Who is Alexa?
As technology continues to advance, companies like Apple, Google, and Amazon are continuing to compete to come out with the next best thing to improve our daily lives. This past year, Amazon came out with the first sophisticated home based virtual assistant, called "Alexa." While smart phones are the most convenient personal assistant while on the go, they are not convenient when someone is working at home. The Amazon Echo and now the Amazon Dot house the Internet-connected, Alexa-powered speaker that answers questions and runs apps. When prompted through voice commands Alexa can play music through multiple different applications, check the weather in your set location, check for traffic, set timers, and even order goods off of your Amazon.com account. These are just a few of the countless functions that Alexa can perform. Through this technology, Amazon is building an invisible operating system for running a broad range of aspects of daily life. Once of main advantage's of Amazon's Alexa over other products put out by Google or Apple is that, "Amazon isn't partial to any particular platform the way Google may be with Android or Apple with iOS, allowing Alexa to offer the same experience with little influence based on the other devices a user may own."
How Alexa Works
What makes this product unique is that the Echo and Alexa are not one in the same. Alexa is the voice assistant while Echo is simply Alexa's "first customer." Amazon is using a typical operating system to control the home. First, the company created a simple “Skills” framework that allowed smart devices to connect to Alexa and be controlled through a relatively strict verbal framework.
While I do not see the absolute necessity for owning an Amazon Echo, I have used the tool in multiple situations and can attest that it is a highly intelligent piece of technology and is pretty fun to use.
References
- http://time.com/4624067/amazon-echo-alexa-ces-2017/
- https://stratechery.com/2017/amazons-operating-system/
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