X10 Community Forum
💬General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: dhouston on January 03, 2017, 10:33:06 AM
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http://venturebeat.com/2017/01/03/lenovo-launches-smart-assistant-a-130-amazon-echo-competitor-with-alexa-inside/?google_editors_picks=true (http://venturebeat.com/2017/01/03/lenovo-launches-smart-assistant-a-130-amazon-echo-competitor-with-alexa-inside/?google_editors_picks=true)
https://www.cnet.com/news/whats-alexa-up-to-at-ces-heres-a-running-list/ (https://www.cnet.com/news/whats-alexa-up-to-at-ces-heres-a-running-list/)
https://www.cnet.com/news/heres-all-of-the-apple-homekit-stuff-youll-see-at-ces/ (https://www.cnet.com/news/heres-all-of-the-apple-homekit-stuff-youll-see-at-ces/)
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Competition in an emerging market is good, though this seems to be competing in the hardware area only. The price may soon be down to the point that we can pick up a device with Echo-like functionality at Walgreens or CVS!
But there's still a question as to which assistant platform to back. As it is, the market for "intelligent" voice assistants already seems fragmented with multiple platforms. Siri, Google Now, Alexa, and Cortana are the big players, but they're not the first nor the only ones. There are also countless others such as Vlingo, BlackBerry Assistant (which appears to be aborted and left to die with BB10 already), Hound, Braina, SILVIA, Nina... some of which have limited utility, but the list goes on.
Just a few years ago, we also had other smartphone OSes competing with the major players. There was Palm/HP's WebOS, Palm OS, Nokia's Symbian, BlackBerry Classic (OS 7 and earlier), BB10, Samsung's BADA, Motorola's iDEN, and some others I never had exposure to. Despite having some unique strengths, these have faded away while the strongest platforms survived. It appears that we're going through the same fragmented growing stage for voice assistants now. I expect that setting up a business model around any of them is still a little of a gamble at this point. However, as the current smartphone platform leaders, Apple and Google seem to both have a significant advantage over Alexa, Cortana, and others by making their assistants exclusive to their smartphone platform. They didn't have that advantage the last time around.
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Yep.... more than one brand available. And the "best" brand... may have a lot as to what you want to do with it. Currently... common knowledge has the Google Internet connected voice controlled device... as "conversationally" the best. With Amazons product as more smart-home and app compatible (with the most choices).
But as I had predicted/reported here [at the X10 forum] some months ago...... of the makers of devices and hubs are working together to make all flavors compatible... I believe the same will be true with voice devices.
Just like you can point your browser to any Site for a home page (regardless of browser brand). You can use a Chrome browser... yet use the MSN Home Page, and Bing (or anyone else's) search engine. Someday..... you may be able to select to run Alexa (and Amazons apps and such) on your Google voice device... AND your iPhone.
Although... the setups aren't completely intuitive (to me) or seamless.... but the interchangeability is at the heart of the new Internet... devices.
In the Halo game.... the virtual companion was born of creativity imagination. But we're getting there. If I can tell the Amazon DOT by my easy chair to remind me of a event later. And it stores that reminder on my cloud based google calendar to send me a banner and chime alert on my Apple phone..... well that's darn good automation.
Is it necessary automation? Well being retired and with plenty of spare time... I no longer fill my day-planner in 15 minute increments. But I still find plenty of things to forget.