Amazon Echo Review and the Battle to Adopt Voice Technology

Quote of the day: 

Tech is a funny industry; I don't think there is any other industry on the planet that reinvents itself every 10-12 years. -Edward Zander

Technology does tend to re-invent itself. Voice recognition has come a long way from the early days of digital speech recognition started by IBM. Now there are loads of enabled devices on the market. One product that I have been meaning to review is the Amazon Echo, a device designed by online retail giant Amazon. From the time it was gifted to me last Christmas (pictured above) until now, a new version was introduced by Amazon, called the Amazon Echo Show. It features a display screen with a lot of uses including video calls and watching youtube clips. There are also other smaller versions of the echo, each with special features.


What is Amazon Echo?

But this review is all about the Amazon Echo, a smart speaker that connects to a voice-controlled intelligent personal assistant service known as Alexa and has 7 inbuilt speakers. A voice assistant similar to Apple's Siri, Microsoft's Cortana, and Google assistant. Out of all the mentioned companies, Amazon was the first to design and introduce a specific product dedicated to the use of voice control technology, while also integrating itself as a home hub. The device has numerous capabilities -most of which I am yet to fully utilize. It is capable of voice interaction and runs on Microsoft's Bing search engine which means you can ask tons of questions and the results read back to you. It is all about convenience really. Since it is voice controlled and intelligent enough to answer back, I often ask Alexa about the weather for the day, daily news briefing, play music from the playlist or radio, basic math calculations, and when I am bored I ask it to tell me a joke. But I think one of the most valuable functionalities of the Echo is the ability to order for items on Amazon using your voice. And also, you can pair it with your bluetooth devices.

Impressive no? And that's just scratching the surface. You can also use the device for making to-do lists, audio book playback, setting alarms, streaming podcasts, and It can also control several smart devices by using itself as a home automation hub -to control lights, room temperature and so on.


Voice Technology Market

Credit: ZDNet

There is a huge market for voice technology, and even Google has joined the party with the Google Home device (notice the air freshener resemblance?)-the first alternative and rival to Amazon Echo. Some businesses understand the need for establishing new technology and also for thinking into the future. Seeing as Amazon is making its voice technology available to third-party device makers, the ideas are limitless. A Las Vegas hotel -The Luxe, for instance saw the potential and outfitted more than 4,700 rooms with Amazon's Alexa voice technology. And there's an article from Bloomberg about Siri and Alexa fighting to be your hotel butler. It doesn't stop there, car companies are also not waiting to be left behind. For instance Ford Motors has teamed up with Amazon to integrate its Alexa software into their cars.

Amazon, in itself a non-tech company has always been seen to lead the way while other tech companies closely follow suit. However, whichever way you look at it, all these companies are having even more control over very aspect of our lives, and there is no end in sight.



Peace. Love. Light* 



Current Listen: Billie Holiday - I'll Be Seeing You