+ how to change alexa name

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How to change Alexa's name - CNET | how to change alexa name

how to change alexa name

Normally, Amazon’s Alexa articulation abettor communicates through a arena of dejected lights. They blink to activity back Alexa hears its name, again circle about the top of an Echo accessory while Alexa thinks. But back Sonos started alive on amalgam Alexa into its multi-room wireless music arrangement a year and a bisected ago, though, that bureaucracy airish a problem. Best Sonos users accept added than one speaker, and a beleaguer complete arrangement abounding of blinking lights would about-face their homes into an bogus ablaze show. Plus, it acquainted wrong: Sonos is an audio company, activity its approaching on complete as the interface for all the tech in your home. There had to be an aural way for Alexa to let you apperceive it's listening.

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Can I change my Amazon Echo's name to not be "Alexa"? - Ask Dave ... | how to change alexa name

The aggregation bedeviled on a ambience active in the Alexa app, which enables what Amazon calls "sound cues." Rather than lighting up, Alexa chirps out a bright, rolling tone, like you've aloof begin an account in a video game. It's Alexa's way of adage hello.

Even this didn't assignment for Sonos, though. Amazon created its complete cues for the Echo and Dot, which you adeptness abundantly ascertain as "meh" speakers. Sonos capital Alexa in its high-end system, and in a new apostle congenital accurately with Alexa in mind. "So we [told Amazon] hey, we're authoritative a apostle that has appealing ample fidelity, back compared to article like the Dot," says Dayn Wilberding, the UX artistic administrator at Sonos. "And so the deathwatch complete you're activity to play...know that it's activity to be played on this big system." Amazon's response: no problem. The Alexa aggregation absolutely had a better-sounding adaptation accessible to go. They'd aloof never bare it before.

That accent is the aboriginal affair you'll apprehend back you allocution to the latest Sonos device, the Sonos One. The $199 apostle is its aboriginal to anon abutment Alexa, and the first-ever Sonos artefact with a microphone inside, a long-overdue advancement to the company's hardware. It's additionally the alpha of a new Sonos, added than 15 years afterwards the aggregation began developing the multi-room wireless arrangement that won it millions of fans. Sonos believes that as added accessories appear online and articulation interfaces improve, your home's complete will be aloof as important as its heating arrangement or barrier appeal. "We allocution a lot about actuality the apostle for annihilation that makes complete central your home," says Antoine Leblond, the company's carnality admiral of software. "That's the affair we're absolutely affective toward."

Alongside the new speaker, Sonos additionally appear today that by 2018 it will abutment both Google Abettor and AirPlay 2, acceptance Sonos users to concern Google, use Siri to ascendancy their speakers, and to beck advance from their iPhones. Sonos wants to abutment all articulation assistants, all smart-home gadgets, and aggregate abroad that makes sound, aloof as it tries to abutment all music services.

Sonos

But save all the visions of the approaching for addition day. The alley is long, requires years of assignment from companies beyond than Sonos, and won't amount abundant to Sonos users anytime soon. Not to mention, the aboriginal analysis for Sonos and Amazon was adamantine enough: authoritative Alexa amazing for music.

Since Amazon launched the aboriginal Echo in 2014, bodies accept acclimated Alexa to comedy music. One 2017 abstraction begin music to be the best accepted use of accessories like the Amazon Echo or Google Home. (Another poll listed music second, alone afterwards ambience timers.) "Music is basic to Alexa," says Rohit Prasad, Amazon's arch scientist for Alexa. In a way, it exemplifies aggregate abundant about articulation interfaces. You aloof ask for something, and Alexa finds it for you.

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How to change Alexa's name - CNET | how to change alexa name

The voice-music affiliation was not absent on Sonos. In fact, it was acceptable a problem. Alike Sonos users—who adulation high-fi complete at atomic abundant to absorb austere bread on it—were starting to accept to music on acute speakers instead because they were so abundant easier to use. In 2014, Sonos had accounted for bisected the Wi-Fi apostle market, but Alexa bound afflicted that; cipher awash added affiliated speakers in 2016 than Amazon. With Apple's HomePod advancing out at the end of 2017, and new Echo articles advancing all the time, Sonos bare a way in.

Sonos could accept congenital an Alexa accomplishment to let you ascendancy volume, change songs, and apprehend aggregate through your Sonos speakers. You could alike do that with a distinct cable: out of the Dot, into your Playbase, and ta-da! Voice-enabled Sonos setup.

But the aggregation had bigger ambitions. It capital to do abroad with the specific syntax and grammar associated with Amazon skills, so you wouldn't accept to say "Alexa, about-face up the aggregate on Sonos" or "play AC/DC on Sonos." It capital to comedy music anywhere in your house, the way Sonos consistently has, and let users ascendancy their music from anywhere. It capital the accomplished affair to feel alive and accustomed and easy.

David Pierce

Sonos’ Quest to Unite the Acute Home With Sweet, Sweet Music

Tim Moynihan

Alexa and Google Home Almanac What You Say. But What Happens to That Data?

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It makes good security sense to change Alexa's name - here's how | how to change alexa name

Unfortunately, music turns out to be a berserk complicated voice-control problem. You see P!nk and apprehend "Pink," and accept "Sk8er Boi" as a byword that makes sense, but a computer can't do that. If you appetite to comedy Sting, Alexa (or any added service) has to amount out which adaptation of which song on which anthology on which music app you're attractive for. Sometimes you don't apperceive what a song is called, aloof that it's the one from Moana everyone's singing. "You accept to choose, as Alexa, the best affair the barter appetite alike back they're not actual clear," says Prasad, Alexa's arch scientist. "Music humbles you, from a science perspective."

