Posted on May 25th, 2025 by Joy Schwabach
The new “Alexa Plus” can make reservations, summarize documents, and hold a conversation without your having to keep saying “Hey Alexa.” It’s available in an “early access” program to owners of the Echo Show smart speaker. Once you have it on an Echo Show, it becomes instantly available in the free Alexa app on your phone, the Amazon Fire tablet, the Echo Dot and even in email. I started it by testing it on a document, the “Simple Sabotage Field Manual,” from Gutenberg.org, a free book site. Because Alexa Plus only accepts text in certain formats, I click the “simple text” version, copied it and emailed it to alexa@alexa.amazon.com. I was careful to skip the intro about Gutenberg.org, […]
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Filed under: AI, Amazon, Internet, Internuts, music | Comments Off on THE NEW ALEXA PLUS
Posted on May 19th, 2025 by Joy Schwabach
If I have to hear “There’s a bright golden haze on the meadow” one more time, I’ll turn it off. I love Rodgers and Hammerstein but there’s a limit. Now I’ve rediscovered Pandora. The problem with Spotify, Amazon Music and YouTube Music is that they either play too much of what I said I liked, or they start at the top of a playlist I’ve heard too many times before. I could build new playlists of course, or try to think of new tunes to ask for, but I like the way Pandora creates a radio station for me. Even on the same Pandora station, I get a different mix every time. For example, when I asked for the Rodgers […]
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Filed under: AI, business, environment, Internuts, music, virus | Comments Off on REDISCOVERING PANDORA
Posted on May 13th, 2025 by Joy Schwabach
Imagine a robot taking your credit card and running down the aisle to pick out everything you need. That’s virtually what Visa’s new “AI Ready Cards” can do with artificial intelligence. With the new card, AI agents will make purchases for you even before you think of them. In fact, they’ll know you better than you know yourself. Got privacy concerns? Don’t opt in. This has been creeping up on us for decades. Amazon already collects shopping data so it can suggest products and push ads your way. The AI Ready card is just one step further. With it, you needn’t lift a finger to get a steady stream of okay products coming to your door. For example, if you’re […]
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Filed under: AI, apps, Google, Internuts, video | Comments Off on ROBO SHOPPING
Posted on May 5th, 2025 by Joy Schwabach
I used SurveyMonkey to get 28 responses to an online survey for members of my new book club. But it only showed me 25. If I had insisted on seeing all 28, it would have cost me over a thousand bucks. A friend suggested the free Google Forms, which works great. Just like SurveyMonkey, it can create surveys, questionnaires and quizzes. It also gives you a link to send out by email, text or social media and tallies the results. Needing help, I asked ChatGPT how to improve the survey’s appearance. That worked. Automatic Zippers I recently returned a wetsuit because it had only one tiny zipper, located in the front, which made the suit tough to get into. A […]
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Filed under: AI, business, gadgets, games, maps, robots, trends, TV | Comments Off on CONDUCTING ONLINE SURVEYS
