I have had an Amazon Echo for a few months and am satisfied with what it can do. The Echo is a device that you use voice commands to interact with it rather than a keyboard or mobile application. It comes with a number of basic capabilities including weather, news and playing music. One of the nice aspects of the Echo is that additional applications (what are called “Skills”) can be written for it and enabled by users. A recent addition that is an excellent example of an innovative commercial integration for it is the Capital One skill. This provides Capital One account holders with the ability to get account information and even make credit card payments. I am impressed that Capital One has taken this step to provide more convenience to their customers.

I am confident voice interactions have a large number of practical usages that we will see added to the Echo capabilities. I also expect that we will begin to see numerous other appliances and devices start providing a voice interface.