Is There an Echo in the Home? The Power of Voice Assist on Devices...

Greetings everybody. Welcome to the Wednesday, October 4th, 2017 episode of Free Webinar Wednesdays. This is Eric Cook. I'm with WSI Digital Marketing, where we work with businesses and organizations in helping you better understand and leverage the power of the internet as a strategic business tool. You can learn more about me and all the fun stuff we get to do here at WSI Online at poweredbywsidigitalmarketing.com. With me this week is my good friend and Free Webinar Wednesday partner, Mr. Jeff Simpkins. Jeff, say hello to everybody out there in Free Webinar Wednesday world.

Greetings everybody, this is Jeff Simpkins and I am with Community Bank Consulting, Inc. You can learn more about me and the services we provide at Community Bank Consulting, Inc. online at www.communitybankconsulting.com.

Cool. So let's get housekeeping out of the way. You've got a trip coming up. I want to talk about that for any bankers that might be listening. They might be able to actually get to meet you in person. And then this is going to be kind of an echo hall, a little bit of Google discussion. So housekeeping stuff. As a reminder, today's show and all shows are recorded, made available at FreeWebinarWednesdays.com. So feel free to hit that site up and check it out, and we'll get today's recording up there when it is done. And if you are listening live and have a comment, question, feedback, if you've played around with any of the devices that we're going to be talking about, please feel free to use the chat function and let us know. We love hearing from our live audience and very much would love to—

Thank you.

Kind of hear what's on your mind and build a little bit of conversation. So housekeeping items, check. Jeff, you are headed off to a banking event to share your wisdom with some bankers. You want to talk a little bit about that, where you're going to be and how people might be able to find you?

I am, and I just sent you a link in chat if you want to put the conference website up. I am going to be headed to Orlando next week to speak at the CSI Customer Experience 2017 conference, and I will be talking about bank operations matters. Be doing a breakout session a couple of times. This is my either third or fourth year. Speaking at this conference. CSI is a pretty major player in the industry. A lot of people in community banking haven't heard of them. They've got a couple core systems that they run. Their main core system is NewPoint, but they've got a pretty significant compliance area that a lot of bankers do business with and may not even be aware that they're part of CSI. But as you can see on the screen, Peyton Manning is doing the keynote address at this event.

Sweet. Toss football around with him a little bit. Yeah. You're like, yeah. Oh, too funny.

I almost made a, made a misstep and said a tongue-in-cheek phrase that I don't want to say on here.

There you go. Yeah, like that's never happened before here at Free Webinar Wednesdays.

Never.

Never, never, never, never. So cool. Well, good. Well, we wish you well. And Jeff and I have both— I'm not going this year, but Jeff and I have both been at a CSI event together in the past. And it's a good event and they're a great organization. We got a couple customers that actually use them for core processing and I'm sure you'll have a good time. Tell anybody there that I know from days gone by that I said hello, if you would please.

Yeah, I forgot the last time the event was in Orlando was when you and I were there at the same time. Yeah, and if they happen to be looking for one of your favorite places on earth—

exactly, love Disney. So we get down there and, uh, get our Disney freak on. So it's— we're the, uh, unusual non-child couple that loves to go to Disney, primarily because we like to watch what happens to all the families that are there with kids late in the day when they decide to start cratering and crying and misbehaving due to the heat and tiredness. And that's when we just kind of smile and keep on walking by. So usually it's with a giant barbecued roasted turkey leg in my mouth too, because those things are pretty darn awesome. So if you get a turkey leg, be sure to send me a picture.

Well, I actually learned earlier in the week that CSI has contracted for several events at the Rosen Shingle Creek in Orlando. So they'll be back in 2020. So if you want a chance to go to Orlando, start lobbying your CSI contacts now.

There you go. Yeah. Well, feel free to drop a little hint when you're talking to folks and saying your good buddy Eric would love to come back and be part of an event. So we'll see if we can see if we can make that happen. So that's cool. So the the title of today's show, and I didn't get a chance to actually get the the pre-show posted, but the title of today's show is going to be something along the lines of Is there an echo in the home or something along those lines? Because I wanted to play off the echo devices, and in one of our prior shows we had started.

Sure.

