Amazon Echo now reads your Audible books on command ... Other capabilities recently added involve accessing services outside Amazon's walls ... Getting traffic info - sports scores ... Controlling lights in the home.

Amazon updates their Echo voice assistant and speaker to add direct read of Audible books

This has been a big request.  Earlier, people had to pair phones or tablets with bluetooth to have their Audible books read through the convenient and very clear Echo speaker system.

Amazon's wording:

' Listening to audiobooks from your Audible library is easy. Here's how:

- Start any book you own with "Alexa, read [Audible book title]"
- Resume the current book you're reading by saying "Alexa, read my book."
- Control playback with "Alexa, go back/forward."

[You can, of course, also pause it as needed.]

Echo also supports Whispersync for Voice, which allows you to seamlessly switch between reading and listening with your eligible Kindle books.  You can read on your Kindle, tablet, or smartphone and then continue listening on your Echo, right where you left off. '

While Amazon is offering "complimentary extended samples from popular titles and a free trial," there are ongoing monthly Kindle Book specials that feature inexpensive Audible narrations paired with some of the Kindle books featured at larger discounts for the month.  The product page for that month will sayk, "Add narration for a reduced price of ____ when you buy the Kindle book."

  For June's specially discounted Kindle books ($1.99 to $3.99), you can find the listing of 104 Kindle books that are paired, for June, with reduced-cost Whispersync for Voice here.  (In March there were only 53, so they seem to be expanding these.)

And for those who want to try a free Audible example with a free Kindle book to see how Whispersync works, here's the only one available currently.

Here's the help page for using Whispersync with more information.


Amazon's latest Echo features that allow you to escape its semi-walled garden
The Verge's Josh Lowensohn reported, in early May, on the Echo's new ability to work with Twitter, Gmail, and Evernote, "...plus a few others, thanks to the If This Then That" ("ITTT)" feature.  I'm repeating this section for those who had no interest in the Echo at the time but may be interested in some of the newer features.

  Lowensohn mentioned the recent updates already reported here, "things like Pandora, traffic reports, sports scores, and support for Belkin's WeMo and Phillips's Hue products" and describes the new features' capabilities:

' ... the IFTTT 'recipes' for Alexa let you send your shopping and to-do lists out to third-party services like Google Drive, Evernote, and Todoist

... There are 54 combinations in total.  Enabling them requires signing up for IFTTT, then linking it up with your Amazon account.  You also need to go through the motions of activating the various third-party app channels, and approving your accounts there so IFTTT can link everything up behind the scenes. Some of the really good examples so far are:

. Adding your Echo shopping list items to Evernote
. Sending someone a short email with your voice
. Sending someone an SMS with your voice
. Adding Echo shopping list items to the iOS Reminders app
. Adding Alexa to-dos to Microsoft's OneNote '

See the Verge's full article for illustrations and more details on what's involved in using the feature.

Amazon Echo was recently updated to control Wemo switches and Philips Hue smart bulbs in the home, to turn lights on or off in named rooms or to dim or brighten them.

Pandora was added, in May (in addition to iHeartRadio and TuneIn radio features).

The updates are coming quickly lately with more meat to them, and Amazon's obviously serious about making it a key device, as Boston Business Journal's David Harris pointed to Amazon's dedicating an entire floor of its Cambridge, Mass. Kendall Square office "to working on the Echo" and is still recruiting more staff for it, with "a hiring event on May 14, 2015 for roles that run the “gamut of distributed systems, speech/voice recognition, and big data.”


My own use of the Echo
I'm music and info-oriented, so while the device is not super knowledgeable about the universe, I tell 'Alexa' to "Wiki [subject]" which has it go to Wikipedia to read me the first couple of paragraphs, and then it sends the rest of the article to my tablet (or phone). This is helpful when I'm not near my computer and think of something.  It's also good for adding to my Echo Todo and/or Shopping lists when I think of things in the kitchen, and I can just say "Alexa, add [whatever] to my todo list" [or to my shopping list].

