标签: amazon

AVS（Alexa Voice Service）是由Amazon提供的语音识别服务 ，凡是有支持此功能的产品在上市之前必须通过相关测试及认证流程，其中认证测试须于Amazon官方指定的第三方测试实验室执行。 百佳泰为Amazon授权的认证测试实验室，可协助客户快速取证，确保产品质量无虞并缩短上市时程。 Amazon官方授权Alexa Voice Service认证测试实验室 百佳泰为Amazon官方授权的 Alexa Voice Service 认证测试实验室（Authorized Test Labs, ATL），可执行 AVS认证测试 外，亦可提供 自我测试（Self-Test） 及相关咨询服务，协助厂商节省取证所需的设备及时间成本，让产品更轻松、快速地进入市场。 百佳泰Alexa Voice Service认证测试服务 Alexa Voice Service 认证测试包含 自我测试及认证测试 ，其中认证测试须于Amazon官方认可的第三方测试实验室执行，测试内容包含 功能性测试（Functional test）、UX测试（UX test）、音乐测试（Music test）、声学测试（Acoustic Test） 等。 Alexa Voice Service认证测试流程 服务项目 LOGO认证 LOGO预测试: 提供与正式测试相同的测试环境、内容执行测试。 相关技术咨询 测试项目 Functional test UX test Music test Acoustic test MRM test 测试对象（产品） 各类支持Alexa Voice Service规格的产品，如智能音箱、PC、TV。 关于Alexa Voice Service AVS（Alexa Voice Service） 是由Amazon提供的 语音识别服务 。不论是资料搜寻、远程操控各式家电、抑或是聆听音乐，只要使用有支持AVS的智能装置，用户就可以直接以声控的方式，用更直觉、自然的方式与之互动。

Max has already extolled the apparent virtues of Amazon's Echo appliance, but as I mentioned to him, this thing is a serious threat to luddites everywhere. Yes, if you're already used to saying "Siri..." or "ok google now..", "Alexa" seems like yet another voice-activated assistant. Before I bought mine, I was interested to see that many reviewers felt it was barely worth the $99 intro price at the time. Yes, it offers better than average audio and comes in this nice unobtrusive package that at a glance just looks like an elegant flowerpot (I advise not watering it though), but what does it do?   This thing is nothing less than your own always-on entry point to cloud services. I mean that very literally. Amazon's Alexa AppKit  (currently in beta) provides a set of services that allows developers to create their own apps that leverage Alexa voice services to respond to custom commands with custom actions.   That just sounds like another app, right? In fact, developers can already tie into Android standard system voice  commands for wearables, phones, tablets, and other Android devices. Google is also in limited release with a custom voice  capability so developers can let users "ok google now" into Android apps. Those are still one-way voice activations -- not conversations. And Siri? We're still waiting, Apple. With interesting market timing, Google very recently released its Voice Interaction API , which is the closest thing to Amazon's Alexa AppKit services in offering the capability to let users not just invoke an app or provide basic voice input but also have a conversation with it.   There's a fundamental and very significant difference between Alexa AppKit services and the Voice Interaction API. Amazon wants to make sure developers understand this difference and one of the first things you see on the AppKit pages is the following notice in a large orange box:   Note: Developing apps with the Alexa AppKit is different than developing for other devices such as Android or iOS. Alexa apps are not installed on an actual device. Instead, they are web services hosted in the cloud. When a user wakes an Echo device and makes a request, that request is sent to the Alexa service in the cloud. If the request was intended for your app, the Alexa service sends a request to your app, waits for the response, and delivers the response to the user.   So this device that seems like just an interesting speaker system is essentially a physical extrusion of the cloud into your personal space.   That fact alone makes Echo compelling, but here's why it could help Amazon suddenly become a major player in app services. (Yes, Amazon already has a whole app services capability that includes Amazon Fire Phone, Fire Tablet, and Fire TV, none of which have particularly shaken the market at this point, running behind other market leaders in each category.) Echo is a mass market appliance into Amazon Web Services (AWS), which some time ago moved beyond just a Platform-As-a-Service capability, already offering 10x the computing capacity  of its next 14 competitors combined. More to the point: Even the worst luddite would be comfortable using Echo to interact with a growing array of smart devices.    Echo already allows users to interact by voice with Belkin WeMo and Philips Hue connected home devices, but the Alexa AppKit would allow developers to slap a voice interface onto their own devices and software applications. The Alexa Service provides a voice-interaction-in-a-box capability, sending parsed user intent to your application and translating your application's response to voice output on the Echo. Like an old-fashioned telephone, Echo itself doesn't do much here -- it "just" connects the user to the cloud rather than the POTS network. (When we someday talk about the plain old cloud service, could somebody please first come up with an expression that yields a nicer sounder acronym?)   Alexa Service flow overview (Courtesy of Amazon)   The Alexa Service can work with any web service and the Alexa AppKit provides a Java library for convenience. The part I find particularly interesting is that rather than building your own web service with all the required bells and whistles, you can also just use an AWS service called Lambda. Lambda is AWS's foray into event-driven service. Unlike its flagship Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) virtual servers, Lambda instantiates an instance on receipt of an event and maintains the instance only as long as required for it to respond to that event. AWS wasn't the first to offer this type of service, and Lambda is a relatively new entry. When Lambda first previewed, I thought it was an interesting service but fairly specialized in its utility. Now I see that it's the underpinnings of Echo/Alexa. Lambda supports Java and nodejs, the two programming languages currently supported in the Alexa AppKit, and it's easy to imagine the Alexa strategic plan had a lot to do with Lambda's appearance.    Within the Alexa AppKit application service, you define your app by providing a URL or ARN (Amazon Resource Name), pointing to your own hosted web service or AWS Lambda function, respectively. In addition, you provide a JSON-formatted "schema" that describes the "user intent" for the conversation and a description of sample utterances. The terms for "intent" provided in the schema correspond to entry points and variables within the web service specified by your URL or ARN. The details of all this are way beyond the scope of this little post but it will all look familiar to developers.   Alexa AppKit and the Service in general are tied deeply into the AWS world in the way the Service authorizes users to interact with Alexa apps and the way Alexa apps are allowed to interact with other resource endpoints. Within the AWS world, all this becomes particularly easy of course. I've been using AWS for many years so I'm familiar with Lambda and the AWS model and getting the Alexa AppKit version of "hello world" up with Lambda was very quick. It's kind of cool chatting with my much smarter Lambda self through Echo.    This is by no means a toy, however. The low-hanging fruit with this service is providing a voice interface to other popular event-driven application services such as IFTTT (there's already an IFTTT Alexa channel ) and the myriad vendor-specific and third-party services out there. Beyond that, you know Echo interfaces are going to pop up for Arduino, Raspberry Pi, Beaglebone, Neopixels, and other connected hardware out there. The interesting thing will be if this becomes a voice hub for home automation and beyond that, if it literally becomes a voice of the IoT.    Stephen Evanczuk  

