Amazon Echo Dot

The Amazon pre-order page offers a discount on the full Echo as well (as opposed to the Dot). Prime members, until tonight, can get it for £99 instead of £149.

With that out of the way, it tempts me too, "gimmick" or not. But I don't know why. I watched a Youtube video of it in action yesterday. American of course, but that's not an issue. But many of the things he was using it for are irrelevant in Cambridge ("where are The Giants playing, what's the baseball score, order me an Uber ride). And the other stuff ("order me a Domino's pizza", "how many calories in a pizza") is kind of fun, once.

Then there's the home automation bits ("turn all the lights to purple", "lock my back door"). I don't have or intend to get any of those things, so that isn't a plus for me either.

I don't want to be negative, and I really like the idea of walking into the lounge and saying "play me some Jethro Tull". Of course, Mrs C then immediately says "stop that godawful row and play me some Prokofiev " and the poor thing gets confused. When we say to it "one of us always lies, and the other always tells the truth. This is a lie" smoke will come out of it in true Star Trek stylee.

Anyway, be interested to hear if it does do what WDB wants.

I'll also be interested to get IOS10 installed on the iPhone when I can be bothered and see if Siri is indeed now any better at any of this stuff. Probably won't be but one never knows until one tries. Of course, if you had both... "Hey Siri, tell Alexa to play some music. And tell her that USB port is too young for her. What does she think she looks like?". Immediate catfight in the back of the car.

TAAB as you know is a spoof concept album, so I can see why you would accept that one - but does that mean you are averse to Sinatra? Some do as say he was the instigator of the concept album.

I'm not sure how you can be against, well, the concept. To me, it just means "a bunch of tracks that need to be listened to in their entirety and in order to tell the story as intended", which doesn't seem too onerous. So "War of the Worlds" is a concept album to me, as is the similar but inferior (to my taste) Wakeman "Journey to the Centre of the Earth".

Or do you mean "self-indulgent endless wibbling", which lots of this stuff is (and I like very much)?

Colleague has also bought an Echo now, so I will get to try one in the flesh.

I noticed in the comments attached to the YouTube review, that when the chap ordered a pizza, a number of people said their Echos ordered one too. If it's that easy I can feel mischief coming on, especially as said colleague has a habit playing his voice messages on speakerphone.

"Alexa, order Big Jugs Weekly". Although I suppose that would imply he would have to have linked it to an online pottery subscription club, so it might actually not be that effective.

Funny how typing out a long and unnecessarily sarcastic 'I don't understand' got me to, erm, understand. Other Echo owners played the YouTube audio and found their own Echoes obeyed the commands contained in it. So you think you might record your own naughty commands on your colleague's voicemail, which he might then play in the presence of his Echo, which would then obey the recorded command - ie you.

Are there really subscription pottery services, though? Bit of a long shot, isn't it?

Here's something that might work for me:
www.wired.com/2016/08/amazon-echo-adds-sonos-voice-control-stable/

Expletives deleted.....?

Colleague brought in his Alexa. Another liked it so much he bought one too. Both devices were therefore in the same office.

My imagination kicks in - let's get one to say its name, whilst the other one is listening, and see if they can be made to argue. Ooh, tell you what, better - get one of them to say the words "hey siri" and put a phone in the middle. And the other one can say "Ok Google" with another phone in the middle and it will be a cacophony of artificial excitement.

We set it all up. We get the timings right. We see if these device can say these words. We get ready. We count down.We go.

End result - they all ignore each other entirely, talk at once, and tells us something useless about the weather. It was most disappointing.

However, I think after I'd left they did get the two Alexas to play "rock paper scissors" with each other.