a chance to lower the sound level so it can pick your commands out of the air easier, and you don't have to shout.

I have a better time of getting Echo to recognize me, over Mrs. Dr. Phil. It may be the years of lecturing and putting micro pauses between words so people can write notes down, I dunno. Or maybe Alexa is a misogynist jealous bitch.

Many of the local radio stations are available through Tune-In

-- Alexa, play 88.5. WGVU-FM, from Tune-In.

Mrs. Dr. Phil has been experimenting with doing podcasts over Echo, as she does from her Kindle. Here, it is not very successful to do it directly. But if you are running the Echo app, you can call up a podcast and command Echo to play that from the app. Same with music.

Right now the problem with both the radio and the podcast functions is that if the stream is interrupted, you can lose some of the program, and it's hard to cue up if you aren't starting at the beginning.

For me working at home right now, it is the music function which is excellent. Echo doesn't likely have much onboard storage -- sufficient for firmware and buffering -- instead drawing stuff from certain sources on the Internet or on its own Amazon Cloud storage. I've started acquiring stuff through Amazon's music store, and naturally it'll play that. I could upload my non-Amazon music library and it would play that, too.

-- Alexa, play Pirates. Pirates, by Emerson, Lake and Palmer. From Philip's music library.

Amazon Prime has added some of my previous Amazon CD purchases to the library, some 300 songs. All told, I have taken 87 songs as of today and put them in what I call the HAPPY Songs playlist. 84 of those are in the YPPAH Songs playlist, which is the same list in reverse order. I usually play one during the day and the other during the late night sessions -- otherwise one tends to hear the same music in the same order all the time. Which isn't a problem in writing, but you'd never hear all the music unless you played for nearly 7 hours.

-- Alexa, play HAPPY Songs playlist. HAPPY Songs. From Philip's music library.
Perfect. But for the other playlist, since it doesn't start with a normal word, Echo stumbles 95% of the time:

-- Alexa, play YPPAH Songs playlist. What playlist would you like?

-- YPPAH Songs. YPPAH Songs. From Philip's music library.
Still, in the beginning it wouldn't even do that well. (grin) So it is learning.

But here's the best thing about the Amazon Echo -- the sound. The speaker system is deep and rich, covering ten volume levels. (-- Alexa, volume 3. -- Alexa, louder. -- Alexa, stop. -- Alexa, resume.) We typically use 2-3 in the kitchen and living room. So nice we have an ultra quiet dishwasher now. I use 4-5 in the bathroom and 6-10 if I am way back in the bedroom. The Bluetooth remote is in the bedroom, which means I don't have to bellow over volume 10 to try to get myself heard. Also I can reset Echo down to normal levels for the next morning, so the radio doesn't blare on phasor level Kill.

I am sure that a proper audio study would find fault, but from where I am, playing what I'm playing, there is good range of tone and detail at all settings, and I'm not hearing any distortion or clipping even at volume 10. Pretty darn good for the home user.

Upcoming adventure. The last Echo update email said that they were coming out with a SDK -- Software Developer's Kit -- and was I interested in doing a late Beta on that? Sure. What programming languages would you like? Oh, geesh. I don't write apps and crap. And the list doesn't include "real" languages like FORTRAN. (geeky-grin) But of the list there, let's skip Java. And Ruby for now. So let's put down Python. It looks as if I had a couple of sample programs I can follow the syntax of Python.

We still both want to tell Alexa "thank you" from time to time. And the commands don't work with the car stereo. And at the moment, there's no connection to either the TV or phone -- or other functions such as lights. Yet. I am sure that Amazon Echo will morph into a full-featured device to run your home at some point. Maybe they'll have different models and features. Couple it with a home security system. Handle dictation. Read your files or your emails to you.

Whatever, I think that Amazon was pretty smart by starting on these core activities. They've shown that with the Kindles and Kindle Fires, they can make consumer products that can be handled. Provided it endures, both physically and financially, having an Amazon Echo around the house is already pretty useful, despite its limitations.

We've got Echo on a single-outlet surge protector. Bought it from Amazon Prime. (prime-grin)

One month in, we're pretty happy with the unit. It sits up high on top of a bookshelf between living room, dining room/kitchen. It's out of the way. I can see the blue/white ring light when it responds to commands -- and can tell when it's confused and whether it's changed the volume level even if nothing is playing at the moment.