My wife (Gina The Gorgeous) and I do not always agree when it comes to our television viewing pleasure.   For example, Gina is "glued to the set" when it comes to programs like Dance Moms and 19 Kids and Counting , which I regard as absolute dross. Contrawise, I can’t get enough of Doctor Who (although I'm still getting to know the new Doctor), while Gina... well, let's just say that she's not a huge fan.   On the bright side, we both love cooking programs like Chopped and Cutthroat Kitchen . In the case of Cutthroat Kitchen , which is hosted by Alton Brown, four chefs are challenged to cook gourmet dishes to be judged by a guest celebrity. The thing that makes this difficult is that Alton introduces "auctions" in which the chefs can purchase a variety of things to sabotage each other or to benefit themselves.   One such item in a recent replay was a set of prism glasses. The winner of this auction awarded them to one of his competitors, who had to complete the rest of the round wearing the little rascals.     I must admit that I was a tad intrigued. I started to wonder how the world would appear when viewed through these little scamps. I also wondered where on Earth Alton had found them, but it turns out they are readily available.   For example, when I bounced over to Amazon's website and searched for "Prism Glasses," I was immediately rewarded with these little beauties , which seem like a bargain at only Rs.481.82 ($7.95).   I am a weak man. I couldn’t resist. I immediately ordered a pair. When they arrived, I had a jolly interesting time walking around banging into things and tripping over the dogs and cats.   One of the things noted on the Amazon page was the fact that you could use these glasses to enjoy your favorite magazine, book, or television program while lying in bed. I must admit that I'd wondered why anyone (apart from me, of course) would purchase glasses like these. The bottom line is that, when we retired to bed that evening, I donned my prism glasses and reclined flat on my back to enjoy The Golden Girls .   To be honest, I'd sort of expected the prism glasses to offer a fairly pathetic television viewing experience, but -- much to my surprise -- they are actually rather good. Also, there's the added advantage that sporting these things does give one an air of... well, something or other. I'm reasonably confident that I'm the only person on our street who owns a pair of glasses like these. And, as I always say, you can’t put a price on style (LOL).

