When I tried the new Alexa Plus back in March, she seemed dumber than the old Alexa. But after a friend raved about her, I decided to give her another chance. Now I agree. Plus is a plus. 

Alexa Plus works with the Echo Dot, Echo Show, Amazon Fire tablet and Fire TV stick or cube, version 2019 or newer. To upgrade, just ask your old Alexa for Alexa Plus. Then try asking any open-ended question, the kind Old Alexa can’t handle. I requested “music as cheery as the Music Man musical.” She gave me “Broadway Classics with a Twist.” Odd, but OK.

I also asked Plus if it was true that in the American Revolutionary War, Britain moved a substantial number of troops to India to fight a crisis there, with a devastating impact on its ability to fight the war in America. She said no. I felt she was wrong, so I checked with Copilot, who said yes, it was true. Copilot was echoing the views of historian Steven Pincus of the University of Chicago, who looks at the Revolution from a global perspective. Copilot and I were just chatting about this a few days ago.

Later, I changed Alexa Plus’s voice. To me, all the new female options sound babyish or snooty. So I chose “Masculine Calm” for my Echo Dot and “Masculine Friendly” for my Echo Show. To change the Alexa Plus voice on your device, just say, “Alexa, change your voice.” 

Old Alexa is still impressive, however. For instance, you can start the day with your favorite podcast, if you set it up as a routine. Or you can move your music from one room to another by saying something like, “Move the music to the kitchen Echo.” Not only that, the old Alexa is free. At the end of March, Alexa Plus will cost $20 a year if you aren’t an Amazon Prime member.

Tell it to Your Ring

Writers often carry around a little notebook to jot down ideas. But what if you could talk to a ring and have your thoughts instantly recorded in an iPhone app? That’s the promise of the $249 “Stream Ring,” available for pre-order from sandbar.com. It launches in summer of 2026 for iPhone. An Android version is coming “soon.”

The default voice in the Stream Ring is personalized to sound just like you, but you can change it if you find it creepy. The pro version comes with three free months of unlimited interactions with your personal assistant and unlimited notes, after which it will cost $10 a month. 

AI in Your Texts

I’m getting more texts on my phone every day. Often, they’re texts with a group. But instead of using the phone’s own messaging app, I could be using the latest version of the free ChatGPT app. It allows you to send text messages too.

Why would I want to? For fun mainly, or to get AI’s help whenever the group had a question, without having to leave the app. In a demo, for example, AI looked at the photo that someone had texted and offered to put everyone in animal costumes. They looked great. The group also enlisted AI’s help for restaurant recommendations and directions.

But it didn’t work out well in my tests. My friends let me send all the questions to AI. They didn’t say a word until AI goofed up. For example, it got all the stops wrong on a Caribbean cruise they were planning. Later, a friend was dropped from the conversation though she hadn’t said a word. Twice, AI responded by saying it was having difficulties.

So rather than use the ChatGPT app for texting, I find it works better to use my regular texting app, after getting whatever I wanted from AI. For example, I went to ChatGPT.com on my computer and uploaded a photo of my brother-in-law in jeans and a fishing shirt. After ChatGPT put him in a tuxedo at my request, I emailed it to my sister. But I could just have easily texted it.

Convenient Shortcuts

Have you ever been in a Zoom session or some other program and needed to quickly switch back and forth between it and something else? There are several ways to do it.

Here’s one: Hold down the “Alt” key on your Windows keyboard (or the “Command” key on the Mac) and tap the “Tab” key repeatedly to cycle through everything that’s open, whether it’s an app or a website. Then click the one you want.

Alternatively, on the Mac, go to a favorite website and click the share button in the upper right corner of your screen. From there, click “add to dock.”

For Windows users, adding a site to your taskbar is easiest with Microsoft Edge. After clicking the three dots in the upper right of your screen, choose “More Tools,” then “pin to taskbar.”

Internut

“The Ocean-2 turns wave power into renewable energy.” Search on that phrase to learn about a bouncing orb in the ocean whose steady 50 kilowatt output is enough to power 15 homes. In larger swells, it can produce 500 kilowatts. Challenges include the corroding effect of salt water, the need to connect to the grid with expensive undersea cables and the difficulty of scaling up from mere kilowatts to gigawatts of power.

Filed under: AI, Internuts, Mac, text messaging, Windows