A camera for fashion selfies? Useful or Narcissism?
Have you considered a voice activated assistant and put it off because it wouldn’t take selfies?
I understand that some would want a record of every outfit they ever wore. It’s a logical extension of paying attention to fashion. Since that’s not me, I started wondering whether the purported Amazon Echo might be more than a narcissistic mirror with memory.
The unit shown here is the camera-on-a-stick model that is officially announced. There is also a prototype with a tablet sized screen that might be useful for programming to view a security camera, a shopping list captured by voice or photo verification for other skills.
I’ll buy one if it includes a “Skill” that picks up what movie I’m watching and shows me “who is that guy is that we say in the other thing”
Amazon’s new Echo Look helps you pick out your outfit
Soon, Amazon’s voice assistant will be able to answer your most burning question: Alexa, does this make my butt look big?
Amazon recently announced the Echo Look, a $200 voice-activated camera that will take full-length pictures of your outfits, by using the command “Alexa, take a photo.” It can also take videos — “Alexa, take a video” — to let you check yourself out from multiple angles, through a live feed from the Look beamed to your smartphone.
It is, essentially, the high-tech alternative to a friend. Or a mirror.
The Echo Look will require its own app on your phone to work. It is the first in the Alexa-powered family of Echo devices to carry a camera. All photos and video the Look records will be accessible through this app, although they are stored locally and in Amazon’s cloud. Users will be able to delete images at any time, said Amazon spokeswoman Michelle Taylerson.
Amazon has done a great job of making itself into a prime digital destination to do your errands. But it hasn’t quite established itself as a fashion authority yet, and Echo Look appears to be a bid to do that.
And yet, it is hard to see how the device does much to help Amazon on this front, because its functionality would seem to appeal to such a narrow slice of women.
Let’s start with the idea that it takes a full-length photo of you using a voice command, using a high-tech, depth-sensing camera that seems a bit overpowered for the job. Sure, millennials are selfie obsessed, but this sounds like something that would be used regularly only by influencers and other digital tastemakers. What real-world woman needs to start each day with a professional-looking, head-to-toe photo? It’s solving a problem that isn’t exactly universal.
It also lets you keep an archive of all your outfit photos — a feature that caters only to our self-indulgence, not one that does anything to make shopping or getting dressed meaningfully easier.
Then there’s the Style Check feature, which offers advice on which of multiple outfits to wear based on machine learning and “advice from fashion specialists.” The company says it will take into account trends and what is most flattering. But it is difficult to imagine women using this tool with much regularity: Who has time for this kind of consultation and deliberation around everyday dressing?
What the Echo Look does accomplish for Amazon is getting an Alexa-powered camera into your home. Depth-sensing cameras have been used to map out sophisticated 3-D maps of rooms, objects and people, which opens up many possibilities for future, customized products. With Amazon promising more features for the camera are on their way, it’s likely we haven’t seen the ultimate end game of this device.
The Echo Look does not yet have a shipping date, but anyone can sign up for an invitation to buy it.
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Elon Musk laughs off the idea of Apple buying Tesla
During the first three months of 2017, Apple managed to add a cool $10 billion to its bank account. When the company released its earnings report earlier this week, it revealed that its cash on hand now totals more than a quarter of a trillion dollars, or $256.8 billion to be exact. While the vast majority of that cash resides overseas — and subject to high taxation rates barring a new tax holiday from the Trump administration — Apple’s tremendous cash position naturally has many wondering what it plans to do with all of that money.
Naturally, some analysts reflexively like to claim that Apple needs to make a large-scale acquisition, whether it be Disney or Netflix. Indeed, one of the longer standing suggestions from analysts is that Apple might want to pick up Tesla. After all, with Tesla currently embodying what Apple presumably wanted to accomplish with Project Titan, an Apple-Tesla merger would seem to make sense, at least from a culture and strategic perspective. Financially, however, the numbers just don’t add up. As it stands now, Tesla’s market cap is in the $46 billion range, and it’s beyond unlikely that Apple would shell out that kind of cash for the company. Even if we imagine a scenario where Tesla starts making real quarterly profits — the company lost $1.33 per share last quarter — the economic realities and low gross margins associated with the auto industry wouldn’t help Apple move the needle from a profit perspective.
Nonetheless, that didn’t stop Morgan Stanley analyst Adan Jonas from asking Tesla CEO Elon Musk about a potential Apple buyout during the company’s earnings conference call yesterday.
Jonas’ question reads:
Apple has enough net cash I think to buy Tesla, like more than three times over. Is there anything that Apple does or has, besides having more money than they know what to do with, that could be helpful in Tesla’s mission to accelerate the transition to shared autonomy and sustainable transport? Could they be the type of firm you could partner with, and is this something you could talk to Tim about?
Upon hearing the question, Musk laughed and let out an audible “Ha!” before replying
“Yeah, I don’t think they want to have that conversation,” Musk answered. “At least I’ve not heard any indication that they do. Obviously Apple continues to make some great products and, yeah, I mean, I use their phone and their laptop, it’s cool. I mean… I don’t know what else to say.”
Jonas followed up, asking if Tesla viewed Apple as more of a competitor or a potential partner, to which Musk replied: “I mean, I don’t know what they’re going to do on the car front. Yeah, it’s not clear.”
For what it’s worth, Musk reportedly met with Apple’s mergers and acquisitions chief Adrian Perica back in 2013, though it’s unclear what was discussed between the two. Musk a few years later confirmed meeting with Apple, but said that he couldn’t “on whether those [meetings] revolved around any kind of acquisition.” For what it’s worth, an Apple/Tesla buyout would have made much more economic sense in mid-2013 back when Tesla’s market cap was still in the $4 billion range.
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