Rest of the Day: Talk to Amazon Alexa in Your Browser With Echosim.io
The Amazon Echo is a cool device, but it costs a lot of money, and you might want to kick your tires in advance. Thankfully, you can now communicate with Alexa, the virtual assistant behind the device, in your web browser. Hi Alexa, do you think I’ll have a suitcase tomorrow on Mondays?
- You can now talk to Amazon Alexa in your web browser. Alexa is, of course, a voice recognition bot that supports the Echo device (and the Dot and Tap companion gadgets). Echosim.io is actually a developer tool to simulate interactions with Alexa, but you can still try it just by talking to Alexa. You can also chat with Aleca via the Roger app . [Amazon via TechCrunch ]
- In other news, Google for iOS was recently updated with faster load times, new keyboard shortcuts for the iPad version, and “accelerated mobile pages” in search results. AMPs are similar to Facebook’s “Instant” articles in that pages are hosted on Google’s servers rather than their respective publishers, which results in faster loading times. [Google Inside Search via 9to5Google ]
- A new analysis of a Tumblr data breach in 2013 showed that hackers had stolen 65 million email addresses and passwords. However, passwords are hashed, which means they are encoded as strings of numbers rather than plain text, but they can still potentially be cracked. So if you’re a Tumblr user and didn’t change your password in 2013, well, you should probably go for it. [Motherboard]
- Will the next MacBook Pro have magic backlit keyboards? May be! KGI Securities’ Ming-Chi Kuo claims the next generation MacBook Pro will feature an OLED touchscreen display right above the keyboard, where you’d expect to find the F keys. Sounds neat. There are also patent applications from Apple showing a laptop in which the entire keyboard is replaced by a touchpad , but that would be silly. [Gizmodo via 9to5Mac ]
Summer is here, the long weekend is coming to an end, and I suspect the rest of the week will be filled with Mondays. Buckle up, Garfield, and make the lasagna.