More Dottiness
Every few weeks, I do a search on amazon.com for Alexa speakers. The most recent search yielded a new Alexa Voice Service enabled speaker for under $20. Sure, it has an average of four stars among the 53 reviews but it seems like a more powerful speaker than the dot.
As companies working on their second and third iterations of AVS-enabled devices, we’ll likely see them liquidate inventory and $19.99 seems to be the bottom out price for AVS-enabled devices. For $20 and the increasing number of features, it makes more sense to have Alexa around them home now then it did when it was released almost four years ago.
Speaking of around the home, I love new form factors coming to market. It’s great to see First Alert with their One Link device:
Nest Protect should have done this five years ago with Google Assistant (then Google Now). I’m perplexed at how Google had all the tools and ability to capture this market and seemed to have analysis paralysis.
Another cool application is the Destiny 2 Ghost device:
I’m not a follower of this game but I love that they’re using the Alexa Gadgets SDK to build a coordinate interaction with a real device. This type of interaction has the potential to transform our interaction with the world around us. Let’s hope more of these devices come out in time for the holidays.
