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The Amazon Echo is a major piece of technology that can be a part of your home. Echo is a talking, listening piece of electronic furniture. It’s like having the internet on your kitchen table, a personal assistant at your side, and it’s the most innovative device Amazon’s made in years.

Echo, ostensibly a speaker, is a deceptively boring-looking little tube, as though Amazon’s designers took an old Kindle and rolled it into a cylinder, plugging its unremarkable guts with intelligent software that talks to you. You say Echo’s “wake word” to wake it up—beginning what Amazon hopes will be a life-long (or at least, model life-long) friendship. Want to know the news? Echo streams it. Need someone to settle a bet? Echo calls up whatever information you need. Need something added to your shopping list? Echo—and Amazon—would be happy to oblige.

We’ll see how well it works. The video sure makes it look awesome. Echo may be a kind of litmus test for Amazon. A $100 device that rolls out slowly (you have to request an invite) will let the company cull data from across a broad range of users in a huge range of environments. via Gizmodo

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Echo is always ready, connected, and fast. Just say the wake word, “Alexa,” for:

• News, weather, and information: Hear up-to-the-minute weather and news from a variety of sources, including local radio stations, NPR, and ESPN from TuneIn.
• Music: Listen to your Amazon Music Library, Prime Music, TuneIn, and iHeartRadio.
• Alarms, timers, and lists: Stay on time and organized with voice-controlled alarms, timers, shopping and to-do lists.
• Questions and answers: Get information from Wikipedia, definitions, answers to common questions, and more.
• More coming soon: Echo automatically updates through the cloud with new services and features.