Everyday UX – Amazon Echo

Amazon Echo

Yanbin got me a Christmas gift – Amazon Echo, a voice control assistant. It arrived on the day of Christmas Eve, so thankful, this is my first Christmas gift ever :)

Echo, apparently, is a speaker. Based on voice commands, it can play news, music from many sources. You can ask it about weather, change its volume, tell a joke, wiki a subject, tell sport results. You can also ask it to do something for you: set alarms, add items to shopping list, buy things from Amazon, control home appliances such as lamps, locks.

I had some thoughts after initial use.

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Book Notes: Nickels and Dimes

Nickels-and-Dimes

I just finished this book written by Barbara Ehrenreich. It was about her research project how what lives were like for low wage workers in the US. I appreciate her observations and evaluations, and I think many of her evaluations are still valid even in 2015. I found how to improve people living on minimum wage is a practically complicated issue, it’s not as simple as raising minimum wage and force rent to be lower (which could potentially crash the economy), and I’m not even knowledgeable to make valid comments on it, but I believe this has to be addressed. So I’d like to share her book with you, to provoke thoughts and spark new ideas. Discussions are welcomed.

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