Awesome Alexa

Digital assistants like Alexa are impressive, but they’re built into boring-looking devices. The AI we encounter in science fiction is more relatable because it has a face. Workshop Nation gave Alexa more personality by connecting an Amazon Echo to a vintage CRT screen that displays audio waveforms and topped it off with eye-tracking animatronic eyeballs.

This tabletop speaker features iconic Marshall amp styling, with the usefulness of a built-in Amazon Alexa voice assistant. It has a 30-watt class-D amplifier, Airplay 2, Bluetooth, and Spotify Connect capability, and you use them to create a multi-room audio system. A Google Assistant version is also in the works.

The Smart Cuckoo Clock is one of the Day1 Editions Amazon will build if it garners enough pre-orders. The stylish wall clock has an analog face, a swinging pendulum, and a mechanical cuckoo, along with digital chimes and alarms. It also has an LED timer that can be controlled with a nearby Amazon Echo device.

We already know what Siri might have been like back in the 1980s, now Squirrel Monkey imagines another virtual assistant existed during a time when voice synthesis and voice recognition were in their infancy. We love how it uses a cassette recorder to download songs from Amazon Music.

Amazon’s Alexa-powered speaker is now an orb, which not only looks cooler, but improves audio quality. The room-filling speaker can stream music from Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify, SiriusXM, and more, and can control smarthome devices via voice commands. There’s also a spherical Echo Dot and a Echo Dot for kids.

Sign up for 2 months of Amazon Music Unlimited ($19.98 total), and get a 3rd-gen Echo Dot Clock (a $59.99 value) for just $9.99. The smart speaker provides access to Alexa voice commands, music playback, and can display the time, outdoor temperature, or timers. (Limited time offer, subscription auto-renews)

Amazon’s largest Echo speaker is a direct shot across the bow of Apple’s HomePod – for a hundred bucks less. It uses five speakers to fill your room with rich, dynamic sound, and self-calibrates to your space. It supports lossless audio streaming, Dolby Atmos, and 3D audio formats. Naturally, it works with Alexa.

Amazon’s value-priced, compact Echo device plugs into any outlet, adding Alexa voice assistant capability unobtrusively to any room. It provides smart home control, weather, traffic, and other information, and has a built-in USB port for powering other devices or attaching a 3rd-party motion sensor or smart nightlight.

This little gadget from Amazon fills in a gap in your living room or home theater system. It works in concert with your Fire TV or Echo to enable voice remote control for your infrared-enabled entertainment equipment like TVs, satellite boxes, and audio receivers. Device compatibility explained here. Available 12/11/19.

Add an Amazon Alexa voice assistant to your car with this tiny 3.3″ x 1.9″ gadget. It has 8 microphones to ensure Alexa can hear you over music and road noise (within reason), and lets you ask questions, stream music and audiobooks, and much more. Requires a Bluetooth or aux input, and can mount on many car air vents.

The 1979 Sugar Hill Gang track Rapper’s Delight put hip hop on the map for many of us. Now enjoy a cover of the seminal rap track, as performed by the trio of Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant, courtesy of YouTuber Steven Rosenthal. It seems like Siri has the best sense of rhythm.

Has your Alexa-enabled device ever started spontaneously responding to something you know you didn’t say? In this short horror film by Julian Terry, Amazon’s digital assistant really does seem to be hearing things – and they’re not good.

The Vobot works not only as an alarm clock, but can stream media from Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, and TuneIn, and offers Amazon Alexa integration for checking weather, traffic, and news, smarthome control, and requesting services like taxis or food deliveries.

Palo Alto Innovation’s Sandman Doppler has stereo speakers, six USB charging ports and is Alexa-enabled. It also has shortcut buttons for your favorite Alexa commands and macros, and an auto-dimming RGB LED display.

“Alexa, order me some Xanax.” That’s the first command we’d issue to this creepy nightmare fuel, Mike McGurrin’s Amazon Alexa build which speaks its words from an animatronic skull. Grab the full build plans on Hackster.

We’ve got an Amazon Echo and it’s awesome except for when an Amazon commercial comes on and says “Alexa…” and it tries to answer the TV. Brian Kane posted this hilarious hack of what Amazon’s next Echo version should look like. Alexa, Take Me to the River.