Cool.

-- Alexa, roll the dice. I rolled a die and got 3.
Yeah, I could see D&D players having a great time with Alexa...

Dr. Phil

Posted on Dreamwidth
Crossposted on LiveJournal

So last week...

After two work days of splendid operation, our Amazon Echo started miscueing on playing my playlists. As I said last week, Ms. Alexa's in Beta so I wasn't even upset to have to submit an error ticket to customer support (DW).

But today, well, different story:

Hooray! Tuesday 10 February 2015, around 3-3:30pm, I sat down to do some work. Tried Echo on playlists again and:

Echo is playing one of my playlists, in order, correctly.

AND, echo.amazon.com on my laptop is now showing the current song and a sidebar with the playlist under Now Playing -- it had no information during the troubles.

To recap:
Echo arrived 2/3 Tu, unpacked that night, played no playlists
Echo played playlists correctly 2/4 W - 2/5 Th
Echo did NOT play playlists correctly (and tested every day) 2/6 F - 2/9 M
Echo returned to proper operation 2/10 Tu

Thanks!

And on the survey form I said:

Definitely a Beta teething problem. I don't know why Echo stopped playing my playlists correctly Friday-Monday. Or displaying anything on the Now Playing page of either the Kindle App or echo.Amazon.com/#playing, but it's working now if I had to guess, it started about the time I got the notice that Amazon was providing playlists for Grammys -- as a programmer, I suspect a code push went awry. But feedback via the Echo app and the callback phone help were nicely thought out. Only had Echo for a week, but it's been otherwise great.

Now I shall get busy this week to report that (1) it really needs a volume 2½ setting, because there's too much gap between "Alexa volume two" and "Alexa volume three" and (b) the Now Playing app really should display how long a track is, the way most music apps do.

But that, as they say Ms. Alexa Echo, is for another day

Dr. Phil

Posted on Dreamwidth
Crossposted on LiveJournal

Mrs. Dr. Phil and I are sufficiently geeky that we keep up on a lot of the tech developments. Actually being early adopters? Mmm... we're usually either too cheap or too smart to get involved in some of the buggy, expensive and doomed things. I remember being really impressed with the Apple Newton when it first came out, which used Graffiti strokes for fast handwriting recognition, much like my mother's generation learned shorthand. But the Newton was expensive. I did, however, buy a Newton black leather zipper case at an Apple Store in Grand Rapids -- and used it for an HP OmniGo 100 PDA which used... Graffiti... and had a physical keyboard. And at less than half the price of the Newton.

Both the OmniGo and the Newton are long gone on the dust heap of failed products.

We didn't get iPhones, didn't get early iPods, never bought an iPad. Or used Windows Vista. Or, so far, Windows 8.

We're not Luddites, but I do get a certain satisfaction about dinosaur computing and all my Nikon DSLR cameras are more than ten years obsolete. I can make them work, though. And at a fraction of the price of the latest and greatest. Hell, we've never owned a car whose model year began with a "2" yet and it's 2015.

I write science fiction, so I have a character who owns a Nikon D5 professional camera -- and we're still a year or two before it even gets announced! (grin)

So it rather amusing when we suddenly look at each and say... yeah. Let's try it.

Monday 29 December 2014

I was driving back from an appointment and had NPR's All Things Considered on the radio. And during an All Tech Considered segment, they started talking about Amazon Echo. It was some sort of box with a quality speaker and a microphone that listened for a wake word -- Alexa -- and then tried to turn it into a request it could serve. Hooked up your WiFi and Internet, the unit itself doesn't require a lot of upgrading to improve -- Alexa is heavily cloud based.

Obviously hooked into the nefarious Amazon ecosystem, it could find and sell you stuff. And let you easily buy music.

But here's the thing. We've used Amazon for years. We dislike malls and crowds. And especially since my hospitalizations we can get medical supplies, and well nearly everything else including a mini fridge for storing IV bags, shipped to our front porch. The only store I've set foot into in 2015 has been the Verizon phone store and that was because I wanted a knowledgeable sales/tech staff.

And Mrs. Dr. Phil was actually an early adopter of the first gen Kindle Fire tablet way back in 2011. The Kindle Fire HD, paid for with generous good will moneys from my UCF friends, allowed me to survive 5½ months of hospitalization in 2013. And I've bought about seventy songs from Amazon to play on my Kindles and PCs -- or got the MP3s for free because of certain CDs I bought from Amazon.

