All those with an Amazon "Alexa" device who don't have a dishwasher!

We have one of the Google speakers in the second lounge (what we call the garden room) which is the Google equivalent to Alexa. That is better with music than Alexa but hopeless at controlling the lights etc.

Google is better when asking for information (traffic on the motorway or local roads etc) but for all else it is Alexa for me. Carol my wife of fifty years recons I am in love with Alexa, must be her very business like but sexy voice.

DH and I have a huge CD collection that we love, but sometimes I want a variety of music not just one album / one artist playing . I also use my Alexa to listen to radio stations that I can’t get on a conventional radio . Can’t see anything wrong with that to be honest .

All that faffing to put music into it, can listen to music on uTube. Have a clock radio by my bed for the time. Switching off lights ! How many lights does one have on in the evening. Can one not just google to find answers ?

Masterful hey.

Anniebach, you do not have to do anything to put music into it. You just ask for a song and it will play it. With the Google speaker it will then keep playing the same era and genre of music by various artists until you tell it to stop or change the genre. Just like radio station where you select the type of music you like. Great

I think you are all asking for trouble in allowing this sort of technology into your lives and homes; it's like big Brother watching you and I've seen enough Sci Fi films to see how it all ends up! I am, however, very polite to my pets and talk to them in sentences which they understand e.g. 'Will you move out of the doorway please!'

It's much more satisfying to converse with something which is alive and breathing and I understand the cat's miaows. There's a difference between, 'I'd like to go out and I want food' or just a general, 'Hello!'

I find it strange that people will strap pedometers to their wrists to count their steps, and get stressed if they haven't done enough, and then buy a smart speaker so the don't even have the exercise of getting up to close the curtains or switch on a light (and with the obesity crisis looming, we need all the exercise we can get. I can see the use of them for the disabled, but would truly hate the idea of a device listening all the time. If you do buy one, take precautions to avoid the risks, see eu.usatoday.com/story/tech/talkingtech/2018/05/25/6-ways-keep-alexa-eavesdropping-you/645504002/ I might be a Fellow of the British Computer Society, but I certainly don't want one of these in our house!

My new iPhone has Siri - came in handy early today when out in bright sunshine and needed to phone a friend.

Instead of screwing my eyes up searching for her in contacts list or finding some shade, I just said to the phone 'Hey, Siri, call Katie's mobile, and it did!

grannyactivist there are a lot of security concerns with 'smart' homewares, and Alexa and the like can and do record conversations - this article has details www.symantec.com/blogs/threat-intelligence/security-voice-activated-smart-speakers

You don’t have to put music into it Anniebach it finds it from Amazon music.

Oops sorry Grandad didn’t realise you had already answered Annies post about “putting music into the Alexa” . I have just upgraded to the £4 per month library and have yet to catch her out with anything . Well worth it for the pleasure we get from music, New and old . DH and I are not really telly fans but almost always have music playing when we are at home .

We have Cortana on the Xbox and the GC take great delight in asking silly questions to see what answers they get! Cortana is too smart for them!

Below is a link to a verified incident of Alexa mistakenly listening to a conversation and sending a recording of it to someone in the owner's address book. The final paragraph says:
Although Amazon maintains this was a malfunction rather than proof Alexa is always listening, the company has filed patent applications in the past for functionalities that involve always listening, such as an algorithm that would analyse when people say they “love” or “bought” something. The patent included a diagram where two people have a phone conversation and were served afterwards with separate targeted advertisements.
www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/may/24/amazon-alexa-recorded-conversation

No different to cookies working on this very website grannya and you can’t accidentally buy something without setting it up to do so .

Thanks for the info Minimoon, but I don't have a smartphone, and also at the moment, can think of other ways to part with our cash.

Not for me, but thank you for explaining much x

I feel sorry for you lot with those Alexa's and Echo's. I've had the same dishwasher for 39 years and wouldn't swap it for one of those things!!

