In December of last year, I received an Amazon Echo as a gift - and it has slowly changed the way I do certain things.
If you are unaware, the Echo is a smart device that is designed to be the hub of your home.
I’ve only scratched the surface of what Echo is capable of, but here’s how I use Echo on a daily basis:
- “Alexa…wake me up at 8am”
- “Alexa…what’s the weather today?”
- “Alexa…when is my next meeting?”
- “Alexa…play some Bollywood music.”
- “Alexa…trigger find my phone.”
Alexa essentially does whatever you ask it to do. It’s a combination of Google Now and a one-way assistant. And it works really really well.
Over the past month, I’ve stopped using the alarm on my iPhone to wake me up or searching for “Weather 10010” everytime I’m ready to leave my house.
While Echo may only save you a few minutes a day, it is capable of doing a lot more when partners start integrating their services with them.
For most consumers, it also makes terms like “smart-home” and “internet-of-things” a lot more understandable. If this is the future, I’m glad Amazon is leading the way with a consumer-friendly product.
We’re in the era of platform stagnation and smart engineers are looking to do more now that computing power enables consumer level adoption of virtual reality, augmented reality and much much more. The video below is shot on a $350 camera that stitches 360 degree video in a few minutes. For professional content creators - it’s a step forward in a very big way!
Experience the blizzard in 360!
Posted by Aanarav Sareen on Saturday, January 23, 2016
It’s an exciting time to be working in technology and as things scale up, I’m looking forward to being a part of it.