@yakkoTDI Although Google might let me buy a fuku again with the additional spying might

@yakkoTDI ^^^^^^^ this. +100

@rjquillin You made Snoop sad.

@ihaveyoursox I feel like not being connected to Amazon is a good thing. It would give me so much anxiety to let Alexa buy stuff with my credit card without first comparison shopping and checking reviews.

@ihaveyoursox It’s good to spread your surveillance around 4-5 different companies rather than concentrate on one. For instance Amazon has your credit card and address, but only Google knows what kind of porn you like.

(just kidding, they all know everything)

@awk With this Google can listen to when you have sex and use the data from when you watch porn for some interesting numbers. Go DATA!

@nogoodwithnames I was going to say…

@nogoodwithnames well just because they din’t say it is not stolen doesn’t mean it isn’t not stolen, amiright?

@Mac454 Echo 1st gen was readily available at this price a week or two ago.

@ruouttaurmind Refurb was (and I bought one), new was $99.

Now the second generation is $99. The new Google thing isn’t out yet, but one assumes it will be soon, with this pricing.

@craigthom Wednesday announcement expected, along with the new Pixel phones.

@craigthom Mid-Sept. QVC had new Echo with an Audible bonus for $75. Home Depot had new Echo for $79 about this same time.

@jqubed Interesting. A week later than Amazon’s rollout of their new gadgets.

@Mac454 I just want an Echo with Google’s search engine. Bing sucks.

@ruouttaurmind And just under a month after Apple announced their new iPhones, which I think are the priority devices.

@jqubed @ruouttaurmind

The Pixel announcement last year was also October 4th.

(Dunno what I’m assuming at.)

@jqubed @ruouttaurmind

Gah!

*aiming at.

@mflassy Yeah, I would’ve expected them to target the same day of the week, not the same day of the month.

@rtjhnstn http://alexamods.com/guide-install-ask-google-alexa-skill/

@cmafba

December 1st 2017.

@cmafba Of course the world will not be complete until there is a Bing Thing.

@xerdkwa what does it help you with that “om google” doesn’t?

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@Brasssong
Three Google Homes for the hipsters blogging online,
Seven for the forum trolls posting from the basements of mom’s home,
Nine for everyone doomed to impulsively buy,
One for The Donald spamming Tweets from his phone,
In the land of unconstitutional wiretapping where our freedoms die.
One Google Home to record them all, One Google Home to spy on them,
One Google Home to self-incriminate them all and with subpoenas indict them,
In the land of unconstitutional wiretapping where our freedoms die.

@RedOak 79 sold and deal paused for the morning crowd. You called it!

@RedOak Paused at a quarter after with 79 sold.

@RedOak So we’re looking at 300 units, tops.

Must have been a small truck these things fell off the back of.

@ShotgunX

@awk Fine then! You ungrateful little brats think it’s so easy to just get what you want all of the time!? That you can just press a few buttons and the thing you want will magically appear at your doorstep in exactly two days!? That it would at most be ten or so bucks more than what I paid for your god-damn present after slaving away at my job!? You ingrates have no idea about the world of online shopping, a world whose darkness I bathe in every day! All you do is sit here and eat your candy corn and play with your knives and speaker docks while I lose my sanity keeping track of a dozen different deal aggregate sites every d…
"Domestic disturbance detected. Dialing 911."
What the hell!? This thing isn’t even plugged in!

@awk Amazon has better third party device integrations at this time, and, of course, it’s easier to order things from Amazon.

In my experience Google Assistant is better at understanding what I say and parsing sentences. And I don’t have to launch an app and tap the mic icon to use it on my phone.

I am probably going to buy some Dots for the rest of the house, maybe on Black Friday, but I want to wait until I see what Google comes up with as an equivalent.

@hafner bay area home. *actual size

@JohnQ118 WHAT DID YOU DO

@JohnQ118 and I HIT meh first…

@JohnQ118 You exchanged money for goods, a classic commerce power move.
/giphy buying stuff

@JohnQ118 you can likely cancel if you really have buyers remorse (even if you’ve lost your cancel button)

/giphy i have lost my cancel button

@Yoda_Daenerys Blink twice if you need help.

@Yoda_Daenerys knock 3 times on the ceiling if you want meh

@Yoda_Daenerys NOPE no regrets. not here. nope, not anyways. we’ll see what I get in a few couple days, I reckon. no alexa, nothing to see here. I’m moving along…

@JohnQ118 But Echo can make phone calls. Maybe you shoulda got one of those instead? Ya, that would have been a much better purchase.

@ruouttaurmind: Planting the seeds of doubt for 1197 days and counting

@Thumperchick twice on the pipe (bink bink), Meh’s your answer is no.

@abhinkhanna I was going to say that. G isn’t hex. And that’s not enough bits anyways.

And they’re usually printed with dashes.

@username same

@username Google Assistant on my phone doesn’t work when my phone is locked; I have to pick it up and unlock it first.

The speaker in this is louder than the phone’s speaker.

My brother has one of these, and it does a pretty good job of picking out a voice over ambient noise or music or whatever.

I’m sure there are other things, but I don’t have one of these. I’ve played with my brother’s, but not a lot.

@username Can Google Assistant turn lights on & off or play media on in-home devices? I don’t think I ever used it much but I love being able to say: “OK Google: turn on the kitchen lights”, “OK Google: turn on the living room media player.”, “OK Google: play ‘Redbone’ on all speakers”, etc.

The speaker in it isn’t bad at all and it can be put in synced audio-groups with Chromecast audios, so you can have whole-home audio really cheaply.