We're gonna start talking a little bit about some of the Echos that Amazon has put out, and also talk a little bit about the Google Home device. And Google is actually having one of their largest events today, announcing their new Pixel phones, which I'm pretty excited about. I don't know if we'll have much time to talk much about those, because I don't know, I think the event is just going on right now. So after the session is over, I might fire up the livestream and just check in to see what all my Google buddies talking about. But Google is announcing today a bunch of Pixel devices that will be new phones, a couple of different home devices, which is their version of the Echo, their home connected voice activated device, a Pixelbook, which is kind of a Chrome-based laptop. So a bunch of kind of interesting things going on. So it's for geeks like me, today's kind of like a little Christmas where there's lots of really cool things that It's like when you used to get the Toys R Us catalog when you were a kid right before Christmas time, and you'd go through and you dovetail all of the— or dog-ear, I guess— all the different things that you wanted, the racetracks and the games and the G.I. Joe with the kung fu grip. And so now those toys just get a little bit more expensive, that's all.

I'm chuckling at you because, uh, when I was a kid there was no Toys R Us. That came after me.

Was it like the JCPenney catalog then that has a toy section?

Sears. Sears.

Okay, the Sears, the Sears catalog.

There you go. Back when Sears really was where America shopped.

Exactly. So cool. Well, there have been, um, a bunch of additions to the Echo family that I wanted to talk about, and Some of them are starting to integrate video, which we talked about last time. There's a new kind of base hub platform that actually incorporates smart home connectivity, which I think is kind of cool. They're starting to sell the new Echos. They've got these now available in 2-packs and 3-packs at a lower price point. And so for folks that may not have heard some of our prior Echo rantings, you know, the Echos themselves are certainly Amazon's attempt at coming into the market with voice-activated intelligence, I guess, controlling devices that allow you to do a variety of different things. And Jeff and I Today, through his Echo and also through my Home, both of these platforms have just released the ability to call landlines directly with them. And so Jeff called me on my phone using his Alexa device, and I called him on his phone using my Google Home device. And so it's kind of bringing the concept of a landline back into a home, but not necessarily having a landline. And one of the interesting things that I heard with regards to the phone calling capabilities of the Echo device is that it can be used in a 911 situation because it apparently is somehow tied back to your mobile phone device, and there's some way that you can associate an address with it. Whereas the Google Home, I don't believe that that can be used in replacement for 911. So there's a little bit of a challenge there. But I guess, yeah, so just kind of a recap of those. You can see the all-new Echo, which is a little bit shorter version. It's not the 179 like it was before. A little smaller, still pretty robust speakers. Now come in a variety of different colors. So if you want to jazz up your Echo device and give it a wood grain finish or some sort of a fabric, you now don't have to settle for just the plain old ugly black style. So, so with that kind of long-winded rambling introduction, Jeff, any, any thoughts on your part on some of the newer Echo devices that have recently been released that you'd like to talk about?

Oh, well, I mentioned last week I've got the Echo Show, which I don't know how long it's been out, 3 to 6 months, I'm guessing. And, um, the reason I ended up with it is, as we've talked about a number of times, lightning hit my house, fried all of the electronics that were on my desk. And specifically, well, in addition to, but everything that was plugged into an Ethernet cable got fried. But I had a couple Echo devices get fried, and they've got a special, or they had a special, maybe it's not any longer, but you got $100 off of 2 Echo Shows, which ended up causing it to be exactly the same price as the Echo Tower at the point that I placed an order for it. And, you know, it's interesting, it's I, I think what's going to happen is with the show, they're going to end up enhancing it as they move forward. It's so new, they don't do a ton with the screen. As an example, last week we ended up coming up with the question in the show, what's the currency in Venezuela? I asked Alexa while we were on the show and she told me and flashed a picture of the currency up on the screen. One of the things Oh, for example, I ordered a 2-hole punch. Believe it or not, I've, I've got some volunteer work I'm doing that is still very much tied to paper, and they give me folders that need 2-hole punches. But I got both a visual and an audible message on my show this morning letting me know that it was being delivered today. And then after it was delivered, I got a visual message telling me that it had been delivered. Um, it's one of the features they're promoting on the show right now, the Echo Show, is the ability to ask for movie previews. So if I wanted to see a preview of any movie, uh, upcoming or in the past, I'd just say, Alexa, show— play me a trailer of Pretty Woman, or whatever movie I want to look at, and it pops Straight up on the screen. So it's cool. And I think it's the next generation. It's got a touchscreen built into it. One of the things that was kinda cool, Eric, when you and I had the voice call and I total exited call your cell phone, There's a touch button on the screen that when I'm ready to end the call, I can just press in the call as opposed to having to use the voice command, which is my biggest complaint with the devices, um, when you don't have a touchscreen. Right.

