Ha! I don't say anything interesting enough someone would actually want to play back and listen to it. Regardless, I'm not that paranoid. I did have a college roommate who thought our water cooler was spying on us though.

It's more about Amazon's seeming attitude to privacy as evidenced by its announcement to remove encryption from Fire devices (and then backtrack in the face of outrage).

Just curious... did you find the Echo objectionable before it was revealed that Amazon intended to remove encryption on its devices?

Don't be so certain about that.

Echo Always listening - yes, but I didn't think the data was processed/stored on Amazon servers until the keyword is spoken.

Google does the same with 'ok google', Apple does the same with Siri, and I don't trust these companies any more or less than the other.

At any rate, the Echo is being used as a music box for a toddler ;)

This to me seems a lot like the smart fridges that Microsoft was trying to peddle a decade ago. It's not really fixing an issue. OK, so I don't need hands to put on music when cooking but usually I just put on music before cooking. It's not like this was a big issue in my life.

I have a friend with one of these. He was trying to show off how it would turn the lights on automatically when he told it and he came in to his place. It didn't work reliably and they have this thing called a light switch that works just incredibly well.

Yep, I still don't understand why people want them. If I want the weather or music, I just use my phone/iPad.

I can understand that, but I have to admit that I love ours. My phone/tablet is often not where I am, and the Echo is centrally located in a reasonably open floor plan. Simple things like "Alexa, set a timer for ten minutes," "Alexa, how many tablespoons are in a quarter cup?" or "Alexa, read Titan by John Varley" still make it seem like I'm living in the World of Tomorrow to me :D

So far this thing has been most useful for entertainment at family parties. Impressive, some of
the knowledge it's been programmed with.

Try asking it in order...
What is your name?
What is your quest?
What is your favorite color?

:D

Because Google/Siri aren't capable of being fully run by voice (yet). My Echo lives at my office and has become my de-facto office radio. I find its hands-free capability to be brilliant actually.

If I'm working in the middle of a project and something suddenly comes to mind, I can just quickly bark it out at Alexa and it gets handled. No needing to stop what I'm doing, pick up my phone/tablet, unlock it, find the app I need, then type on some crappy on-screen keyboard only to have autocorrect munge it. Additionally, the microphone array on the Echo really does work, much better than any tablet/phone.

I can see one of these for home use where your phone might not be convenient. I'm not sure what other people do, but when I get home, my phone goes on the charging stand in the kitchen or left in the car, where it'd be a pain to grab & use to change channels. I agree that entertainment options on modern tablets/phones are great, but virtually none of them were meant to be controlled remotely.

As far as it listening to everything, I've not found that to be the case, even keeping an eye on it with Wireshark (packet sniffing).

I still see it as a device which is half-baked for now. I think one of the problems Amazon faced was that they weren't really sure what they had created here, which is why it's had basically a year-long beta test. Now that they see what people are using it for and asking it, they're better able to tune the existing one (and create new ones). Still, the Echo lacks audio outputs, any sort of display, and has a hugely limited command set. Siri/Google are much better in this, BUT they still can't be controlled truly by voice only. If you say Play KKJZ to either of those, it will show you that KKJZ exists and has a website but won't start playing it -- Echo will.

What I don't understand is the Amazon Tap. There are plenty of bluetooth speakers out there, far less expensive or with better sound.

I did pick up an Echo Dot. For the price, it's a decent, fully-featured internet radio receiver. Even better is that it IS voice controlled. No remote to lose, no need to fire up the TV and scroll through page after page of listings, etc.

I mean, you can turn on "Hey Siri" and "OK Google" to run them handsfree. I turned Hey Siri off because it was triggering randomly too much. BUt it works fine otherwise. And you certainly can tell Siri to play a song. If it's in your library it will start playing right away. If you have an Apple Music subscription and the song is in Apple Music, it will also play right away. Siri will only do an internet search if it can't find the song in either of those places.

Can you flesh this out with some examples? Ms mia uses Echo as a music player and timer, but (to my knowledge) nothing else. I find the music player function frustrating because the syntax seems to be complex and I am prone to pause while speaking, which Echo interprets as the end of the command. I would like to be able to suggest some other tasks that she could try.

My Dot was ordered today and is scheduled for delivery June 15. Not sure why Amazon can never crank their supply chain a little harder. Is there some revolutionary technology inside that Foxconn can't make? There were tight supplies when the original Kindle came out but that was (my guess) because the e-Ink was tough to make.

I enjoy Alexa, but it sure is tough to talk about her as she always listens. I was describing to my brother how when I walk in the door after work I say, "Alexa play music," and sure enough, she started up music. So I have to talk about her as A-L-E-X-A.

Guess someone left their NPR on while they were gone and Alexa went rogue!

http://qz.com/637326/amazon-echo-hom...-a-thermostat/

I use the lists feature extensively, mainly as a to-do / reminders list. If I have something on the workbench and are using both hands, it's much easer to say Alexa, add dinner with Chris to the calendar or add expense report due by Friday to shopping list.

Some of the features Amazon's pushing, like voice ordering, I don't see as practical at all, for now. I can see some of this eventually working if they started doing more local deliveries of groceries and such, but that's not my pattern with them. I've not ordered toilet paper, produce, (common) food, or any other item which I'd regularly need to restock on. I do order printer toner, but I order ~20 different types of cartridges due to wide variety of printers at my office. If I were to ask it for a box of pens, what would show up at my door? How would it handle products with stupidly-long names created by idiotic marketing departments? My old Motorola Droid Razr Maxx HD comes to mind.

The Echo is also available on http://zrealizujkupon.pl/shops/mediamarkt for pretty reasonable price - $95. Quite a handy stuff for anyone who has intention to save up the time and adores useful things.