The Bite Magazine Issue 17

Amazon Echo Dot E cho Dot, the hands-free, voice-controlled device from Amazon has now come to the UK. It’s powered by Alexa, a device that can play your favourite music, provide weather and news updates, answer questions, create lists and many other features, and uses the same far-field voice recognition as Amazon Echo. When Echo Dot is connected to external speakers, it enables you to use voice control on your home entertainment system or you can use it on its own to talk to Alexa, which itself will have new skills in the UK, including shop- ping, ESP (Echo Spatial Perception), expanded sports information and much more. “The team is innovat- ing at a rapid pace with Echo and Alexa, and they are already adding new skills for UK customers,” said Jorrit Van der Meulen, Vice Presi- dent of Amazon Devices EU. “Now you can order your favourite items using just your voice, get additional sports information, and much more. Customers love Alexa and Echo, and with shopping ESP, and more features to come, it’s only going to get better.” As well as being connected directly to speakers with a 3.5mm audio cable or via Bluetooth which would then add voice-control to your home stereo system, thanks to its small built-in speaker, the Echo Dot can be used in the bedroom or as a smart alarm clock, in the kitchen to easily set timers; or it can ask for measure- ment conversions; or in any room as a voice assistant to control lights and smart home devices. With its sleek and compact design, the Echo Dot comes in either black or white, and is designed to disappear into any room in a house. Just like the Echo, it has the same array of seven microphones and uses beam-forming technology and enhanced noise can- cellation to detect the wake word, ‘Alexa’, from across the road and features a more powerful speech processor to deliver improved far- field speech recognition accuracy. The beauty of using Alexa Voice Shopping for Amazon Prime members when using Echo or Echo Dot is that you just say, for example, ‘order paper towels’, ‘order dog food’, or ‘buy some LEGO’ and Alexa will find a product that ships with Prime and apply available discounts. By just saying ‘Yes’ to buy it, you can complete the entire shopping transaction using just your voice in a conversation with Alexa – there’s no need to open an app, look at a screen, or tap a button. Customers will be able to check the status of their existing orders simply by saying, ‘Alexa, where’s my stuff?’ For customers who have multiple Echo devices within hearing distance, Amazon’s new ESP technology avail- able to both Echo and Echo Dot users, can intelligently calculate the clarity of the customer’s voice and determines which Echo is the closest and should respond to the request – instantly. It also allows performance to get better over time by contin- uously improving as you use Echo. With a selection of new features, with more to come soon for Echo and Echo Dot users, these include the Alexa Skills Kit which recently added a new List Skill API. Now cus- tomers can integrate Todoist and Any.do lists with Alexa, who pro- vides the ability to add items to your Alexa Shopping or To Do List. Simply set the default list provider in your Alexa app, and then say ‘Alexa, add laundry detergent to my shopping list’ and it’ll integrate directly into your preferred list service, whether that is Todoist, Any.do , or Alexa. Football fans can also ask Alexa for the latest developments in the UEFA Champions League, with scores for Europe’s premier club competitions now available on demand, with more local sports to come soon. The all-new Echo Dot is also avail- able to purchase in a 6-pack (buy 5, get 1 free) and in a 12-pack (buy 10, get 2 free) on Amazon now. www.amazon.co.uk/echodot Jada Brookes looks at some of the latest gadgets and developments on the tech market. New Gadgets on bite gadgets the Go