Last September, Amazon announced a voice assistant alliance ahead of its yearly fall event with the goal to ensure smart devices are compatible with multiple digital assistants concurrently. Nearly a year later, the coalition has over 70 companies pledging support, including Facebook, Garmin, and Xiaomi, which recently joined. Yet, Amazon’s biggest rivals in the voice assistant space — Apple, Google, and Samsung — have yet to join.

Amazon’s Voice Interoperability Initiative’s goal is to have companies create smart devices that support multiple voice assistants like Alexa or Cortana concurrently. But without Apple, Google, and Samsung’s voice assistants (Siri, Google Assistant, and Bixby), the biggest competitors to Alexa, the idea feels empty. They’ve got 70+ companies on board, but it seems like they’re missing the ones that matter?

THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE THREE NEW MEMBERS DON’T SEEM THAT BIG OF A DEAL FOR AMAZON’S INITIATIVE, EITHER
The announcement of the three new members don’t seem that big of a deal for Amazon’s initiative, either, as each company already supports Alexa:

Facebook’s Portal devices have Alexa integration
Garmin’s GPS devices include Amazon Alexa
Xiaomi has an Alexa skill that allows the voice assistant to connect and operate its smart devices
Oddly enough, Apple and Google have no issues collaborating with Amazon to work on an open-source smart home platform, which is expected to launch next year. But that initiative doesn’t require Apple and Google to potentially let additional assistants like Alexa onto their smartphones.

The e-commerce giant also announced today that it had released new guidelines to help manufacturers create new devices that support more than one voice assistant.

Source: TheVerge

Also Read:

FACEBOOK, GOOGLE, TWITTER URGED BY EU TO DO MORE AGAINST FAKE NEWS

APPLE PLANS SPECIAL EVENT FOR SEPTEMBER 15, NEW PRODUCTS ANTICIPATED    

CHINA LAUNCHES INITIATIVE FOR GLOBAL DATA SECURITY ISSUES    

GOOGLE URL PARAMETER TOOL UPGRADE WILL BE 'REALLY COOL' WHEN MIGRATED TO NEW SEARCH CONSOLE  

AMAZON EXPANDING TO 25,000 WORKERS IN SEATTLE SUBURB

GOOGLE LAUNCHES READ ALONG OFFLINE APP TO HELP KIDS LEARN AND READ BETTER

Google is reportedly working towards replacing the video-calling app Duo with Meet in due course of time. The decision was made by the G Suite head Javier Soltero who took over the position earlier this year in May. According to 9to5Google, Soltero announced to his employees that having two video-calling apps does not make sense.

Apparently, the combination of the two apps is in process and has been codenamed as ‘Duet”. Google Meet has posed as a tough competitor to video-conferencing app Zoom which has been a hit among office-goers as ‘work from home’ became a new form. Zoom was also used for casual family and friends meeting who were unable to meet each other in-person.

Reportedly, the Google Duo team is surprised by the recent series of events as the app was widely used during the lockdown. Especially after Google announced in May that there was a total of three billion minutes of call duration in the month and close to three million daily new users. The engineers who worked on the app either left or were shifted to the Meet team.

“We’re fully invested in Duo, which has seen astonishing growth during the pandemic. People around the world are relying on video calling more than ever, and we have no plans to interrupt that. We’ll continue to invest in building new Duo features and delivering a delightful experience for our users, customers and partners. We brought the Duo organization under Javier Soltero’s leadership in May, and it follows that we’re looking at ways that our video calling products can improve alongside one another,” Google said in a statement.

Earlier, Duo let the users call anyone from their contact list. Then, they added the ability to call people using their email addresses. However, the update in April helped improve video quality followed by 32-person calls, a family mode, and the more popular link-based invites.

Google Meet has been a part of G Suite from the start. After Zoom’s popularity grew manyfold, Google announced in May that Google Meet will be free for everyone till September 30 including enterprises. Google Meet’s integration with the Gmail app made it more accessible and easy to use.

 

Also Read:

NOKIA'S OLD ICONIC PHONES RELAUNCHING TREND CONTINUES

NOKIA POST 116 MILLION EUROS PROFIT IN FIRST-QUARTER 2020

GOOGLE LAUNCHES READ ALONG OFFLINE APP TO HELP KIDS LEARN AND READ BETTER

TOP PHONES UNDER 50000 IN NEPAL 2020 (UPDATED) | SPECS - BEST MOBILES..

