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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday April 25 2018, @05:39PM   Printer-friendly
from the giving-the-kids-a-big-brother dept.

Amazon has unveiled a Kids Edition of its Echo Dot smart speaker:

The $79 Echo Dot Kids Edition takes the original device's design and wraps it in a kid-friendly, colorful case. Otherwise, the hardware is the same as the tiny smart speaker that debuted in 2016. While the regular, $49 Dot is considered a more affordable and accessible version of the regular Echo speaker, the Kids Edition costs more thanks to its bundled software. Amazon includes a two-year warranty plus a one-year subscription to the new Amazon FreeTime Unlimited service, an expanded version of Amazon's new FreeTime for Alexa.

FreeTime gives users "family-focused features" and new parental controls that adults can use to restrict what their kids can do with Alexa. Family features include "Education Q&A," allowing kids to ask Alexa science, math, spelling, and definition questions, "Alexa Speaks 'Kid,'" which gives Alexa kid-appropriate answers to nebulous statements that kids may say such as, "Alexa, I'm bored." Parents can also limit the times during which kids can speak to Alexa (like no talking to it after bedtime), restrict the skills kids can use, filter out songs with explicit lyrics, and more.

[...] But even with the added parental controls, some will be wary of a speaker designed to listen to their children. Like the original Dot, the Kids Edition has a mute button and parents can put the device in "sleep mode" to prevent it from responding to commands. However, the mic will always be listening for its wake-word just like other Echo devices.

In the new Parent Dashboard in the Alexa app and online, parents can monitor how kids are using their Echos (including all their utterances, or the phrases Alexa thinks it heard before trying to respond) and limit their abilities. According to a Buzzfeed report, Amazon claims it isn't making back-end profiles for users with data harvested from Alexa. While the virtual assistant can now recognize voices and provide personalized answers based on who's talking, the company maintains that data is only being used to make Alexa smarter and more tailored to each user.

Also at CNN and Fortune.


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  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 25 2018, @06:05PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 25 2018, @06:05PM (#671745)

    Robert Shields [wikipedia.org] was around 54 years old when he began his diary, the world's longest. Someone who starts at an earlier age could surpass him.

    To begin, say "Alexa open My Diary [amazon.com]".

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 25 2018, @08:20PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 25 2018, @08:20PM (#671837)

    Poor bastard, I tried sleeping in 1 hour 45 minute intervals. After 2 weeks every aspect of my life deteriorated beyond belief to a point where I welcomed death if I was forced to continue.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 25 2018, @08:44PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 25 2018, @08:44PM (#671848)

      I've heard the term sleep fragmentation [medscape.com].

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 26 2018, @07:29AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 26 2018, @07:29AM (#672059)

        Tell me about it.... just about the time I doze off, I get this urgent "water bag full" alarm from the bladder that requires immediate attention.