Every week we bring you a selection of the most buzzworthy headlines on voice-first and related topics. Here's the news roundup for May 27-31.
Amazon announces it's latest addition to the Echo Show family--the new Echo Show 5. The newest member of the Alexa family features a compact design, 5.5" display, rich sound, HD camera, and built-in camera shutter—all for only $89.99. It is already posted on Amazon.com for pre-order and will ship June 26th.
Coupled with the announcement of the new Echo Show 5, a post on the Alexa Developers blog announced that they're expanding the range of multimodal devices that the Alexa Presentation Language (APL) supports.
The announcement of this affordable smart display has us all speculating about the impact that it will have on engagement and commerce opps for brands. Voicebot.ai wrote an excellent overview of the voice assistant ecosystem and where the Echo Show 5 fits within it in "Echo Show 5 Heats Up the Battle for the Nightstand. Will the New Smart Display Replace Echo Spot?"
Back in April, CNBC reported that Facebook was working on a voice assistant. This past week, at the company's annual shareholder meeting, Mark Zuckerberg addressed the topic again, this time stating that they're working on a series of projects that would benefit from an AI voice assistant. “I imagine there are going to be more products that we build where voice is going to be an important interface over the coming years,” Zuckerberg said. “We’re working on a lot of different things around this.” Zuckerberg: Facebook is working on products you’ll control with your voice (CNBC Markets)
The BBC Kids Skill team has written an excellent advice piece based on their lessons learned on voice design, "12 design principles for voice design by the BBC Kids Skill team." (BBC Global Experience Guidelines)
Bradley Matrock has announced that the Alexa Conference is now part of "Project Voice," the voice tech event taking place Jan 13-17 in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Conference programming will now expand to cover the larger scope of Voice-First including Alexa, Google Assistant, Samsung Bixby, and Microsoft Cortana. For a preliminary schedule see: https://www.projectvoice.ai/
Podcasts
Dylan Zwick joined Carl Robinson on Voice Tech Podcast to discuss Usability Testing for Voice - Voice Tech Podcast ep.027
Check out the latest VUXworld podcast: Voice strategy advice for brands with Amazon Alexa Chief Evangelist, Dave Isbitski.
Bret Kinsella talks with Marco Iacono, COO of Viv and VP of Mobile R&D for Samsung Bixby, about voice assistant design and launch on The Voicebot Podcast. Iacono's the only person that's served as product manager for the launch of 2 out of 5 leading voice assistants.
Save the Date
SF, LA, and NYC: Bixby Developers will be hosting three developer sessions in San Francisco (June 8th), Los Angeles (June 15th), and New York City (June 22nd). Apply!
Seattle: Join Women in Voice for their Voice AI June Seattle Mixer, June 11 at 5:30. Location TBA.
Dylan Zwick, Pulse Labs CPO, will be speaking on "How to Integrate Voice in Your Total Customer Experience" at NEXT 2019, June 13-14 in Chicago. Register with the Promo Code: NEXTSPEAK to save $100.
Dylan Zwick, Pulse Labs CPO, will be a speaker and panelist at VOICE Summit, July 22-25 in Newark, NJ. Use the code DZ83 for 15% off: http://bit.ly/2YxOpLp.
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