We use Alexa for all sorts of things, the most useful task she does for me is add things to my shopping list. If I'm in the kitchen, it's far simpler to ask Alexa to add pearl barley, stock cubes, etc to my shopping list than to stop what I'm doing, find my paper list and a pen and write it myself!
We have three Alexas now, an Echo in the living room and Dots in the master bedroom and kitchen, so we're pretty well sorted.
We've finally finished replacing all our light bulbs with Philips Hue bulbs (all colour ambiance) so have great fun making the lights 'dance' and change colour according to the music Alexa is playing at the time! It's also very useful being able to ask Alexa to turn the lights on and off, as quite a lot of our lights are on corner tables etc, semi hidden by other furniture and a bit difficult to physically operate.
Our twenty three month old DGS has great fun with her too, playing 'Animal Sounds', he tells her what animal he'd like to hear, and she plays the sound that animal makes. It's helping his speech wonderfully as he has to speak clearly to get her to 'play'!
DGS has hay fever, so we bought a Dyson Pure Hot + Cool Link purifier. It's a really powerful fan, a great space heater for winter and removes 99.95% of allergens and pollutants from the air, and is controllable via Alexa! It's been so good for him that we bought one for DS and DDiL too, so DS sets it before he leaves work, and by the time he collects DGS and gets home, their living room air has been purified to take DGS into. It's so effective that they've just ordered themselves another Dyson to go in DGS's bedroom too!
We also get her to put lights on and off if we're away from home overnight to make it less obvious that the house is empty.
All in all, I think Alexa's brilliant, and shall be surreptitiously getting her to play 'The Washing up Song' when DH is standing at the kitchen sink this evening! Thanks phoenix!

We don't have an Alexa or an Echo Dot but while we were England my DH decuded to treat himself to a new Tomtom which can be voice activated. He hadnt bothered looking into the voice activation part and getting it set up. We are driving through France chatting to each other when a femail voice pipes up 'I'm listening'. Then when the tomtom didn't show or say the turn off early enough my husband said 'silly woman' and the tomtom fell off the windscreen. So don't know if he could cope with Alexa.

I'll have one when 'she' can wash the kitchen floor and iron my linen things. (I don't bother much with the rest)
Words almost fail me at 'can't be bothered to turn over in bed to look at the clock.' Unless someone's disabled, in which case I can certainly see the point.

I do wonder about sat navs, too. We do use one, but I have to have a map as back up. How long before nobody can read a map any more, nobody buys them and they stop producing them? What will happen when some solar burst (or whatever it is) or some terrorist event wipes out the Internet even for a day or two?

I do notice that my dh's formerly fantastic sense of direction has withered sadly since he began relying on his iPhone satnav just to navigate a few London streets on foot. And yes, I do feel a mite smug when tall buildings or whatever mean it stops working, and I whip out my handy pocket A to Z....

mabon1
I didn't swap my dishwasher for my Alexa Echos and Dots, we have both!
Alexa does a lot, but as yet she hasn't learned to vacuum, wash dishes, make the beds or do the ironing, although DH does the vacuuming and dishwashing, so no probs there. The dishwasher is now only used when family have been here or I've done a lot of batch cooking, it's lazy to use it for just the two of us!

Can’t think of anything worse. Not a technophobe, but iPad, smart phone and a radio are more than enough.

The idea of these mini robots make me feel something around losing important skills, and give me a rather creepy feeling. ?

I can see the point for those with disabilities tho’.

Witzend
DH's Satnav is built into the car, she's voice operated but quite often gets told to "shut up Doris" and I navigate using a good old fashioned map!
I learned to map read when I did my DofE awards, and went orienteering, a lot, during my twenties, so maps pose no difficulties.
Strangely enough, we often get to places faster when I navigate than when Doris sticks her oar in!

Juggernaut whatever happened to the (perfectly adequate) mini blackboard in the kitchen where we used to write down what needed to be added to the shopping list?
You still have to write a list don’t you?
Or do you take your Echo dot with you in your trolley?
It is no doubt seen as “cool”to say “Alexa add baked beans to the shopping” But is it really ?
I wonder if some people are harking back to a distant age where the master of the household clapped his hands and ordered “Make it so!”

I don't have Alexa but always say thank you to my little car when I reach home safely. I say something much ruder whenever I sneeze - to an empty house.