Show notes
Join us for another exciting episode of 'A Lady with Lucy', where our hosts, Marty and Lucy, dive deep into the fascinating world of Amazon's virtual assistant. Discover the magic of various features like the Follow-up Mode, Whisper Mode, Routines, Themes, and the intriguing VoicePad. Whether you're a tech enthusiast, a smart device lover, or someone new to the realm of AI, this episode is sure to provide you with some hidden treasures and secret hacks to make your life a tad easier.
In this episode, Lucy walks us through how to optimize our usage of these features, from enabling and disabling different modes, understanding themes, to experimenting with recording through VoicePad. So, are you ready to level up your interaction with Lady A? Tune in now!
Transcript
Marty:
[0:04] Hey y'all, Marty here and we're back with another A Lady with Lucy.
And Lucy, welcome. How's it going?
Lucy:
[0:13] Oh, it's going great. Going great. Yeah.
Marty:
[0:16] So what are we going to be talking about today?
Lucy:
[0:18] Okay. So today I thought I would go over just a few things that you can do with your Lady A, just some kind of, oh, miscellaneous things, modes that you can set up and things like that.
So, first one is called follow-up mode.
And that means that you can ask your Lady A more than one question without having to say her name again.
Because normally, you You know, you ask her one question and then you have to say her name again before you can find out anything else.
So with follow-up mode, I'm not actually sure how many questions you can ask her at a time, you know, without having to stop and say her name again, because I asked her that question and she didn't seem to understand what I was trying to find out.
Marty:
[1:21] That would be a fun game to play, you know, see how many questions you can ask before she cuts you off.
Lucy:
[1:26] Yeah, yeah. So the first time you use it, you have to say enable follow-up mode and then it will be turned on from then on. So.
My device today is called Ziggy.
Enable follow up mode. Follow up mode is now on. Ziggy, what's the weather today?
Currently in Lansing, it's 90 degrees Fahrenheit with partly sunny skies.
Tonight, you can expect mostly clear skies. What's the humidity?
Right now, the humidity is 26%. Is it going to rain?
No rain is expected tonight. By the way, there's an air quality alert in effect until Friday, June 2nd, 9.30pm.
What's the date today? Today is Thursday, June 1st. What's the weather tomorrow?
Tomorrow in Lansing, there will be partly sunny weather, with a high of 92 degrees Fahrenheit and a low of 62 degrees.
By the way, there's an air quality alert in effect. Hmm.
Marty:
[2:35] So I would have never even thought that I thought that what you were doing, you could just do. I never. So if you didn't have that mode on, you'd have to say her name every time.
Lucy:
[2:46] Yeah. So let's, let's try this.
Ziggy, disable followup mode. Followup mode is now off. Ziggy, what's the date today?
Today is Thursday, June 1st.
What's the date tomorrow?
Yeah, I see.
So maybe it's just like never ending. You can just keep asking it questions.
Marty:
[3:12] Or maybe there's a time limit. Like I wonder if you waited long enough with a pause in between the questions, if it would disable.
Lucy:
[3:19] There is. I don't know what that time limit is, but I know it's not very long.
I would say 10 to 15 seconds at the most.
Marty:
[3:29] Right. casket questions one after another, like you were doing, it probably could go for a long time. But if you wait too long, whatever that time limit is, then you'll get out of that mode properly and you'll have to say your name again. Yep.
Lucy:
[3:43] Yep. Hmm.
Marty:
[3:45] Interesting. But that's pretty cool though.
Lucy:
[3:46] Yeah, it is kind of cool. I have mine on all the time just because, you know, there's yeah. Yeah.
Marty:
[3:54] If it's on, do you have to still say her name in the first time?
And then once you say her first time, then you can continue without saying her name.
Lucy:
[4:02] Correct. Got it.
Marty:
[4:03] Cool.
Lucy:
[4:04] Yeah, you always have to say the name the first time to activate it, yeah, to wake it up.
So the second one, I don't really see much advantage, but it's kind of cool.
It's called Whisper Mode.
And it is what it says it is.
So, Ziggy, enable whisper mode. Sure. Whispered responses is now on.
Marty:
[4:32] Did she speak?
Lucy:
[4:38] Yeah, she did.
Marty:
[4:40] It doesn't come across in the audio, just so you know.
Lucy:
[4:42] Yeah, unfortunately. I thought it would, but it doesn't. But yes, she was whispering.
And it's actually kind of creepy. I don't like it. Because it's just, I don't know.
Marty:
[4:55] Well, here's an interesting question. If you whisper at her, she'll whisper back without having to enable whisper mode, right?
Lucy:
[5:04] I don't think so. I don't know.
Marty:
[5:06] That's what happened to me anyway, that's why I said, you know, it was all let me see.
Lucy:
[5:10] So let me see Ziggy disable whisper mode. Okay. I've turned off whispered responses.
Ziggy, hello. Hello. No, the Stanley Cup playoffs are almost done and I'm taking my best slap shot to predict the Ziggy stop.
Marty:
[5:28] How did it come out of the hockey question? If you whispered at it by saying hello.
Lucy:
[5:34] I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. Who knows?
Yeah, you must have had yours on somehow because I've noticed that, yeah, if you've got to have that on in order for her to reciprocate the whispering.
Marty:
[5:52] All right. Got it.
Lucy:
[5:53] Okay. So the next thing is kind of silly also.
And I don't know exactly how many themes there are that you can activate.
I've only found two. And the only thing that it does is it kind of gives you some sound effects before it says something.
One is the space theme and one is a cat theme. So let's enable the cat theme.
