Amazon Alexa turns 5

The Amazon Alexa voice assistant turns 5 today and originally it was…

Amazon announces a bevy of new Alexa products

Amazon wants to include their Alexa voice assistant in all corners of…

Choose your own adventure audiobooks now available on Alexa

Chooseco is the company that has produced the Choose your own Adventure…

Over 100 million Alexa devices have been sold

Dave Limp, senior vice president of Amazon Devices told the WSJ Tech…

Good e-Reader is now available on Amazon Alexa

Good e-Reader is now available as a Flash Briefing on Amazon Alexa. This includes the Alexa app for Android and iOS, in addition to the Echo line of smart speakers. Alexa will read all of the latest headlines and the news articles, which is ideal if you prefer the audio editions of our stories.

Amazon Alexa to get a special Newscaster Voice

Amazon is developing a customized Alexa Voice to read the news. Currently Alexa reads the news, but uses the same voice when you issue it commands or search results. Amazon has created a special version of the voice that sounds the same as a quintessential evening newscaster. Everyone is familiar with the “newscaster” voice style; it has a unique flow and emphasis atypical in ordinary conversations. The newscaster voice makes it immediately clear that the user is hearing a news report while helping emphasize key points, break up the information, and state everything clearly. Amazon says the new speaking style is enabled by by the company’s development of “neural text-to-speech” technology or NTTS. This is the next generation of speech synthesis, that use machine learning to generate expressive voices more quickly. Currently, Alexa uses uses concatenative speech synthesis, a method that’s been around for decades. This involves breaking up speech samples into distinct sounds (known as phonemes) and then stitching them back together to form new words and sentences.

Amazon Fire HD 8 will be the first tablet that uses Fire OS 6

The upcoming Amazon Fire HD 8 will be the first tablet that…

Amazon Freetime Unlimited is coming to Alexa

Amazon Freetime Unlimited is coming to all Alexa devices May 9th and…

New Alexa update for Fire 7 and Fire HD 8 tablets

Starting this week, Fire 7 and Fire HD 8 (2017) owners can…

Amazon Echo Speaker will now play your first Audible Audiobook for Free

The Amazon Echo line of smart speakers have just gained the ability…

Alexa Video Calling and Messaging Now Available on Tablets

Starting today, customers can use Alexa calling and messaging on Fire, Android,…

AR, VR and Alexa will dominate ALA Midwinter

The American Library Association Midwinter conference is occuring at the Colorado convention…

Amazon Alexa Smart Speakers Now Available in Canada

The Amazon Alexa line of smart speakers are available in Canada for…

Amazon Wants Developers to Make Choose Your Own Adventure Games for Alexa

Amazon really wants developers to start making choose your own adventure style…

Would you buy a Amazon Alexa Fire Tablet?

Amazon has been releasing tablets since 2011 and over the last two…

Amazon Echo Will Now Read eBooks Aloud To You

Amazon has just added new functionality for their Echo streaming media center…