Amazon Echo - UK Release

paul211b

Told my company that deal with Weather forecasts about Alexa and received this from the consumer team.
We are talking with Amazon about Alexa (Amazon Echo) since the MWC in Barcelona in February this year. We thought about many ideas and Alexa is not so clever as we hoped. If you will ask for the weather, it will always answer with the native integration of AccuWeather. You have to define key words which the user has to say when he/she wants our weather data. That was the first issue we have. The second is, that Alexa cannot give us the location of the users house. This is only available for internal skills and not for third parties. Unfortunately we have no Accounts at the moment, where the user can save their location and that we can use for Alexa.

This is something we are planning for next year and we hope that we will get some investment by the management to realise this idea. So at the moment no guarantee that we will be able to develop this.

zantarous

No way, been burned by lack of support by Google on too many products, Android TV, Android Wear, Google Music itself. Most of these things just seem to be a hobby for the big g.

paul211b

Battery base coming soon by the look of it.
https://www.amazon.com/Portable-Battery-Base-Echo-anywhere/dp/B01FE2OV30

paul211b

Surely someone will create something that can link to spotify.   I guess Amazon want you to use their music streaming service.  

I assume you say " Alexa play  this runs from the Amazon service.
Hopefully there will be some kind of skill that allows you to say "Alexa open Spotify and play

redboy1

And they couldn't of built a battery in in the first place

paul211b

Sure they will release something in the future that costs more money.

LDJ

Isnt that what the Echo Tap is?
Adding batteries (and the associated hardware) will just add to the production and thus retails costs. I'm happy with a mains only model. Id rather a different (more expensive) battery model than just one that does both

zantarous

A small battery with a docking station so you can move it around the home would be a dead cert for a future version.

skk3

Update! I have Spotify installed on my iPad and laptop... If I play Spotify on my laptop, there is a little speaker icon at the bottom of the page that allows me to select "Listening on Simon's Echo" and away I go - listening to Gregory Porter as I type...!!!

paul211b

What's the speaker like on the Echo?