Awesome! Thank you so much for this :) I've been experimenting with using Echo for home automation (mainly TV/Logitech Harmony related stuff) and this is really, really cool for that. A tangent: Siri on the AppleTV 4th gen was pretty cool until I got Echo - now having to have that remote and press a button seems archaic. Apple and Google will definitely release something similar soon.
Thank you. I experienced the same feelings. It's interesting how eliminating the extra button press makes the technology not 20% more useful, but maybe 10x more useful (IMO).
There are constraints. For example, the Alexa service can't do dictation, so building certain types of applications doesn't make sense.
But, after experiencing the Echo, it's hard to imagine a future without this type of computing - where you speak a sentence and it maps to a function carried out on a server. It's a very natural and fun way to get things done.