ONLINE LEARNING EFFECT ELECTRONIC DEVICE USAGE TO RISE

10 UNIQUE AND USEFUL APPS FOR YOUR ANDROID PHONES

TOP UTILITY APPS FOR ANDROID PHONES

Amazon.com Inc on Thursday launched its first fitness band and app, Halo, as the e-commerce giant looks to take on Apple, Fitbit and Samsung in an increasingly crowded fitness tracker market.

The Halo band, which does not feature a display screen unlike most of its rivals, is priced at $99.99, while the app membership costs $3.99 per month, Amazon said.

The scope of growth in the fitness band market has prompted tech giants such as Apple Inc and Samsung to introduce many sophisticated features for health tracking, including electrocardiogram and blood pressure sensor.

In comparison, Amazon has featured a relatively new technology in the market called tone analysis, which reviews users’ tone during conversations. When enabled, a microphone on the band listens to detect emotions such as happiness, confusion or affection in the speaker’s tone.

It remains to be seen if consumers would embrace this feature or would it spark privacy concerns. Amazon said the technology was designed in a way that protects privacy.

The company said the water-resistant band, with a battery life of up to 7 days, also contains an accelerometer, a temperature sensor, a heart rate monitor and can measure body fat percentage.

Alphabet Inc-owned Google is also making strides into the fitness market. Google in November said it would buy Fitbit Inc for $2.1 billion, a deal that is currently under regulatory scrutiny.

The market is also crowded by cheaper offerings from China’s Huawei Technologies Co Ltd and Xiaomi Corp.

source:reuters

Also Read:

5 BEST DIGITAL WALLETS IN NEPAL

TOP 5 REFRIGERATORS UNDER 50000 IN NEPAL

WHAT MEDICAL DEVICES SHOULD I HAVE AT HOME

BEST SMART WATCH AVAILABLE IN NEPAL

TOP 5 ONLINE SHOPPING SITES IN NEPAL | 2020

DISH HOME LAUNCH FIBER TO THE HOME INTERNET SERVICE INSIDE KATHMANDU VALLEY

TVS APACHE RTR 200 4V PRICE IN NEPAL | FULL SPECIFICATION

TOP 5 SUVS IN NEPAL IN 2020 | UPDATED PRICE

 

Blink, that other smart home camera company that Amazon scooped up, today announced a pair of new cameras that move its business deeper into a subscription model. And they can also last for a long time — up to four years of “normal use” — on a single set of batteries if that’s what you need.

The new Blink Outdoor ($99.99) and Indoor ($79.99) cameras include a free trial to Blink’s cloud storage plan that’s good through the end of this year. But after that, you’ll have to pay $3 monthly to keep the cloud storage going; an unlimited-cameras plan is slightly more expensive at $10 per month. Blink is still giving customers the option of saving their recordings locally with the included Sync Module 2 and any USB flash drive they might have on hand.

Both cameras check off most of the features you’d want out of a basic home camera: you get 1080p video, night vision, motion detection, and two-way audio in “sleek new hardware design.”

By default, the Blink Outdoor and Indoor can keep going for up to two years of recording on a pair of AA lithium batteries. But later this year, Blink says it’ll release a battery expansion back that ups the number of AAs to four, thus doubling that total stamina to up to four years “with normal use.” Blink says it can achieve this efficiency because of its “proprietary chip technology.” You can see how this would be convenient if you want to stick a camera in a high-traffic area or a hard-to-reach spot where frequent battery swaps would prove annoying. The expansion pack costs another $30, so the added expense might not be worth it for some.

And of course, both new Blink cams are Alexa compatible.

source: theverge

Also Read:

XIAOMI NEPAL LAUNCHES HI-RES REDMI EARPHONES

THINGS TO LOOK OUT FOR WHEN BUYING A GAMING SMARTPHONE

ONLINE LEARNING EFFECT ELECTRONIC DEVICE USAGE TO RISE

ESSENTIAL ELECTRONIC ACCESSORIES FOR EXERCISES OR WORKOUTS

GOOGLE, APPLE ROLL OUT BUILT-IN COVID-19 EXPOSURE NOTIFICATIONS TO PHONES

GOOGLE’S ANDROID TV DONGLE COULD COST JUST $50, ACCORDING TO THIS LEAK

JAPAN’S ‘FLYING CAR’ GETS OFF GROUND, WITH A PERSON ABOARD