Chewie, I don’t think they had wookies in mind when they made her - Issue #32

The holidays are almost here. Another year is ending and a new one begins. With it, one of the best years for voice technology adoption. We are going to be at the Alexa Conference next January 15 - 17 discussing a year in voice. Join us! I will be speaking about podcasting in the age of Alexa. Here’s a promo code for a 20% discount when you register: ALEXASPKR226. See you there!

As always much ❤️!

If you were forwarded this issue, you can subscribe here.

Read this for why smart assistants are still not capable of recognizing certain speech disabilities. And how some users might be giving up on smart speakers, thinking they are not for them: Chewie, I don’t think they had wookies in mind when they made her.

A friendly reminder that voice technology and specifically speech recognition stills have a road ahead to understand a portion of their users.

What do you think about the comparison of email reading to a huge voicemail inbox? Leave your cents on Twitter.

I think is a powerful feature for contexts like driving, getting ready in the morning and above all for specific messages.

Catch up with the latest updates to Alexa in this BI article.

I have said before that for voice apps, context, as opposed to content is king. That necessarily does not diminishes the relevance of content, since in voice, the structure of the app, is the app itself. It does switch the spotlight to the environment in which the app is invoked, generating a chain reaction of responses that vary depending on that context. This article by the Alexa team goes deep into their vision and work in context in Alexa skills. The goal, as stated by the post is to fundamentally change: we’re on a multiyear journey to fundamentally change human-computer interaction.

The review of 2018, is not exhaustive by any measure, but the takes on the top five developments in voice technology he expects to see in 2019 is indeed worth the read.