Well, and as you probably heard when we were having our call from my Google Home, I had to say, uh, okay, G, uh, end call or hang up or whatever it was. And if, if you're trying to keep it rather inconspicuous that you're using an Alexa or a Google Home device as part of your calling, that just may seem kind of weird, or you have to uncomfortably wait for the other person to disconnect. And so what I think will probably end up being the case if I decide to use either of those devices to make some phone calls is when somebody answers, I might, you know, give them a, oh, by the way, I'm using my Echo device to give you a call, so if you hear me Ask Alexa to hang up, you'll understand what I'm talking about. And then that might actually facilitate a little chuckle and maybe some even side dialogue before the real conversation actually gets started. So depending on how well you know the person, because if you're just talking and then all of a sudden you say, Alexa, hang up, the person on the other end might be like, what? What are you talking about? My name's not Alexa. So it might be a little confusing.

The other complaint of mine is that when you're on a call, when you use the wake word, it still wakes the device up and actually your call goes into the background. So I think that's something that they're going to need to work around at some point.

Gotcha. There's also, for anybody that wants to try this out, I know Mark in our office has played around with it a little bit. And if you— and I don't know if the touchscreen on the show does this, but if you've got an Alexa device and you're calling somebody and they are at an extension number, for example, so, thank you for calling Community Bank Consulting, press 1 for Jeff Simpkins. There's no real way if you're just using your voice command to enter a number 1 on a touchpad. And so there's touchtone emulators that you can actually download for your computer that will give you the ability to make that sound of what a 1 sounds like when you touch it on your touchpad. So that sound goes through Your computer and your device will hear that, and that's what will send the trigger for TouchOne for Jeff Simpkins. So you don't have something like that and you happen to be calling somebody, you don't realize you're getting an after-hours or press, you know, pound for the directory, you're not going to be able to do that unless you bring in some sort of a third-party tone emulator. And I don't know, does the show give you any sort of a touchpad beyond just the hang-up button, or does that not really give you that capability?

It does not at this point. I suspect that's something that will be added. And I actually accidentally learned that the Echo devices are now capable of placing calls to landline telephones. Just when I was scrolling through some of the features of the new devices, I noticed One of the features said that you can call North America. I think it's the US, Canada, and Mexico.

For every—

if you scroll down on the screen that you're on, there's actually somewhere lower on the page, there's a comparison of 5 of the Echo devices.

Yep. And I want to talk about the hub. which now resides within Echo Plus. 'Cause I think that also— and I know you've got a little bit of smart home action going on. One of the podcasts that I listen to is This Week in Google, and Stacy Higginbotham is one of the co-hosts of that, and she also hosts her own podcast, Stacy on IoT, which is the Internet of Things. And in her smart home, One of the challenges that she has is a lot of these smart devices, the Wemos and the Hues and the Ring Central, they all rely on hubs in most instances to control them. So they don't necessarily get controlled directly by the Echo device until the Plus has come out, where the Echo device communicates with a hub. And then the hub controls your lights or your thermostat or your security system or your door locks, whatever the case might be. And now the Echo Plus has that baked in as a hub that has the ability to smart control, so you can eliminate all those third-party hubs. And she made the comment during that podcast that she's expecting probably 4 or 5 devices that she has had to acquire around the house to run a variety of different things, because of course nothing actually runs off of the exactly same one. So your lights might be different from your thermostat, so now you've got 2 different hubs to use. That will actually start taking the place and being able to just be used as a hub by itself. So here's that comparison chart that you were referring to, Jeff.

Yeah, I've got 3 hubs sitting to my right even as we speak, all of which got fried from the lightning damage because they have to go directly into— they have to be hardwired into an Ethernet port.

Yeah.

So I've got a hub, they call it a gateway for the garage door opener. I've got a Philips Hue hub for all of my— I just have screw-in bulbs from Philips. No, that's not true. I've got a light strip from them as well. And then I've got some light switches from Lutron Caseta, I think is what they call that product. So each of those requires a different hub.

