Twenty-two million Americans now have what's called a "smart speaker," a gadget that sits on a table or shelf and responds to voice commands. The numbers have doubled in the past year.
This is without a doubt the hottest product out there and we expect the numbers to jump sharply again this year. The market leader, with about 72 percent, is the Amazon Echo; Google has about 18 percent and the rest is "other," which includes Apple's HomePod, and the Sonos One.
Now the Amazon Echo not only listens to you, it can listen for you. In short, it can be an intercom. If someone turns on its "voice calling and messaging" feature, you can either call them or listen in. There have to be certain agreements here: You must have put them on your approved list and vice versa. This last should be a big sigh of relief for all involved, because otherwise you are bugging their house without bothering to get a judge's order.
This is a lot like spying. You can "drop in" on a friend's home if they have an Amazon Echo, Echo Dot or Echo Show. If they have the latter, you can not only hear what's happening in the room, you can see whatever the device can see. You pay extra for eyeballs in the room; it's $160 for the one with the video camera.
More than a year ago, Joy bought an extra Echo Dot for a disabled friend. In the Alexa app settings, she named the second device "Joy's Second Echo Dot." Then she tapped the speech bubble to turn on calling and messaging. Back home she said, "Alexa, drop in on Joy's Second Echo Dot." She then heard her friend talking with the helper who comes in twice a week. The sound was clear, as if she were in the room. It's also like an intercom, in that the friend could have also talked back to Joy -- if she knew Joy was there.
If you don't want anyone to eavesdrop on what you're doing, you simply say to the device: "Stop Drop-In for my household."
The intercom feature kicks into play usefully if you have Amazon Echo devices all over the house or business. You can drop in on the one in your child's bedroom, for example, and call her to dinner. You would start that call by saying something like "Call the Echo in Jane's Bedroom." Go farther afield: check on grandma, check on someone next door, check on the dog.
We're still exploring the features of these devices. For instance, we just found out we can use Alexa to control the TV. Joy asked it to play the movie Mother's Day, which is free for Amazon Prime members. It worked because we have a $30 Amazon Fire Stick plugged into the back of the TV. We then asked Alexa to pause the movie so we could write this column. Amazon Echo got confused and searched for a movie named "Pause." But that stopped the movie anyway. The Google Home device can also send movies and videos to your TV; it has the advantage of access to the millions of shows and talks on YouTube, which Google owns. Amazon Fire TV also has access to YouTube videos, but in our tests, Alexa couldn't find them.
SPECIAL EFFECTS AT HOME
If you've ever been to the Haunted Mansion at Disney World or Disneyland, you'll remember spooky ghosts floating through the air and 3-D figures waltzing before your eyes. A similar kind of magic, from AtmosFX.com, is now available for home use. It requires no virtual reality headsets, starts at $7 and is called "animated decorations."
On June 1, the company is releasing a new set of animated decorations, but we're held in check by one of those nondisclosure agreements for the time being. We can only say that they're basically kid friendly; fans of a certain blockbuster movie will be thrilled to see 3-D creatures projected onto their windows or TV. OK, that's enough hints.
To watch these effects, you need a DVD player or a computer connected to a TV, monitor or projector. We first looked at the "Party Time" decorations, which bring you virtual balloons, confetti, fireworks and streamers. But what really blew us away was their Halloween set. Wacky pumpkins sing songs and tell stories from a virtual shelf. Moving shadows create mayhem in your windows. A creepy portrait follows you with his eyes from your TV screen; it reminds us of Uncle Max.
FINDING A GOOD BRIDGE GAME
Bob has been playing Microsoft's Bicycle Card Games for years. He likes them because of the graphics. He also likes it because the Microsoft programmer who made it is probably the worst bridge player in the world, and is very easy to beat.
It's a friendly game with friends, if you don't mind that one of your friends is Sam Spade and another is a guy who looks like he needs a shave. But the game suddenly went kaput on us, showing a haze of colored blocks. This set us off on a quest to find the best substitute.
After several disappointing tryouts, we were ready to give up. Then we put the Bicycle Card Games CD back into the computer and it worked! By the way, it's an old program and lists Windows 98 as the most recently compatible operating system. But it works on our Windows 10 machines. Amazon had only two copies left when we checked. The cheapest was $20; golden oldies still sell.
Bob and Joy Schwabach can be reached by email at [email protected] and [email protected].
Business on 05/19/2018