Bedtime stories were once the domain of loving mothers, but now, a different female voice will be reading aloud to you. Amazon’s Alexa can now narrate Kindle books by way of the Echo — simply say, “Alex, read [insert Kindle title here],” and you’ll be able to enjoy the latest pages of your favorite novel (though with a rather robotic voice). The latest feature comes entirely free of charge, and should work with any Kindle book you have stored in your Amazon library (Kevin Tofel of ZDNet notes that some of his 200-plus titles weren’t readable).
An intuitive service, Alexa will keep tabs on your reading habits by way of Whispersync technology. So if you tell the AI, “Alexa, read my Kindle book,” it’ll pick up on the last book you had open yourself. You can also tell Alexa to “pause,” “go forward,” and “resume reading,” but you can’t tell the system which chapter to skip toward. That being said, within the Alexa app, the tap of a button will send you 30 seconds forward or backwards, or you can specify a chapter, much like you can with another Amazon service — Audible.
Despite the fact that Audible employs professional readers to narrate their various titles, Tofel notes that you almost forget about Alexa’s monotone after a few minutes — after all, not having to pay for a service renders it much more enjoyable regardless.
It’ll be a useful new add-on for the connected home service, especially if you need some noise to keep you company as you complete chores, or need a recipe read aloud to you to avoid constantly going back and forth between the stovetop and the computer. And it looks like Alexa is slated to do more than just read to you — the technology has also recently been integrated for Vivint smart home products, which include various security systems and locks.
So if you’d like to take Alexa out for a spin, you can start with the free Star Wars e-book sampler, courtesy of Amazon, that contains excerpts from six of the new Star Wars series novels. And since it’s a series about a galaxy far, far away, it only makes sense to use a rather nonhuman narrator to tell the story.
Few things ruin a quiet evening faster than a robot vacuum roaring through the living room. Most of us end up pausing the cleaning run, which defeats the whole purpose of owning one. Matic thinks it has the answer with its new Serene robot vacuum, and the big selling point is how little noise it makes.
The Matic Serene runs at 52 decibels even when cleaning at full power. To put that in perspective, Matic compares it to the hum of your refrigerator. It is available now for $1,695, which is $200 more than the original Matic’s current price.
Outdoor security cameras are not always practical if you live in an apartment or rental. Drilling into an exterior wall may be off-limits, while pointing a regular indoor camera through a window can create another problem once reflections start showing up after dark.
Baseus is trying to solve both issues with the new PrimeSentinel W1, a $69.99 security camera designed specifically to monitor the outdoors through glass. It mounts directly to a window without drilling and uses a 4K Starlight sensor with an F1.0 aperture for full-color monitoring during the day and at night.
This post is brought to you in paid partnership with Best Buy.
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