Tag: Alexa

July 16, 2021

Virtual assistants are a lagniappe technology. Almost nobody actually needs them, but when they work properly they bring a little something extra to your life. Even though they’re heavily flawed and a clear-and-present danger to our privacy, it’s still super […]

October 5, 2020

Alexa, amazon’s voice-based virtual assistance like Siri for the iPhone, and Cortana for Microsoft Windows, is a cloud-based service. When first introduced, it was in the form of ‘Amazon Echo.’ Fast forward and this voice assistant is now part of […]

September 3, 2019

Tight on time? Still need to schedule that meeting next Friday and follow-up on an important email? Not to worry! Get it all done in seconds, without moving a finger—use only voice commands. Unless workers immersed themselves in a chapter […]

June 17, 2019

It’s been nearly a decade since Apple released Siri, a voice and virtual assistant that promised to revolutionize our lives through the magic of speech recognition, artificial intelligence and a whole host of other supporting technologies. Although the start could […]

June 4, 2019

Steady advances in artificial intelligence and natural language processing have made digital assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa increasingly capable of performing complicated voice commands under different circumstances. But does it mean that our digital assistants are ready to escape the […]

May 8, 2019

AMAZON HAS ANNOUNCED an upgrade to its Alexa voice assistant which pretty much destroys any hope for Microsoft’s Cortana. The world-dominating voice assistant is already available as a Universal Windows Platform (UWP) app to Windows 10 users – but there’s […]

April 29, 2019

Last year at its Build developer conference, Microsoft gave quite a bit of time on Day 1 to a conceptual demo about meetings of the future. In that demo, futuristic Cortana-enabled conferencing capabilities figured heavily as did Cortana integration with […]

April 12, 2019

Innovation shapes our daily experiences, offering us the chance to seize the convenience offered by modern technology. Since the advent of smart speakers and voice-enabled digital assistants, voice-user interface (VUI) technology has experienced an explosion in popularity among consumers and […]

January 9, 2019

A trend quickly developing at CES 2019 is the entry of Amazon Alexa into the car, with numerous announcements linking the digital assistant into the fundamentals of future vehicles. We’ve already seen Amazon’s smart assistant feature in cars in a […]

November 9, 2018

THOSE FEARFUL OF a gradual AI takeover should be wary with the pace at which Amazon’s Alexa has gone from living solely in Echo devices to calling anything with circuits home. Its latest holiday home is Windows 10, and it […]

September 5, 2018

Honeywell bundled an impressive number of features into the company’s crowdsourced Smart Home Security starter kit, including a security camera, smart home integration and Alexa. But it’s not what Honeywell included so much as what it left out from this […]

August 16, 2018

Yesterday, we reported that Amazon and Microsoft’s year-long smart assistant partnership was finally bearing fruit. The two companies have worked together to bring their Cortana and Alexa virtual assistants to each other’s devices. Windows 10-powered PCs, for example, let users […]

August 15, 2018

It’s been possible to use Alexa, Amazon’s voice assistant, on Windows 10 computers for some time, but now the two companies are officially integrating their software: you’ll be able to call up Alexa on a Windows 10 PC, or Cortana […]

August 7, 2018

If there’s one area in which Alexa has long lagged behind Google Assistant, it’s general knowledge. While Amazon hasn’t closed that gap yet, you’ll now be the first to know when it does. Amazon is launching a feature called Answer […]

May 31, 2018

Smart plugs are obviously the best way to add some smarts to all the “dumb” devices around your home. Whether you want to control a fan, coffee maker, lamp, or any similar devices, these little wall outlet adapters make it […]

April 6, 2018

Amazon’s Alexa app allows you to create routines, which will turn on smart home devices or get news, traffic, and weather info either at a certain time or when you say a specific phrase to an Alexa-enabled device (such as […]