  For music, I ask it to "play playlist [name]" and I get about an hour of my favorite music, depending on the genre I feel like listening to.  If interested in an artist, I ask it to play [artist] from Prime (which is free Amazon music for Prime members) or I ask it just to "play [artist] and it asks if I want to listen to the musician on iHeart Radio or Prime, sometimes it chooses TuneIn.  I signed up for Pandora but haven't used it with Echo yet.  The local classical music station sounds surprisingly good on it, though this isn't true of some other stations.

The speaker is very clear, is loud enough that I can't use it at max for most material, has more bass than I thought it would for its size, but it's best with really well-recorded tracks. If the treble range is edgy, it's very edgy on the Echo.  I'd like loudness compensation added in the next version for late night listening at lower volume.

 It's great for my kitchen where I have no speakers and no computer. They've added news-sources for flash news but I'm waiting for them to allow direct-access to specific sources instead of my having to say "Next" a few times when not interested in the current source.

I really like that I can control the volume by just saying "alexa, louder" or "alexa, not so loud" when I'm working in the kitchen. Or asking it, "what's playing?" or "who's singing?" and it tells me the artist and album. If you like a track, you can of course buy it (but you need a confirmation code to do it), and I've added a lot of good, free Prime tracks to my library while listening, by just saying "add this to my library."

  Others are interested in being able to get current sports scores or scores for ealier games, and in getting traffic reports, when we give it starting and ending addresses.  (I haven't used it, as I have lifetime traffic status and recommended alternate routes on my Garmin Nuvi, which is a bargain for what it does, well.)

A post on the Kindle Forums mentioned that TuneIn offers a lot of nearby scanner stations if you use the Echo app to enter, in the Search field at the top,
  'fire and police' -- but it doesn't work well by voice.  Just a curiosity.  TuneIn offers local, national, and int'l radio stations (music, talk) with clear, easy access.

  What's struck me most about the Alexa voice is that its answers are often lightning fast, which I wouldn't expect when it needs to go to the servers, access whatever, and then get back to me with an answer, and even then the speech is so natural, I have found myself saying, 'Thank you.'

  I also found that I sort of enjoy ordering something around :-) ... "Do this, do that, get me this, or that. What, you don't know? Take a class, get trained!"

I do shut off its hearing often, by pressing the microphone icon down, because I don't want it to waste electricity waiting for the word-string 'alexa' to fly by so it can say "Your command is my wish."

  I often just use the remote and press the mic and talk without needing to say her name.  She tries to obey, does what she can, and then stops listening for anything unless I press the remote button.  When will Amazon give us a male voice that takes orders from us?


Echo now does Google Calendar
This is one I waited for, except that i started to use a small printed calendar lately.  Why? I don't know, but it's sort of convenient :-)

  I had a bit of difficulty finding out how to do the linking, but finally found this help page on how to link your Google calendar to Echo, and its instructions are very clear.

  Richi Gupta, with octafinance.com has good details on what you can and can't do with Google calendar, from Echo.


Some Echo tips from the Kindle forums

' Beauty Fool says:
Wow... I just discovered you can get the latest episodes of various NPR, APM, etc shows by simply asking for them.
Case-in-point: "Alexa, play Splendid Table."
Reply: "Getting the latest episode of The Splendid Table from Tune-In."

+++
romper says:
If you ask, "what's the weather or forecast" she will give you only today's weather.  Ask "what's the extended forecast" she will give you the next 7 days...

+++
Cheryl Jones says:
as for the weather you can ask her for 10 days. so you can ask for the weather next sat or the weather for may 30 etc. or you can ask if it will rain next sat.... '

Recent mainstream reviews from mainstream tech writers who use it quite a bit
• "Five months in, it's the most used gadget in my home" - James Kendrick, ZDNet, May 15, 2015
• "It sucks.  It's awesome.  It sucks.  We want two more" - David Gewirtz for DIY-IT - May 21, 2015
• "Amazon Echo review" - Margaret Dornbusch - Gadgeteer, May 31, 2015
• "Amazon Echo talks to Google Calendar (and you)" - (more tips) David Gewirtz for DIY-IT, June 1

---

Check often: Temporarily-free recently published Kindle books
  Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources.  Top 100 free bestsellers.  Liked-books under $1
UK-Only: recently published free books, bestsellers, or £5 Max ones
    Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.