If you are anything like me, you spend a lot of time and money at Amazon.com (I'm scared to think how much of my hard-earned cash goes to swell their coffers). Since you're there anyway, why not use your purchase to make a donation to the charity of your choice -- at no cost to you!   Here's the way it works: Instead of going to Amazon.com like you normally would, go to Smile.Amazon.com . After that, everything is just the same as usual -- it's exactly the same user interface and you have exactly the same login -- the only difference is that Amazon will donate 0.5% of your purchase price to the charity of your choice (you select this charity on the AmazonSmile website).     My chum Jay Dowling -- who is constantly pointing me at interesting websites and news articles -- is a big proponent of the Guiding Eyes for the Blind charity. In fact, when he heard I was writing this blog, Jay asked me to point you at this " Things I learned while pretending to be blind for a week " column in the hope that it would interest you in setting this charity as your default.     For myself, I'm a big supporter of the St. Jude's Research Hospital. But that's the great thing -- everyone can choose a charity that is near and dear to their hearts.   Just one tiny word of caution: Just because you decide to use this AmazonSmile feature (assuming you do, of course), this doesn't mean you should cut back on your usual charitable donations. You can't say, "Well, I contributed to AmazonSmile, so I've done my part." We've got to remember that we were going to purchase our book or gizmo or whatchamadoodle anyway, and that our AmazonSmile contributions come at no cost to us, so we should all keep on supporting any legitimate charities of our choice that aid people less fortunate than ourselves and help to make the world a better place.

今年的春节，是矛盾的，分歧在于对小孩的教育方式。 侄子13岁，小学，比较淘气，跟大部分同龄人一样，爱玩，爱打游戏机。我姐的管孩子的方式很简单，就是要她在自己的视线范围内，稍不如她意，就骂。骂着骂着就骂习惯了，姐夫也经常被骂，老爸甚至都在此列。其实现在的小孩很可怜，被管的严，不玩电脑还有什么可以玩的呢？ 我建议我姐，少骂一些，侄子玩电脑，就规定一些时间，强制执行，而不是让他老是偷偷的玩，被抓之后又骂骂咧咧，影响很不好，虽然是好心的建议，却让我姐对我意见很大。 在老家大人的眼中，小孩就是被哄、被骗、被骂的，父母打骂他们当作是天经地义的事情，因为大部分家庭都是这么教育的，所以这个也是我姐的理由，而我跟她讲那一套现代的教育方法，显然不被我姐接受，而这些，归根结底都是源于所处的环境及相应的见识。 去年跟一位同事争论了半年关于“中医是伪科学”的命题，该同事非常认可方舟子的观点，很认同现代的分析方法，比如双盲测试，他自己也非常排斥中医理论。确实，中医发展到今天，远远被西医超越了，再加上中医高水平医生人数的减少，庸医及江湖骗子增多，发展前景堪忧。但说它是伪科学，却太过了。毕竟中医有几千年的历史，依靠他治疗了太多的人，是一个经验的总结，比如本人鼻炎，就用中医治疗，取得不错的效果，基本控制了不恶化。有太多的事实证明了中医具有的科学性，当然也不能说它就是完全科学的，这一点西医同样做不到。中医跟西医只是对事物的切入点不同罢了。我曾举了一个例子，一个只有初高中学历的，在档口修手机，就一个万用表，一把烙铁一个风*，可以修各种各样的手机硬件，若让一个技术高超的手机设计师过来，估计要傻眼了，我是做手机设计的，修手机水平却远不如他们。解决问题并非就一种方法。这个，同样跟自己的见识有关。 最近在微博上发现这么一条信息，让我惊讶，说这世界上让他觉得最尊敬最伟大的三个公司是Google、Apple、Amazon。这直接无视了其他的产业，就算是IT产业，还有IBM、Intel和Microsoft。同样，这取决于你的见识。 所以在开年会议上，我重点提出了要提高中上层的见识问题。因为见识问题制约了公司的发展，财务因为只停留在财务角度看问题，她辛辛苦苦做了，结果还被骂。结构模具设计修改了一遍又一遍，最后都怕了，不知道该如何做了，就是因为结构不懂电子特性，虽然有一次次的沟通，但理解不能到位。各个部门都要跟别的部门合作，都需要了解相关的知识才能协调，提高效率，只有这样，才能让小企业活的更好，才能真正实现微创业。 对于广大的IT技术人员来说，现在的就业越来越难的时候，同样要扩展见识，不要只是一味的跟自己类似的人交往，因为他们跟你们是同一种性格，同一种见识，而应该要多认识一些同龄创业的老板，每一个成功的老板，都有自己求存的独特技能，一种具备实际意义的有效技能，同时可以通过他们，获得更多的见识。 最后别忘了，有空看看电视、电影，那些都是浓缩的精华，当然不是让你简单的看情节，也不要挑剔人家的瑕疵。