@elspic Google Assistant can turn lights on and off with the caveat that fewer device manufacturers have done the integration. For example, it works as well as Alexa for my Phillips Hue lights and my TP Link outlet, but my cheap Chinese RGB bulb works with Alexa but not Google Assistant (or IFTTT).

Alexa has been around longer, and this is likely to improve.

I haven’t messed with playing music to different devices. I’m not big on playing music through little speakers like those in the Echo and Home (or Bluetooth speakers).

@craigthom Aren’t you comparing 2 different things though? Google Assistant is just a phone app and Alexa is a hardware/software device. I didn’t realize that Google Assistant could work with Hue lights and thought that was something hardware related in the GH.

I’m using Home Assistant for my home automation hub and it works with Google Home via Hue emulation, which isn’t perfect but, as long as I can get the device into Home Assistant, GH can see it.

@elspic That’s not direct integration, though. I think people running Home Assistant or OpenHAB or Domoticz or something similar will know the details.

For people who just want to buy the Google Home or Alexa and have it work directly with their home automation devices, then it’s important that they work natively. I think that’s most people. They want to buy the bits and just have them work.

I think I’m being pretty specific when I’m comparing Alexa with Google Assistant (the AI part) and the Echo with Google Home (the hardware).

I can do both Google Assistant and Alexa from my phone. I can do Alexa from my Echo. I don’t have a Google Home at this point.

@craigthom But the Google Assistant app is NOT the same as the Google Home app. You use the Google Home app instead of Google Assistant, when you have a Google Home hardware device and it’s my understanding that the Google Home app is more capable than Google Assistant, especially in regards to home automation. It does sound like the Echo currently integrates with more services than the Home but the OP was asking about how the Home is different from Google Assistant.

Sorry if this sounds argumentative, I’m just trying to understand, as well as be clear for anyone else.

@elspic Can you provide some differences between the Google Assistant app and what’s running on Google Home?

So far the only one I’ve found is that the Android app will play a song off YouTube if it’s not in my library and I haven’t paid for the music subscription.

What will the assistant running on a Google Home do that the phone app won’t?

@elspic and it’s not a “Google Assistant app”, it’s the just the Google app that talks to the cloud-based Google Assistant. The same way Google Home does.

@yeppers

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I find your excitement odd considering your name is @yeppers.

@yeppers “Begs the question” and “devolve”. They make me sad also.

@Yoda_Daenerys if you manage to buy one at 8 PM I will be mighty impressed.

@dagirlgenius Alexa can tell bad dad jokes and sing songs, too. Apparently the latter was in response to Google Assistant. She can also give me a beat, rap, and autotune.

Google Assistant is better at playing trivia games; Alexa numbers the answers and wants me to give the number of the answer, which is really confusing when the answers are numbers.

I’ve had an Echo for a few weeks, and I’ve been playing with Google Assistant on my phone for around six months, after playing with my brother’s Google Home for a couple of days, and I’m still not sure which one I like better.

Amazon does have much better integration with third party devices. It’s always “Works with Alexa” first, then Google and Apple, maybe, in smaller print. This will likely change as the market changes, but, right now, if you want to control smart home devices, Alexa is a better choice.

I am undecided about which way I’m going to go for the rest of the house. I’m going to wait at least a couple of months to see how things develop.

@tweezak

Sometimes I think I kind of like that and
Other times I think I’m already there

@tinkleondabeach We wanted the morning crowd to have a shot at this too, so we’re holding back some of these until 8am ET.

@Nitewatch Really? What device is that?

@Nitewatch is that a banana boat in your pocket or are you just happy to see me? banana boat bluetooth speaker

@lemonswithsalt have one of these and LOVE it! One of my better meh purchases…

@Nitewatch you’re censoring yourself by saying “heck” instead of a stronger term, and then you’re censoring the “heck” itself with an asterisk? What the h*ck?

@Rentalsoul They will be announcing new options soon.

@Rentalsoul I have one for sale, same price. Brand new

@craigthom I hope so. Wanting them to come out with something like the dot for this.

@Rentalsoul if you still want one and you don’t get one let me know. I bought one on impulse here last time and it’s still in its shipping box as I’m not finding anything I particularly want to use it for. I was thinking about posting it on Craigslist. If you’re willing to pay $79 + postage it’s yours.

@moondrake Thanks for the offer! I think I’m going to get a couple of the new minis instead though. They’re the kind of thing I was wanting really.

@payindigo *guarantee it will

@payindigo it also lacks a speaker of meaningful quality, an aesthetically pleasing housing, and many of the other features of the Home. It’s only a voice assistant box.

@jbartus True, it’s very bare bones, but if people REALLY want a Google Home like device without paying for it, it’s an option.

@payindigo It lacks the microphone array that makes it able to hear you while music is playing, and, out of the box, you need to press a button to play with it.

Back in the Spring I played with this software and AlexaPi on an Orange Pi Zero. And they worked, but by the time I got everything set up it would cost more than a Dot on sale, and I suspect Google will have something similar, too.

It’s a fun toy, but it’s not a practical replacement.

@payindigo they had it attached to an issue of “the MagPi” a raspberry pi magazine… issue 57 I believe (I hit every B&N around, no luck)… good to hear they are thinking of cranking more out.

https://www.raspberrypi.org/magpi/google-aiy-voice-magpi-57/

https://www.raspberrypi.org/magpi/buy-aiy-projects-voice-kit/

https://aiyprojects.withgoogle.com/voice/#project-overview

@thismyusername

Microcentre are doing Raspberry Pi 3 + Google AIY bundles.