  *Click* to Return to the HOME PAGE.  Or click on the web browser's BACK button


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TheKindleChronicle's Len Edgerly and Jeff Bezos sit down for an interesting interview on the Kindle, long-form reading, 3G, location numbers, multimedia ebooks and more

On The Kindle Chronicles blog Thursday, July 27, Len Edgerly offers some notes on his two very full days in Seattle, during which he met with Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos for an 18-minute interview.

This marked the completion of the first four years of Len's weekly podcast which is now also a blog with written articles.  Len Edgerly's site is both informative and entertaining, quite addictive for many interested in the Kindle, other e-readers, and the e-reading publishing scene in general.  His interviews are with those heavily involved in all aspects of publishing.

The energy in this interview is more youthful than I'd expected, since neither of these guys is in his 20's but you'd not know it from their enthusiasm for books, reading in general, and for finding innovative ways to encourage long-form reading in a short-form world.

  Bezo's planning has always been the long-range type, and he took some intense criticism during the first few years of a non-profit Amazon despite his having said it would take years to build.  Now he's often characterized by publishers as a ruthless future monopolist while others wonder why he's allowing the company to show lower net profits this quarter due to a good portion of revenue being put back into growing the service and distribution areas as well as its ecosystem.  But enough people understand it and the stock went up after the results were announced.

  In the interview, Bezos says, re innovators, that if you need to be always understood, then don't do anything new.  His infamous laugh may not only break the microphone but comes from a businessman who thinks of his work as fun.

Multi-media books
  There's a section on the effect or place of multimedia books, which many had felt would be the 'new' e-book, replacing the traditional book, but much that interests people in a book -- the inner dialog for one -- can't really be caught in a multimedia approach, Bezos says.

  Multimedia additions can detract from the flow of the words that the author wrote without anticipating interruptions for a video or music.  With a straight-text book, the reader does much of the work, using the imagination with what the author presents, rather than passively taking things in as we do with multimedia.  I personally like the use of multimedia at the end of a book meant only to be read, where the added material can be optional and likely very useful.

3G use on Kindles
  He has interesting things to say about the 3G versions of the various Kindles, a popular option, and this includes his statement that "people who buy that Kindle are the people who read the most."  Edgerly asks him why, and you can hear the podcast interview for the response.
  He also mentions that the 3G works globally, roaming options and all (for Kindle book downloads, Kindle bookstore, and Wikipedia).

  Most know that any 3G data, at all, is expensive to just give away -- the 3G capability alone, before one starts paying monthly data fees, costs $130 to add the option to an otherwise WiFi-only Apple iPad.

  Currently B&N offers no 3G Nook e-Ink reader in its newer models and Sony doesn't offer 3G book downloads in the U.S.

  Yet Amazon offers, globally, on its new Kindle Touch (UK: KTouch) and older Kindles, free 3G data transfers for download of Kindle books, browsing the Kindle store on the device, and browsing Wikipedia 24/7 in countries outside the US where normal carrier and AT&T partners' roaming charges are very high.  It still offers free 3G for slow web browsing in the U.S. and 60 other countries on the older Kindle Keyboard (UK: KKeyboard) and Kindle DX models.
  Bezos does explain why they do it.

  They also discuss LOCATION numbers vs Page numbers and what customers have told Amazon about that and Amazon's thoughts on that.

Future Kindles?
Len Edgerly explains that we all know that they stay mum on future products, so that kind of question was not on the list.  Probably it would have been a waste of time.

The Kindle Mission
  Now, realizing Bezos and team are first and foremost, businesspeople with bottom-line goals, who too often feel they need to be hardnosed or not particularly forthcoming, and not always making decisions in our favor, I still like Bezos' stated philosophy or sense of mission:

' Yeah, absolutely! I think it’s the love of reading personally and it’s also that we on the Kindle team take it as an article of faith that reading is important for civilization.  So we feel this powerful mission, and it’s exciting...
...
  I think if people read more, that is a better world.  So I would posit that as an article of faith. '

  Their interest in reading IS shown in all the unusual features they've made for content, such as instant-translation (for understanding) and X-Ray, pre-packaging info that people would probably want to look up, from the book, as an associated file, including instant links to each appearance of a character's name in a book if you tap the character's name in the X-Ray menu for the page you're on.

