In November last year Amazon unveiled the Echo. Basically its a smart speaker which is hooked up to the cloud. Echo can provide information, news, play music and do much more with just voice commands. It can respond to commands as well so it essentially offers Siri-like functionality. Amazon has pushed out a new software update for the Echo which now enables it to provide voice control for iTunes, Pandora and Spotify.
Amazon Echo already had the ability to stream music from these services through a smartphone or tablet. However users couldn’t control playback through it which basically made Echo no different than a Bluetooth speaker if it was only being used to stream music.
Today’s update changes that. Users will no longer have to perform media controls like play or pause on the connected device. They can simply give the voice command to Echo and it’ll do the rest. Music streaming has to be started via a connected device but once its up and running the stream can be controlled through voice commands.
Amazon Echo can’t be purchased by everyone just yet. It sent invites to a small group of people. Prime members could purchase it for $99 whereas the full price for Echo is $199.
No word as yet from Amazon whether this product will be made available for purchase to everyone anytime soon.
Filed in . Read more about Amazon, Connected Objects and Echo. Source: zdnet