I've had one for about six months and the only thing I use it for is as a Bluetooth speaker and as a five minute coffee timer. In fact, when I have friends over I ask them to try to get it to do anything because it's always hilariously bad.

Part of the problem is that it just doesn't do much. It can't seem to answer 9 out of 10 questions I ask it. It's very unstable and I get a flashing ring on top indicating that it needs a forceful reboot about twice a week. It doesn't seem to connect to anything in the outside world other than wikipedia. They did recently add calendar support but it can't read both my home and work calendar at the same time so it's not especially useful. It can't talk to my email, it can't send me emails, it can't look up movie times, it can't look up traffic, it can't price flights, it can't tell me when a book will be released. It has a built-in shopping list and todo list but they are only accessible from its (awful!) iOS app and don't do anything else. It can tell me the population of Florence, Italy. I learned from this thread today that it can do unit conversions. It can reply to some movie memes like "show me the money".

Part of the problem is discoverability. I don't know what it can do and in true hilariously bad form "what kind of cool stuff can you do?" just makes it reply "I don't understand the question"

So maybe you can answer here: what does it do? What cool things am I not doing with it that I should be doing? What am I missing out on? Is "show me the money" the best I can hope for?

I've got Philips Hue lighting in my house, so I use it frequently for that: "Alexa, turn on the kitchen lights". It's particularly helpful because I have the voice remote in the bedroom, so I can do an "Alexa, turn off all the lights" before crashing and know that things are off. Home automation for me is the holy grail - If I could link Echo to something like Vera/MiCasaVerde or other full-home-control system (shouldn't be difficult, they have decent web APIs), the whole "Alexa, Time to watch Silicon Valley"-dim-the-lights-turn-on-the-tv-start-playing-my-show thing becomes a pretty easy reality.

I use the grocery function often and have IFTT linked to add stuff to ToDoist (agreed, the mobile app is horrible - who knew Amazon would make such a miserable shopping list app).

Lastly, living in the PNW, I do get a lot of mileage out of "Will it rain tomorrow?"

Granted, nothing I couldn't do with an iPhone/Android, but Echo's cheaper than a dedicated mobile device.

It sounds a lot like these 90s videos about the "house of the future". If I want to listen to the news, it's way less of a hassle to pull my phone or touch my watch and press play. Voice interaction is pretty slow and intrusive.

Maybe I have the wrong circle of friends and acquaintances, but I have never ever seen anybody interact with Siri or Google Now by voice other than as a demonstration or a joke in social settings.

I love my Google Now, I love even more that it does not shout things at me when I am in the bus.

I was also wondering how useful Echo would be since I rarely use Google Now. As an Echo user, I can tell you it's vastly different. Echo is always there... always ready and it's surprisingly very fast. The array of microphones works great and Echo hears me from very far away (in other rooms out of line of sight, down hallways, etc). Google's voice recognition is probably still better and I do have to repeat commands sometimes - but I can be anywhere in the apartment and Echo works well.

When I'm getting ready in the morning, I will rarely check the weather on my phone because first, I need to find my phone (I seem to put it in a different place every morning) and then I need to click multiple times to see the information I want. With Echo, I can say "Alexa, will it rain today?" or "Alexa, what's the temperature?" and get an answer instantly while I'm doing other tasks. It might be less useful for smart watch users that wear them 24/7 (I don't own one).

>it's surprisingly very fast

This is very true. With Google, you have to say "Ok, Google", wait for it to go "bleep" and start listening, and only then ask.

With Echo, you just say "Alexa, what time is it" in a single second, and you get your reply.

I have the Moto360. I use it a LOT via voice, and especially so while driving. The voice recognition tends to work at better than expected rates.

In crowded settings, or sitting still, I will almost always just grab my phone before having to worry about whether or not the environment is too loud, which is (I suspect) why you probably see so few people using it.

Do you use it to text when you're surrounded by other people? The biggest drawback for me is not how noisy the environment is, it's that I literally tell other people around all that I'm doing with my phone. And as a fellow bus rider, for instance, that would annoy me to hear your text to your wife. But I found out that nobody actually does that.

As a general rule, no, unless I'm doing so to make a point / be heard. For example, I'll often verbally take a note of book recommendations that people give me, both to preserve the note for myself (as book recommendations are serious business) and to affirm to them that I am taking their recommendation seriously without having to explain that I am taking their recommendation seriously.

Beyond that, I agree that verbal commands on a bus would be inconsiderate both to the other passengers as well as the recipient of the message, whose privacy I just (slightly) violated. That said, if I'm sitting on a bus, I don't really have a good excuse for not typing the message myself, and typing is still slightly preferred except for when my hands are occupied or my phone is not conveniently accessible.

Voice interaction works great in situations where you either don't want to, shouldn't, or can't interact via touch. These situations also tend to be the ones where you don't want the distraction of any computer device (eg: driving, sports, etc.).