  The team also made a personal annotations webpage on Amazon servers for each Kindle owner.  This webpage holds and displays the notes and highlighting made for any of your books in the order they appear in the Kindle book (unless you opt out of the feature).  You can then copy, edit, or print these, if making a book report, say, or when discussing pages with bookclub members, etc.

At any rate, the interview is fun to hear and I like Bezos' energy.  Again, the interview by Len Edgerly (who prefaces the conversation with his entertaining observations on trying to find the meeting place and preparing to meet with the CEO who is not known for doing interviews) starts at the 11:45 mark.  Of course the Kindle news and tech tips are worth hearing too.

There'll be a link to the transcript soon, which I read today in Stephen Windwalker's emailed Weekender for his Kindle Nation Daily blog, which gets some of Len's reports a day early.

  The transcript will be available on TheKindleChronicles site soon, and I'll update this with a link later.

---

Current Kindle Models for reference, plus free-ebook search links.
NOTES on newer Kindles.

US: Updated Kindle Fire Basic  7" tablet - $159 Kindle Fire HD 7" 16/32GB - $199/$249 Kindle Fire HD 8.9" 16/32GB - $299/$369 Kindle Fire HD 8.9" 4G 32/64GB - $499/$599 Kindle NoTouch ("Kindle") - $69/$89 Kindle Paperwhite, WiFi - $99/$139 Kindle Paperwhite, 3G/WiFi - $179/$199 Kindle Keybd 3G - $139/$159, Free but slow web Kindle DX - $379, Free, slow web

UK: Kindle Basic, NoTouch - £69 Kindle Touch WiFi, UK - £109 Kindle Keyboard 3G, UK - £149   Keybd: w/ Free, slow 3G WEB

OTHER International Kindle NoTouch Basic - $89 Kindle Touch WiFi - $139 Kindle Keybd 3G - $189   Keybd: w/ Free, slow 3G WEB

Check often: Temporarily-free recently published Kindle books
  Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources.  Top 100 free bestsellers.  Liked-books under $1
UK-Only: recently published free books, bestsellers, or £5 Max ones
    Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.

  *Click* to Return to the HOME PAGE.  Or click on the web browser's BACK button


Below are ways to Share this post if you'd like others to see it.
-- The Send to Kindle button works well only on Firefox currently.

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(Older posts have older Kindle model info. For latest models, see CURRENT KINDLES page. )
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Questions & feedback are welcome in the Comment areas (tho' spam is deleted). Thanks!

KindleWiki - Getting faster Kindle access to it - Updated

Since all International Kindle owners with wireless access in their countries get free 24/7 Kindle access to Wikipedia, this is a tip on how to do it more easily than with the traditional way.  (See Updates.)

FIRST -- a one time set-up,
  unless needing to 'reset' the Kindle after a memory freeze (it's a computer),
  . Click on Menu button
  . Click on 'Experimental' option
  . Click to get 'Basic Web'

  You'll probably see a 'Bookmarks' page.
  Don't bother with it, even if 'Wikipedia' is listed.

  . Click on Menu button again
  . Click on "Use Basic Mode"

After this, you shouldn't have to go through that again.  But it's how you get into 'Basic Mode' (or 'Advanced Mode' if needed -- which is usually for password log-ons or when javascript is required -- but Wikipedia doesn't need either one).

"Advanced mode" (which we're avoiding for Wikipedia) translates web colors to various shades of gray and tries to emulate the width of a web page -- but it is quite hard to read translated colors on e-ink's 16 shades of gray.  Instead of vivid black, you get words that are grayish and harder to read.  That's a reason I try to stay in Basic mode - and it is faster access also.
  There are no color-translations to be done, no routines to convert words to tiny characters to squeeze them all in to emulate a web page.
  Basic Mode keeps the text larger, blacker, and it wraps (or reflows) text as needed.

  For those with Kindle web-browsers enabled:
  A drawback when web-browsing complex, multicolumn pages:  you have to read the left column material first, but that's not a problem with Wikipedia pages.
So it's best to be in Basic Mode for it.

"Basic Mode" will show at top middle while you're browsing Wikipedia if you have set it up.
It COULD be the default Internet-setting of your new Kindle and that'll save you the above steps.

