A parrot formed a friendship with Amazon Alexa. Besides chatting with the voice assistant all day long, the parrot started ordering things through Alexa when the owner would be away. Of course the owner quickly understood what was going on and didn’t end up with goods ordered by her pet, but now she’s left with the task to clean up her shopping list every once in a while.
Apple Music is available on Amazon Alexa. While initially I was amazed, now it feels like it makes sense. There are many ways to look at this move, and the view by Maxim Samoylenko adds another perspective to the collection: is this a signals that Apple is toning down their focus on voice? That is quite a statement to make. Apple historically been a fast follower, rather then the driver of innovation.
Apple and Voice interfaces by Maxim Samoylenko
Vector is a toy by Anki. The autonomous robot can rove freely around the house, and comes with a basic voice assistant. From the video it becomes clear how Anki has spent a lot of attention to personality, as the display complements the character for the robot through blinking eyes. Some people react with a tender awww 🥰 once they see the little robot.
While the robot isn’t that impressive at this moment, I’m looking forward to see how the features will develop over time. The maturity of the robot is mostly about software, and I’m pretty sure that it will develop with updates over time. Having these embodied assistants roving the house and following you around brings up visions of a digital companion species. Let’s see how they mature.
Rougemont, Switzerland
It’s hot here. I’m in a hammock reading up on the popular section of Pinboard while O is asleep and B/Ph have their screen time. We’re spending the week in Rougemont. It’s the first time I took my family up to the mountains, so far it has been great.
Back to Pinboard. The popular section has a link to a post by Matt Webb on the format of Weeknotes. I’ve always enjoyed his weeknotes, and more then once I thought about starting my own version. Often that was from the agency perspective, which would then not find any follow up. I guess that if I want to get this started, I should do so myself.
So here it is, the first edition of my weeknotes. Intended as a moment/place to share some of the things I thought about during the week, to collect what made me think or what has kept me busy.