Cool.

And honestly, if you're starting up, the Echo Plus for $149.99, if you don't have to buy any more hubs, that saves you a good bit of money because the hubs tend to run Between $60 and $80 each.

Yeah, well, and if you look at the pricing on this, a couple things to keep in mind. I remember when I bought my regular Echo, which looks like the Plus but does not have the built-in smart home hub, that was $179, and they've reduced that to now $149. And they're running a promotion right now where— and I did a search for Echo Plus. I mean, you can buy it directly here, but if you just go on If we do, because I saw that they were running an actual promotion. Let's see.

Well, these devices will be available from retailers that carry Amazon products like Best Buy, Bed Bath Beyond.

Yeah. So there was— yeah, this one right here. So if you're a Prime member, this is kind of cool because not only, like you said, Jeff, you get the hub, but if you order this and you are a member of Amazon Prime, you can go ahead and get a bulb included, which I don't know what the cost of a Philips Hue bulb is, but it's probably— About $40 for a white bulb. Yep. So $40. So you're saving $40 or so bucks on a hub, you're saving $40 on your first light bulb, and you're getting this at $149 for Prime members to be able to get the whole thing kit and caboodle. So Prime members might want to take advantage of this. And you can see it's coming in 3 different colors now, where instead of just the old-fashioned black, you now can go silver, or you can You know, make it look like some sort of an Apple device and, uh, and get it in, in white. I'm surprised they don't call it Apple White. Just kidding.

Probably would be a good thing.

Probably wouldn't be a good thing.

Silver is kind of a— silver is kind of a nice color. I like that.

Yep. Yep. So, um, so that was, uh, and I have a good time. That might end up being, uh, something that I might pull the trigger on. So Who knows? But from a smart hub perspective, you can eliminate and simplify a lot of stuff by having it all just basically in one device. So we've got a handful of Dots sprinkled around. We've got one up at the cottage. We've got one at the house. I've got that— I unplug that and I take it with me. The Echo Spot is one that is kind of similar form factor to the Dot. It's nice and tiny. You know, talked about, you know, having one as an alarm clock. When I was listening to the web— or the— not the webinar, the podcast, the This Week in Google, there was also the comment that as much as we trust Amazon, probably not a good idea to bring anything with a video Unless you want to just put like a piece of tape over the actual camera. Probably not a good idea to bring that like directly into the bedroom where you're changing clothes. And, you know, so the Echo Spot, even though the form factor might make you think like it'd be a really good bedside alarm clock, because I think they show that as an example where it can be an alarm clock and, you know, good morning and may or may not be really what you would want to do. So maybe think a little extra hard before you toss one of those on your nightstand, maybe.

And that's not true of just Amazon devices.

Well, exactly, exactly. So, but you can see a lot of the, uh, 2 of the pictures at least that they show, um, you know, have got it sitting on your nightstand next to your bed. So just something to think about. Yeah.

Any device that has a camera attached to it, most likely the camera can be activated without putting on the green light or red light or whatever you use as your cue that the camera's on. That's true of smartphones as well, by the way. Yep. Yep.

Speaking of which, as I look at my MacBook Pro, you and I participate in a lot of conferences. So I'm gonna chase a little squirrel here and go down our A path. But, you know, it's interesting when you go to these conferences what the trinket du jour is. A couple years ago it was— and I don't know if you've seen any kind of things come and go— but used to be you'd have the clip-on hand sanitizer where you'd get the little Purell things, and everybody was doing a branded version of a Purell little mini that you could clip onto your belt or onto your golf bag and And it gives you that. And then they had screen cleaners and fidget spinners. I've seen a couple of those. But one of the recent conferences that I was at, one of the security vendors actually had these little slidable windows with double-sided sticky tape that were designed to just affix over the top of your webcam. And then instead of having to put a piece of tape like I've seen a lot of people do in the technology world where they just forcibly say you can't— even if you activate my camera, you're not going to see it. They've got these little slideable windows that you can put on your laptop where you can just slide it back and forth if you want to use it, and if you don't, you just slide it shut. I don't know if you've seen those at any of the conferences that you've been at, but I can see that as being pretty popular. Most of the more traditional bankers, I'll tell you, probably don't know what they are. But for a geek like me, you know, I stopped by the booth and the guy still had a whole bunch of them left over. And he's like, if you want a bunch, take them, because otherwise I'm just gonna have to take them back. So I grabbed some for my wife and for a couple of other people that I know to slap on their laptops. So if you're at a conference, look for those little monitor webcam covers. Pretty cool. Maybe, maybe they'll have some of those down in Orlando with some of the vendors. You can get yourself a little slide of a webcam cover. So that'll just thwart me when I decide to take over your laptop and turn on your, your camera to see you while you're traveling.