SEARCHING WIKIPEDIA
* Turn on the wireless to access the Internet.*
  Normally, people would press the Menu button and go to 'Experimental' and then go to the "Bookmarks" page (which is likely on the Kindle International model, even in countries with the web browser disabled currently) and then they would click on Amazon's pre-set 'Wikipedia' link on that page.

  However, you'd then need to type in the Search term, and that keyboard is not optimal as web browser input :-) and there are too many steps involved.

TIP: If I see a word, name, or phrase in a book or article I'm reading and want to know more about it, I can (1) search the book for that or (2) put the cursor in front of the word to get the inline-dictionary summary definition.

Normally, we just type out a word or phrase for a search.

 But there's another way and I use it often.  (This tip works with Kindle (U.S.),  Kindle (Global),  and Kindle DX.)

  I start a "highlighting" process on a word or phrase of interest in a book or article by clicking in front of the word(s) w/the 5-way cursor -- but instead of ending the highlighting at a certain point in the usual Kindle way, I end it with a Spacebar-press and that copies the highlighted word(s) into the search-box that comes up when pressing the Spacebar at that point.

  When doing this:  instead of opting to 'find' the result in my book or periodical, I can choose from the other options in that bar, which include 'Wikipedia' as the search-location ( I love this.)

  Here are the steps.

  1.   Begin to highlight the word or phrase that you want to search, by pressing down the 5-way button where you want to begin the copy of the search-word(s).

  2.   5-way to the right, and when you get to the last character to be highlighted,   be sure to NOT press the 5-way button down to end the highlighting of the name.

  3.   Instead, press the space bar.  That'll bring up a search field at the bottom.

  4.   Your now-highlighted word or phrase is pasted into the search bar.

  5.   "find"  is the default Action shown (at the right) to be done by the Kindle -- and that finds instances of the search-phrase in the book.
  But that's not what we want in this case.

      Instead, 5-way to the right until you see the Action wanted, which is 'Wikipedia' for this topic, and then click on the 5-way while 'Wikipedia' is highlighted.

Tip 2:
Anything you highlight, copy and paste this way, you have the option of searching for in Wikipedia

Caution: The Kindle doesn't search substrings.  You need to search a full word.  Searching just part of a word won't work.  But I can usually find a word that works.

TIP 3:
After browsing Wikipedia search results and reading the one(s) you want,
  press the 'BACK' button to return to the list of results and then press 'BACK' button once more to get back to the page you were on before the search.

You should be back at your book or article.

I hope this helps! To US & Canada folks, a fun, stomach-filling Thanksgiving Night.


UPDATE1
11/28/09 at 3:06 AM (Original posting 11/26/09 at 3:24 PM))
To make your access probably several times faster, if images are not necessary:
  DISABLE IMAGES by doing the below while browsing a webpage:
  . Click on Menu button
  . Click on 'Settings' option
  . Go down to "Disable Images" and click on that.
Remember to go back and "Enable Images" when you want them though.

UPDATE2
11/28/09 at 3:06 AM (Original posting 11/26/09 at 3:24 PM))
For Wikipedia lookups, the Kindle 2 and DX automatically take you to http://en.m.wikipedia.org.

  Some other mobile units use http://mobile.wikipedia.org, which has no images and makes sure that sub-categories are links you have to click, rather than included on the page as happens with the Amazon Kindle's choice.
  I prefer the Kindle's inclusion of other pages, even if that takes longer to load, since then you can page through them instead of moving the cursor to the link and clicking and then waiting for each page-set.  Load-times for just one section at a time will be faster with the mobile.wikipedia.org choice over the default Amazon choice that loads pages for all the subcategories at once (but I prefer the latter).

  When you try to do a new bookmark for the alternate Wikipedia, the Kindle feels it's the same one and will do it only if you allow it to overwrite the Wikipedia bookmark that is already there.  I wouldn't do that though.
  Disabling images if you need speed will be fast enough (for me). Below are ways to Share this post if you'd like others to see it.
-- The Send to Kindle button works well only on Firefox currently.

Send to Kindle

(Older posts have older Kindle model info. For latest models, see CURRENT KINDLES page. )
If interested, you can also follow my add'l blog-related news at Facebook and Twitter
Questions & feedback are welcome in the Comment areas (tho' spam is deleted). Thanks!