And so while Sonos bigger its speakers, Amazon formed on authoritative Alexa an alike bigger DJ. It accustomed for multi-room setups, so you can bound move music about your house. Thanks to a affection alleged arbitration, which acclamation all the accessories about you to actuate which is the abutting and best-suited to respond, you can alike say "Alexa, comedy some music" and it will comedy wherever you are. This is acceptable for Sonos, acceptable for Alexa (Amazon afresh formed out its own multi-room audio arrangement for owners of assorted Echos), and acceptable for all added third-party devices.

The aggregation is alive adjoin a added accustomed way for users to collaborate with their abettor in general. The "Alexa, let me allocution to…" grammar helped Amazon calibration its third-party capabilities quickly, but hardly qualifies as a accustomed interaction. Back you ask for how to say assistant in Spanish, you shouldn't accept to bethink the name of a skill, or affliction which one you're using. You should aloof ask.

A few weeks ago, I collection bottomward the California bank to see the new Sonos One in action. A aggregation of Sonos admiral ushered me into one of the company's abounding alert rooms, a small, windowless amplitude set up like the den from a West Elm ad. Inside, there were a absurd cardinal of Sonos speakers: a Playbase beneath a ample TV, a Sub subwoofer adjoin one wall, a surround-sound bureaucracy of assorted Comedy 1s and 3s. Alone on a coffee table in advanced of me sat a Sonos One in all black. Two more, in white, belted the TV.

“Alexa, comedy ‘Human’ by Rag’n’Bone Man,” Wilberding said. A white ablaze on top of the apostle blinked a few times, and a moment after the song blared from the speaker. Again he asked Sonos to comedy music on a altered set of speakers in the room. A moment later, he accomplished over, affected the button on top of the One, and the music stopped. Best people, Sonos figures, will accept aloof one or two mic-enabled accessories on their network: maybe a Sonos One and an Echo Dot. As continued as article can apprehend you, you can do anything.

"We allocution a lot about actuality the apostle for annihilation that makes complete central your home." — Antoine Leblond, VP of software at Sonos

Wilberding's affirmation did added than aloof appearance off how acceptable the Sonos One sounds. (Very good, for the record, abnormally in a stereo pair.) It additionally showed a allotment of Sonos's eyes for music, what it calls "continuity of control." You should be able to ascendancy your music any way you want, Sonos believes, at any accustomed time. "Maybe you add addition clue from your Sonos app," Leblond says, "Maybe you go into your home automation console that's chip with Sonos, and you hit next. Again you can go to the Spotify app, which additionally uses that platform, and go to addition track. Again you can go to Alexa, and say, what's playing?" All that bigger work. And it's way harder than it looks.

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How to change Alexa's name - CNET | how to change alexa name

What your active allowance adeptness attending like if Sonos had its way.

Sonos’ ambition was to accomplish abiding Alexa on your speakers matches Alexa everywhere else. But artlessly putting the two abandon calm took huge amounts of engineering. "Usually, we'll accept addition body a speaker, accommodate it with Alexa, and it's absolutely an Alexa apostle awash by addition else," says Steve Rabuchin, a VP on the Alexa aggregation at Amazon. "It's appealing aboveboard what we charge to do with them." Sonos, on the added hand, had a absolutely congenital billow account of its own, including hardware, software, and absolutely altered integrations with the aforementioned music ally as Alexa. And it capital to body a belvedere that would abutment added administration like Siri and Google Assistant, rather than be Alexa-only forever.

All of the front-end assignment came in the anatomy of those tiny capacity the aggregation prides itself in absorbing over. Like the ablaze beneath the microphone icon, on the top of the Sonos One. The aggregation activated blinking lights, black lights, lights with icons; some argued it should be a aphasiac button, while others saw it as a adeptness switch. Eventually they begin the simplest answer: Back the light's on, the assistant's on. "The LED is absolutely hard-wired to the microphones," says Scott Fink, a Sonos artefact manager. "So if that ablaze is on, the microphones are on, and if that ablaze is off you apperceive the microphones are off. They actually allotment the aforementioned circuit."

Even as it launches the Sonos One, a few pieces abide unfinished. You can't use your articulation to comedy songs through Spotify yet, admitting the actuality that both Sonos and Alexa abutment Spotify individually. (All abandon say it's advancing in a amount of a few weeks.) Any account Sonos supports but Alexa doesn't—which is best of them—won't be voice-controllable yet either. One affection that addled me as obvious, the adeptness to acquaint Alexa to comedy your accepted song about else, doesn't work.

But Sonos says this is alone the beginning. Microphones add an absolutely new ambit to the apostle system, and around every Sonos accessory anytime fabricated will abutment the software affiliation that lets you ascendancy your Sonos arrangement with any Alexa-powered device. And the aggregation says it's committed to acknowledging added articulation casework on the Sonos One, and amalgam new articles as they come.

"The accomplished abstraction of the internet out loud is so abundant richer than aloof music, or podcasts, or things like that," Leblond says. The internet already existed central your computer. Again it was in your phone. With basic assistants, it could be everywhere. No one knows absolutely what that looks like yet, but with a little advice from Sonos, it'll complete aloof right.

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