If anybody wants to You want to spy on me through one of my computers, have at it.

Yeah, not going to be a real exciting—

You're going to get what you deserve.

Yeah. Oh, too funny. So, well, any other, uh, I guess any other thought? I know there was some discussion regarding the Echo Look and whether or not you can see this is kind of stuck over on the far right-hand side. There was a lot of debate during that podcast that I was listening to as to whether or not that's even going to continue to exist. You know, a hands-free camera and style assistant. I don't know. You don't see that in the comparison grid down below, so that might have been just one of those, hey, let's try it. Oh, that didn't work so well. Let's discontinue it.

I was kind of surprised when they introduced that one. You know, they said out a big couple of email blasts with all this fanfare, and, uh, I, I looked at it and I was like, okay, why would I want that?

Yep, I don't really understand. Don't really understand. So, well, next on my little list of things to talk about is, uh, let's hop over into the wonderful world Of the Google sphere. So if we go to the Google Store, they're now adding some cool new things to their lineup. You can actually check out their livestream on YouTube if you're interested in checking that out. But they are, I think, doing some things that are similar to Amazon, and they're doing some things that I think are similar to Apple. And I'm a Google Pixel phone user and have been so since that came out last year. So I'm curious to see what the new Pixel device is going to have to offer and if that's gonna cause me to be migrating over into kind of a new Pixel. So who knows, maybe I'll be posting it for sale if anybody wants to buy a really well-taken care of Pixel 1. I'll make you a heck of a deal. But much like the Alexa devices, they have got their Google Home, which I will tell you was totally integrated. And I know, Jeff, when you called me on your Alexa, you gave it my phone number, although there does exist some interconnectivity between the Alexa app and your phone address book. But when I called you via my Google Home, it just accessed my Google Contacts because all of that information is up in my Google account. And so they've got a smaller version now called the Mini, which is going to be more like the Echo Dot. And then they've got a couple of other things that they've announced. So they've got a Home Max, which I think is their attempt. And we've talked about Spotify before, or not Spotify. What's the other? Sonos. Sonos. There we go. Yeah. So the Sonos speaker platform. And so you can see they've got a much larger footprint version of the home, which probably has got some other stuff baked within it that I'm not even really sure of yet because I haven't caught all of the details. It'd be interesting to know if this is going to have any sort of a smart hub capability as well. But from a fidelity perspective, you know, really going to be much more of a audiophile kind of sound experience.

That looks like a Sonos Play:3 speaker.

Yep. So tying it into Spotify. I see YouTube here. The one thing that I want to just take a quick step back on your show device, I heard that the YouTube Video capability on that Show device has been suspended. Apparently Google has said the Show device, the Amazon terms and conditions don't support the YouTube terms and conditions. And so while you might be able to watch through Amazon Video a preview of a movie, you're not at this point going to have access to any YouTube videos. So I don't know if that's just Google being territorial with its own YouTube information and saying, screw you, Amazon, we're not going to let you play our videos. But I don't know if you even tried that or gave it a shot, but something kind of interesting there.

Anyone has an interest in trying out the Google Home device and you don't have any and you happen to be a Costco member, I was in earlier in the week, and I noticed that they have a 2-pack of Google Homes at an attractive price.

Cool. Although you're not going to get the Home, the big one, because that's on a waitlist. So you have to go ahead and do that. So let's kind of go up and see Apple. When they came out with their new phone, they had their— what's it called— their iBuds or their earbuds, which were specifically designed to control the Apple device in the absence of the headphone jack. So I don't know if you actually got those, Jeff. Are you familiar with what I'm talking about, though?

I am. Greg has those, but no, I haven't gotten those.

