Startup Weekend Vancouver happened at the start of June. People came out from all across the west coast to attend, as far north as Vancouver, BC and as far south as San Luis Obispo, CA. I'd like to say that it was a blast and fun to put on this event but it wasn't. Like most non-profit events, we had a lot of moving parts and at one point had setup a GoFundMe page because we thought we had more expenses than actual revenue from sponsors and ticket sales. Fortunately we were in the black with some budget money leftover for future events.
Hello Alexa, part 2
It's been a while since I last posted about Amazon's Alexa being accessible through the Amazon retail shopping app. And while Amazon's generic web search is fine and comes nowhere near the voice-to-search recognition that Google search offers, Amazon is missing the point about monetizing the index system that they have for the millions of products listed on their shopping exchange.
Wouldn't it be better if instead of matching to keywords (mostly nouns) in a user's speech search, that Amazon served up relevant recommendations instead.
Say for example, you ask Alexa (in the Amazon app):
"recommended wines for dinner" or
"recommended red wines" or
"recommended fruity wines"
Alexa currently offers no recommended product searches for any of the wines or wineries that sell on Amazon. Well, it certainly can't recommend wines that's for sure. But it could if Amazon incorporated product label text, certified wine reviews, or wine manufacturer descriptions in what can be searched. The words "recommend" and "recommended" are not in Alexa's lexicon of search knowledge. Perhaps this is too advanced a concept for Amazon's AI.
You can still just say "red wine" or "white wine" and those options will show up with valid results in the Amazon app.
Voice searching the Amazon product engine should be no different than typing in the search query.
The results are mixed, however.
You can say "services for window washing near me" and Amazon's app will show for "Hire a Window Cleaner" (Amazon Home Services) as the top result. That's spot on. The third result (same screen on a smartphone) shows "Window Cleaning" (Amazon Home Services), also a valid result to what I was voice searching for.
Maybe this is a phased rollout for voice search queries.
Wouldn't it be better if instead of matching to keywords (mostly nouns) in a user's speech search, that Amazon served up relevant recommendations instead.
Say for example, you ask Alexa (in the Amazon app):
"recommended wines for dinner" or
"recommended red wines" or
"recommended fruity wines"
Alexa currently offers no recommended product searches for any of the wines or wineries that sell on Amazon. Well, it certainly can't recommend wines that's for sure. But it could if Amazon incorporated product label text, certified wine reviews, or wine manufacturer descriptions in what can be searched. The words "recommend" and "recommended" are not in Alexa's lexicon of search knowledge. Perhaps this is too advanced a concept for Amazon's AI.
You can still just say "red wine" or "white wine" and those options will show up with valid results in the Amazon app.
Voice searching the Amazon product engine should be no different than typing in the search query.
The results are mixed, however.
You can say "services for window washing near me" and Amazon's app will show for "Hire a Window Cleaner" (Amazon Home Services) as the top result. That's spot on. The third result (same screen on a smartphone) shows "Window Cleaning" (Amazon Home Services), also a valid result to what I was voice searching for.
Maybe this is a phased rollout for voice search queries.
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