Getting Started with Amazon Echo Dot and Amazon Alexa


Introduction to Amazon Echo Dot and Amazon Alexa

Imagine the ability to have a personal assistant, 24/7 cater to your every wish, want, need or desire. What would you ask him or her to do? Of course all of us would immediately begin at the every day tasks such as taking out the garbage, washing the dishes, and cleaning the floors. But once these tasks have been completed, and if your personal assistant was incredibly intelligent as well, what would you ask him or her to do?

  • “Wake me up at 7 a.m.”
  • “Remind me to exercise 45 minutes today”
  • “Tell me a joke”
  • “Tell me a recipe for dinner this evening with chicken, carrots and spaghetti pasta.”

After a few weeks with Amazon’s Echo Dot, and learning to interact with ‘Alexa’, it is clear to me that this is exactly what Amazon has done: created a super-computer as a personal assistant available 24/7/365 for free.

Echo Dot with Alexa listening, volume control also pictured

Amazon Echo Dot and Alexa Skills and Capabilities

During Amazon’s “Prime Day” I purchased an Echo Dot due to the $15 decrease in price on that day ($34.99 instead of $49.99) and that I knew very little to nothing about Amazon Echo product line, but when Amazon makes a new product, especially something like Amazon Alexa, I had to learn more.

I have had the Amazon Echo Dot for approximately 3 weeks now and here are a few of my initial observations:

Alexa has an incredible ability to understand what you are saying by natively speaking english giving a simple command to another person, and what you are instructing Alexa to do. For example, ‘Alexa read my Flash Briefing’ and she can also understand “Alexa, read to me my Flash Briefing’.

The 3 weeks I have had Alexa, she has only misunderstood me once (understanding that I instructed her to play songs from the band ‘NB Ridaz’ rather than playing ESPN Radio). Alexa is able to understand you, even while music is playing (the music stops once you say ‘Alexa’). Just to test her capabilities further, I gave instruction to Alexa from over 20 foot distance, with obstructions in the way and fans playing, and although I shouted, she was able to understand the instructions ‘Play Lil Uzi Vert’ perfectly, which was actually pretty surprising. When you ask Alexa to play a particular artist, she will shuffle 4 or 5 of their songs in a row. When you ask her to play a radio station she plays the time for much longer, in my experience.

The Echo Dot took some getting used to, for example, it is merely a round piece of plastic with electronics inside, a few buttons and a speaker. After connecting it to the internet and updating an app on my phone — which is my only significant complaint about the Echo Dot, for some reason the Alexa app does not work very well with my Google Pixel phone. I was able to use the app once, so I chose various news organizations for my ‘Flash briefing’, such as Reuters, AP, the Economist.

Once I had set up the Echo Dot, my first experiences with Alexa began with ‘Alexa, read my flash briefing’, and I would do it every day just to get into practice with interacting with Alexa but also, after a few days of receiving the news this way it became VERY useful, helpful, and a great way to start my morning by hearing headlines from across the world in various topics such as business, technology, health care, and much more. One complaint about this area of Alexa is that the flash briefings are recorded by different organizations (Such as AP and BBC) and sometimes the volume between the news organizations can be drastically different which causes some flash briefings to be inaudible. By listening to the daily briefing every morning I have found that my horizons have broadened and with a much better understanding of current news — although not very in-depth, I am looking to add additional podcasts to my Alexa line-up, currently learning how to do that part as well.

Amazon Alexa Introduction Commands

After gaining some familiarity and practice with Amazon Alexa, I began to test what can be done, what her capabilities are. For Example, I have tried the following commands:

  • “Alexa, play ‘Lil Uzi Vert’’ (or any artist)
  • “Alexa, play indie music” (or any genre of music)
  • “Alexa, set an alarm for 7 a.m.” (or any time, I will explore on the abilities to set a schedule or recurring event)
  • “Alexa, play ESPN Radio” (still searching for additional radio station names)
  • “Alexa, how are you?” (Alexa replies: “I’m doing great and I hope you are doing great as well”)
  • “Alexa, tell me a compliment” (requires an additional Amazon Skill installation)
  • “Alexa, what are some of your new skills?”
  • “Alexa, tell me a joke”
  • “Alexa, how old are you?”

I am very surprised by the catalog of Amazon Alexa and the experience alone of speaking is much more intuitive than other ways that we interact with computers such as keyboards and texting. I have noticed this phenomenon when I text: lately I have been dictating into the phone which is then translated into a text message and sent. Comparing two examples of playing a song, the first is a traditional method of typing a song title into a youtube search bar on a computer or phone, and the second is speaking ‘Play Lil Uzi Vert’, I have found the second way to be 100x more intuitive, easy and preferable. The way of communicating with Alexa is one under-appreciated aspect of what Alexa can do, and I believe one of the future uses will be dictation for Lawyers, politicians, scientists, business-persons. For example, imagine if Alexa was able to tweet on your behalf, or you speak into Alexa and a number of tweets results. ‘Alexa, tweet ‘Happy 4th of July to all my friends and family in Albuquerque, New Mexico!’ end tweet’ and a tweet to your personal or business account. If anyone is aware of an Alexa skill that is able to do this please let me know.

Wishlist of Amazon Alexa Skills

  • “Alexa, please read my facebook timeline” (where posts would be read aloud, including by whom and general description of photos, etc)
  • “Alexa, please update my facebook by saying ‘Hi everyone’”

Final Remarks on Amazon Echo and Alexa

In conclusion, the Amazon Echo Dot, in itself is just some plastic and electronics, but is simply a key to a much larger personal assistant. The Echo and Alexa are difficult to grasp initially, but once you experience the ability to natively speak and give direction to a large super computer, with tons of information and music available, you begin to see the capabilities and power of such a system.

My future plans concerning the Amazon Alexa is to learn more, test capabilities by installing different skills, and learn how to utilize the technology to help me to be more productive and organized. I can see the future of Alexa working with other technologies and better understanding of language, for example, “Alexa Tell me two jokes” to be 2 jokes and not just one as she currently does. Additionally I believe there are some areas that need various improvements, such as leveling the volume of daily briefings to provide one consistent experience.

Blockchain Engineer - Crypto Trading Bots

Written by

@BlockchainEng on Twitter. Crypto Trading Bots Programmer. Blockchain Engineer. Crypto Investor - Trader. ICO Advisor. realestateblockchain1@gmail.com

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