Yeah. So the Pixel device itself has also done away with the headphone jack, even though I think The Google folks poked fun at Apple for removing it when they did. But now you've got the Pixel Buds, and the intent around these beyond just traditional Bluetooth are they're designed to work more closely with the actual Google ecosystem, the Google Assistant, much like the Buds are designed to work more closely with the Siri Assistant. So You can see that they've kind of followed suit despite the fact that they picked on them a little bit. The Google Clips, I'll be honest, I've not really even heard of this. So it looks like this might be a little clip-on device. And I know that there were people— maybe this is something a little bit more along the lines of Oh, the, the Nest cams where this could be just set up to capture information, position it in certain spots.

It looks like an old-school webcam. Yep.

So it's like it's got a little— no internet needed to capture. So that might be something kind of interesting to take a peek at to see how that works. So don't know a whole lot about it at this point, but you've got a little clip and baby monitor, security monitoring, kind of an interesting, interesting little thing there. So the Pixel 2 is where I'll probably be spending a little bit of time later today, just kind of digging in and seeing. kind of what that phone has to offer. I think even though I don't have an iPhone, I think it's going to be rather difficult to compete with the blast that the iPhone 8 and especially iPhone X— don't say X— but the iPhone X came out with as far as, you know, their facial recognition capability and the bevel-less or the, you know, kind of edge-to-edge. So it'll be interesting to see how this compares. To the overall Apple, and then even the Samsung devices have come out with some pretty cool stuff. Looks like they're doing dual front-facing speakers, so a little bit more of a stereo sound, although I don't know how often people are actually playing sound directly from their phone, but that's going to give it a little bit better capabilities to play some sound But the big advantage here for those of you that might be Google fans is just the instantaneous access to all the Google software. So, you know, our phones have already been updated to the Google Oreo operating system, whereas I don't think any of the other carriers have migrated over to that. And so from a security and a protection and a privacy perspective, you know, you're making sure You're getting the absolute most current version of the software, which is really pretty similar to what the Apple sphere does because they're controlling the delivery for the software. So water resistance, long-time charging. Don't know if it has wireless charging. Now that was one of the things that people were questioning. So But anyway, should be kind of an interesting little exploration to see what's going on over here with the Google folks. And they have talked about making it available at other retailers, so it's no longer a Verizon exclusive deal like the Pixel 1 was. So we will see. Who knows, maybe I'll be doing a more in-depth discussion around this in the future for Webinar Wednesdays. So don't suppose you've got much more to add to this Google Pixel discussion, do you, Jeff?

I don't. I'm pretty loyal to the iPhone only because I've had one for so many years and it's worked so well for me.

Sure, sure. So, cool. Okay. Those were, and this, I know Jeff and I oftentimes will say, well, maybe this show will be a relatively short one and we can get people on with their day. And then invariably he and I end up, you know, consuming the whole hour and then some and have to force ourselves to stop the conversation. But my little to-do list of things to talk about were to really go through some of the Echo stuff, the calling, some of the new ones. I think the Hub's kind of a cool They've got that deal if you're a Prime member interested in pulling the trigger. You could save, you know, maybe $80 in total by not having to spend money on a hub, and you get your first light bulb as part of that package. And you're getting that less than what you would have spent for a lesser device just a year, year and a half ago at a $179 price point. So, so then you may want to— you may want to take advantage of that. And then chatting a little bit about what's going on in the world of Google. So again, if you're interested, just do a search for October 4th Google events in YouTube, and that will get you— let me go ahead and I'll pull this over actually so you can kind of take a look at the— let's see here. Come on. There we go. So here's the livestream that I have paused because certainly don't want that distracting me from the other, other computer monitor. So go through and kind of check that out, see what all it has to say. So kind of cool. Alrighty. Well, Jeff, safe travels to you on your CSI conference. I'm actually going to be traveling next week and going to be attending some advanced LinkedIn Social Selling Certification Training. So I will be on the road. So provide the notice today that we're going to actually be canceling next week's Free Webinar Wednesdays. So we won't see you next Wednesday, but keep an eye on our website and our Facebook page, and we'll make an announcement when, when our next show is ready to go. And until then, enjoy your week and the next week, and we'll see you back at freewebinarwednesdays.com. In the very near future, so take care, everybody. Have a good one. Bye bye.