We've been impressed with the Kindle's quality. They want to offer us a home electronic butler, sort of HAL 6000 without the homicidal tendencies or ability to pilot us to Jupiter/Saturn, we could give it a try.

Especially since it was $199, but Amazon Prime members got a $100 discount, so $99. And we had money in our Discover card rebate stash, so $199 - $100 - $99 = $0. Plus $0 for Free Shipping.

I had told Mrs. Dr. Phil about it when I came home. And by after dinner we figured, fine, we hadn't really gotten each other anything for Christmas and I was going to be home for the next semester, so... why not?

Amazon Echo's listing said that if ordered now it would arrive in two days on New Year's Eve. Okay. Fun way to spend the rest of Mrs. Dr. Phil's Christmas break.

Alas, not so fast. In a combination of factors, which surely included the coverage on NPR and elsewhere, since the Echos first starting shipping in like November AND that this was technically still in Beta, you couldn't just order it. You had to request an Invite.

So not knowing what Amazon's algorithm was, we both requested Invites.

And waited.

Tuesday 6 January 2015

FINALLY, I got my invite and ordered my free Echo. Alas, the delivery date was given as February 11th. Sigh. Worse, I knew of two people in the area who had gotten Echos, one receiving theirs just about the time we first heard about them. Oh well.

ConFusion

At ConFusion in mid-January several panelists mentioned Echo in passing. And since I ended up moderating my last panel at 11am Sunday on Science or Science Fiction?, I led off with a reference to Siri (iPhone), Cortana (Android) and Alexa (Echo), as examples of Star Trek, et al, and their voice activated computer systems. There was some significant interest in Amazon Echo, either from the panelists who already had it or people like me who had it on order.

Ugh, and we STILL had to wait to mid-February...

Tuesday 3 February 2015

The other day I got an email telling me to expect my Echo for today. Yay! I heard a delivery truck around Noon, opened the garage and caned over to the back door to find a very lightweight box containing some medical supplies. Oh. Well. The next delivery came at 4pm. Brown didn't drive up the snowy driveway, but their guy trotted up and down the 250-foot driveway. I debated going outside and retrieving it, but getting onto the front porch and then carrying a heavy box? Not going to happen. Had to wait until 6pm when Mrs. Dr. Phil got home. And then we waited until later in the evening, letting the unit get up to room temperature before trying to make it work.

The next hour was a lot of grins and smirks. It's fun. It can do a lot of things we could want it to. The only real glitch came when I asked for the time and the temperature and Alexa thought we were in Chicago. Considering that, like the Kindles we've bought, it comes pre-configured for the user out of the box, this seemed like a bug. But Mrs. Dr. Phil quickly found an answer via Google on her Kindle Fire HD -- Alexa didn't seem to know about settings -- we found the place to put in the Allendale ZIP code. Ask for the weather or temperature or time, and you get Allendale MI. Ask for the weather or temperature or time for Helsinki, and you get Helsinki, Finland. Easy.

It's a sleek black cylinder, about 9¼" high and 3¼" in diameter. And it is heavy, so it isn't easily knocked over. Two buttons you don't have to use. And a glowing ring light which changes color depending on what function you want. Otherwise it sits. And waits.

Kind of like a cylindrical 2001 monolith, with a few more surface features. (grin)

And if you ask Alexa to "Open the pod bay doors", it tells you "I can't do that, Dave..."

More as we play with our new toy. And remember, if you come over to the house, speak carefully -- Alexa is listening. (creepy-grin)

Amazon Prime is 10?

What? February 2005? Who knew?

I mean, I vaguely remember hearing about Amazon Prime early on, I thought. And I remember thinking it silly to pay money to get Free Shipping. And so, like millions of others, we dutifully bundled up Amazon orders to clear the $25 threshold to get Free Shipping. You'd be amazed at how many books, CDs, DVDs and other things -- at Amazon's predatory pricing, of course -- just didn't quite make $25.00.

We actually got Primed for a year free when Mrs. Dr. Phil bought her first Kindle Fire. Prime has a few more benefits than just Free Shipping -- and it's not like we don't buy stuff from Amazon. So...

Dr. Phil

Posted on Dreamwidth
Crossposted on LiveJournal