Hasta La Creative!

The walls have ears, almost literally, when Amazon’s Echo is listening. This device and its peers will transform how people interact with media, appliances and even each other at home. Brands will love it.

I assumed that the Echo voice-activated assistant would be a $99 paperweight, albeit half the price the paperweight costs people who don’t subscribe to Amazon Prime. Instead, it wound up fitting in somewhere between a useful gadget and a member of the family.

Amazon Echo is a black cylinder standing nine inches tall — about the dimensions of a thin roll of paper towels. Plug it in, sync it with a mobile device via wifi or Bluetooth so it can connect to a wireless network, and it listens in the background for its name (Alexa or Amazon are the only options so far). After someone in the room says “Alexa,” a ring encircling the Echo’s top shines with a blue light, and it awaits commands. Particularly useful ones include “weather” for a local report or travel forecast; “buy diapers” to add such items to a shopping list in the accompanying mobile app; and “play classic rock” to stream songs from Amazon or play music from your own stored library. It can also look up factual information from services such as Wikipedia, set a timer, create reminders and respond to other requests.

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