Ziggy, enable cat theme. disabled cat theme in the past. Do you want to enable it again? Yes. Okay, here's cat theme.
Welcome to the cat theme. And just so you know, I'll add some cat fun to the weather, timers, and even jokes.
And if you ever want to pause, just say, no more cats.
To start right meow, just say, hello. Hello? Hello? Hello?
[7:01] Ziggy hello.
Hello to keep kidding around ask me for a cat joke Yeah, see that's just kind of stupid And I don't know you know Who are severe cat lovers are gonna probably love that or you know people who are into Star Wars and Star Trek would like the Space theme what's the Star Wars one sound like oh, let's see let's see Ziggy enables space theme You've disabled Space Theme in the past.
Do you want to enable it again? Yes. Okay, here's Space Theme.
Welcome to the Space Theme. Engines are go for liftoff.
I'll add an interstellar twist when you ask for things like the weather, timers, alarms, and even jokes.
Marty:
[8:15] That there.
Lucy:
[8:16] Here's a fun fact. A laser battle in space would be dark and silent.
To lighten things up, try asking for a joke about space. Oh gosh.
Yeah, see, it's just, it's silly. I don't know. It's probably, you know, something for kids, you know? Yeah, definitely.
Marty:
[8:33] They like those sounds and stuff, you know?
Lucy:
[8:38] So another thing that's kind of cool is you can set up what they call routines.
And this means that it's kind of a bundle of tasks that it will perform when you say a certain thing.
So it's kind of like what you can do on your iPhone by setting up activities.
Don't really want to get into that, but they have some routines that are pre-set.
In other words, you can enable like the weather routine.
It's like, so after you dismiss your alarm that you have set for the morning, it will give you the weather.
And there's one called Start My Day and this, it'll give you the news and traffic updates and more, just what we need, traffic updates. Right, Marty? Oh, yeah.
Marty:
[9:37] I'm going to need that.
Lucy:
[9:40] And then there's one called, and I don't know how this works.
It's called Morning Shower.
And it's like, it says it will give you weather and favorite radio station when Lady A detects water running for two minutes.
Now I've never tried that one so I don't know you know, how it would.
I guess, I guess it would, I don't know, that's pretty weird one, I know, right?
Marty:
[10:07] Maybe it does that. It's the thing is, well, if it's raining, you're not going to go anywhere. So here's your favorite radio station.
Lucy:
[10:16] And there's one called Sunset. And that turns off the lights.
Or I mean, wait a minute. It's called Sunset Lights, excuse me.
So it turns on your lights when the sun goes down.
That is if you have smart lights, smart home lights, and we'll get into smart home devices in another episode of this.
And then there's one called good night and that wishes you good night, turns off the lights, and plays sleep sounds.
And so in order to find these routines you would go into your Amazon Alexa app on your smart device and go under the more tab in the bottom right-hand corner of your screen and then flick to the right until you find routines.
Double tap on that and there are some tabs at the bottom of that.
And to find the preset ones you go into gallery and that will give you the preset routines. There's tons of them in there. Hmm.
Marty:
[11:24] That's kind of cool.
Lucy:
[11:26] Yeah. And you can also...
Marty:
[11:28] You don't have to mess around with all the different ones to see which one would suit your needs.
Lucy:
[11:32] Yeah. You can also set up your own routines. I've never set up my own routine, but it's not difficult at all.
So, um, yeah, that's cool. Yeah. All right. So the next thing I want to talk about is something called voice pad.
Now this is kind of a cool thing.
Once you enable it...
You can ask it to, it'll ask you, what do you want to do? Do you want to record?
Do you want to read your notes? Or, you know, what do you want to do?
It will allow you to record things quickly.
[12:16] Like if you, let's say, you know, somebody gives you a phone number and you don't have your phone around or it's dead or whatever and you don't have anything to record with.
So you would just ask your Lady A device to open VoicePad.
So let's just see. Let's do that. Ziggy, open VoicePad.
Welcome to VoicePad. Say record to start recording. Say stop to stop recording.
Say read to read everything back. Say email to email yourself your notes.
What do you want to do? Record. Recording. Please speak now.
This is a test just to see how this works.
And in a minute, I will ask you to read back what I just said.
[13:14] Recorded. read my notes oh let's see how do I do this now read back maybe recorded Ziggy stop stopping recording okay what do you want to do now read my read my recording sorry I am not currently recording and say record to start recording or say help for help.
What do you want to do? Read. You want me to read you your notes, right? Yes. Please email me the words that I am saying.
This is a test just to see how this works and in a minute I will ask you to read back what I just said. Read my notes.
That's the end. What do you want to do now? Stop. Okay, goodbye.
Marty:
[14:02] So is that in text or is that an audio file?
Lucy:
[14:05] It's in text. Okay.
And you can only have that email you that text if you have your email linked to your Lady A account.
And you would do that by going into your Amazon Alexa app, and then you go into settings and you find, you flick around until you find mail and calendars.
And there's only certain email providers that will allow you to do that, but Gmail and Google, they're one of them.
So you could, yeah, you could have it email those notes to you.
And I mean, you know, with all the devices I have, I don't really find much of a use for that, but you know, somebody might. It's kind of a cool thing to have around.
Marty:
[15:04] Yeah, you never know.
Lucy:
[15:05] Yep. Okay. So, um, that's about all I have to talk about today.
So we will be back next time.
And so I'll see everybody next month.
Marty:
[15:23] All right. Thanks so much, Lucy. We appreciate it. And thanks, everybody. We'll see you next time.
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