Three months with Alexa
At our annual sales kickoff in January, I was the lucky winner of an Amazon Dot. The Dot is the slimmed-down version of the Echo, and my expectations were high.
I was concerned that the device wouldn't function at all, as I live in Germany, but that concern was completely unnecessary - Alexa takes commands both in English and German!
You really have to define your query or command very clearly, however. Any deviation into dialect or changing the speaking rhythm leaves Alexa clueless.
While you can add new capabilites ("skills") to Alexa, many of these will likely be as forgotten as that odd app you installed on your smartphone but don't use because it is on the 5th app page…
All in all, I'm glad the device was free, as I would have been disappointed by a purchased version. Alexa (and speech command technology) has a long way to go, obviously!
I was concerned that the device wouldn't function at all, as I live in Germany, but that concern was completely unnecessary - Alexa takes commands both in English and German!
You really have to define your query or command very clearly, however. Any deviation into dialect or changing the speaking rhythm leaves Alexa clueless.
While you can add new capabilites ("skills") to Alexa, many of these will likely be as forgotten as that odd app you installed on your smartphone but don't use because it is on the 5th app page…
All in all, I'm glad the device was free, as I would have been disappointed by a purchased version. Alexa (and speech command technology) has a long way to go, obviously!
blog comments powered by Disqus