My biggest bias here is that I don't drive. Talking loudly to your phone feels way more intrusive in a packed train than in the intimacy of your car, even when you're stuck in traffic.

The opposite: pulling out a phone to listen to the radio or set a timer is more cumbersome.

I do love my Echo, it's just.. it's entirely Amazon ecosystem and that really limits its usefulness for me.

As an amazon employee I'm sure you're probably bought into the Amazon ecosystem. Maybe you even have a fire phone? :p

But I'm primarily an Android user. I'm just imagining what a device like the Echo would be if backed by Google Now. It would be ten times more powerful, easily.

My girlfriend's primary complaint was "it can't even recommend me a book" (Because Amazon was.. well.. a book seller!)

Now goes the other way for me. It's like a little puppy that has read my entire internet history. Now when I do anything google's got 3 redundant reminders that are always a few minutes late. From most recent flight:

- Hey you've got a flight (2 days before)

- Hey you've got a flight (11 hours before)

- Hey you've got a flight (4 hours before, eg 3am, thanks)

- Hey your flight is now leaving 3 minutes later (1 hour before flight)

- Hey your flight has changed gates (initial gate assignment, already at gate)

- Hey your flight has changed gates (actual gate assignment, already at gate)

- Hey your flight is now boarding (on board door closed already)

- Hey your flight leaves in 15 minutes (20 minutes after flight was in air)

oh and:

- Hey amazon shipped you a package (package has arrived and amazon told me about it within 10 minutes)

- Hey that baseball game you wanted to watch later, here's the score!

- Hey you once looked at a SF Giants article... Here's their score and when they play now and for EVER

- Hey

- Hey

- Hey

So, here's the thing that I like about it... if google now had an API then you could build an app that talked to google now for you. I like the idea that I can host my own echo endpoints at echo.ranman.org and then have my own server make calls out to other stuff.

I don't really use anything amazonian besides a kindle and the echo (although I do really like the fire TV stuff).

I use a ton of other apps/stuff -- and many of those have APIs. If I could call out to those APIs with my voice and then get stuff back it would enable a lot of convenience and intelligence that's hard to do on just a phone (or if more apps supported making API calls via siri, google now, cortana, etc.)

I'm really excited to see what people build with the SDKs and I hope it takes off.

I have access to the SDK but I haven't built anything with it, and I remember having an NDA. So I don't know how much I can say about it's functionality.

I'm excited about it, but it's more cautious optimism because it's kind of limited, but I don't remember if it's too limited to have the kind of stuff another commenter pointed out like "When does McDonald's close?"

And Google Now does have an API.. they're just super protective of it right now. It will definitely be more interesting once it starts to open up ;)

Just curious how early did you sign up for the SDK and how long was it between your request and when you were given access? I requested access probably a month ago and haven't heard anything since.

I signed up fairly early and I got a request in a few weeks.

Thanks. It seems like they have either slowed down sending out SDK invites or the number of developers requesting has increased. I'm probably not the only one who waited to signup for the SDK until I had received my Echo.

> I'm just imagining what a device like the Echo would be if backed by Google Now. It would be ten times more powerful, easily.

Maybe, but competition is good. Google isn't the only company capable of R&D, and if Amazon turns this into something amazing then you can bet that Google will work to make their stuff even better. This is a Good Thing for all of us, and as an Apple user I hope it inspires them to get into the game.

It is a bit limited if you compare it directly to something like Google Now (or OK Google?). But I think once more developers get involved we'll see some cool things. For instance, a frequently mentioned feature is "What time does McDonalds close?" which Echo currently can't answer. But perhaps pretty soon we'll have a Yelp app which can do that.

I like that Echo NEVER ever talks without being talked to. I don't know how you could integrate Google Now without it being pretty annoying.

Not talking about the Google Now notifications. Meant "OK Google"

Jibo looks very cool, like an animated version of Echo, but it's a bit pricey at $749. They have an developer+SDK version for the same price which is open to anyone with the money to buy it. There are some initial forums for Jibo over at Reddit (http://www.reddit.com/r/jibo) but since the robot hasn't been officially released yet, they're kinda sparse on details.

> "It's lunch time, want to see what's in the neighborhood you haven't tried recently?"

Since you might be more up to date with what echo can do.. could it work as an ad-block for TV (mute, switch channel)? Perhaps using 3rd party API for tagging ads.

It's very possible but unlikely until the next version of the device. Basically you would need an IR transmitter that had a web endpoint and could control your TV/set top box. I have ridiculous hacks where I set an alarm/reminder to say "Xbox turn off" around bed time.

>"Welcome home, want me to turn on the news?"

How do you do this?

(S)he doesn't, it's an example of something ranman is looking forward to.

Oh, whoops! Neat.