Amazon claims its working on the laughing Echo devices

It’s like one of our worst nightmares coming true. Some Amazon Echo users are reporting that Alexa has started laughing at random without any prompting. One user on Twitter claims it started to laugh as he was about to fall asleep, another one on Reddit describes the laugh as sounding almost like a real person (after Alexa refused to turn off his lights after three tries). Amazon says they are aware of the issue and are working on the matter.

Here’s Amazon’s official statement about the issue: “In rare circumstances, Alexa can mistakenly hear the phrase ‘Alexa, laugh.’ We are changing that phrase to be ‘Alexa, can you laugh?’ which is less likely to have false positives, and we are disabling the short utterance ‘Alexa, laugh.’ We are also changing Alexa’s response from simply laughter to ‘Sure, I can laugh’ followed by laughter.” 

Source: Gizmodo

Amazon tipped to be trying to add real-time translation to Alexa

Possibly taking its cues from Google Assistant, Amazon is reportedly trying to turn its Alexa voice assistant into a real-time translator. What would be different this time around is that it won’t just translate phrases but also supposedly include local culture into its responses. Amazon is reportedly looking into making this feature available on multiple devices and it’s hoping to translate multiple conversations at once. It isn’t clear though where Amazon’s translation skills will be coming from. But if this is happening, we should hear about it soon enough.

Source: The Verge

Amazon purchases Blink to expand its connected home lineup

Amazon’s latest acquisition shows us how the company is taking the expansion of its connected home line very seriously. They just bought Blink, the company behind the wire-free home monitoring system. Blink offers both an indoor and outdoor home security camera models as well as a video doorbell. According to Blink, nothing will change for the company and its customers now and they will continue to operate as usual and support clients as needed.

Source: Engadget

Review: Kindle Oasis (2017)

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

2017 marks the 10th year anniversary of the Kindle eBook reader which is truly one of the revolutionary inventions of our time.

Amazon's Kindle ushered in the era of eReaders, which have made it possible to simulate the visual quality of paper on an electronic device capable of carrying thousands of books and documents but which is thin and surprisingly light.

The early Kindle was a beast by today's standards. It tried to do too much. It came with a QWERTY keyboard, a web browser and probably an e-mail client. This was at a time when smartphones were BlackBerry devices and not iPhones, so you get the idea.

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