9/30: An Industrious Girl playing with her phone

[emeraldsedai]

There are whole communities for this stuff. "Theming." It's a thing. You buy an Android phone and you make it TOTALLY UNIQUE AND PERSONAL through the medium of extremely finicky, detailed customizing apps. We're talking nudging things around pixel by pixel and copy-pasting eight-character color hex codes into font settings. And stuff like that

Comments

[helenajust]

Ooh, this looks like fun! About the only customising I did to my phone is to move the icons for apps around until they're where I can find them quickly, and upload photographs for the lock screen.

Your mention of a JARVIS reminds me of Amazon's Echo, which you do just talk to. I've read techy reviews of it, and it sounds like fun. It wakes up when you say its name, and apparently this means that it does *not* listen in and send back to the Cloud everything that goes on in your home (like the new voice-operated smart Samsung TV!).

And according to this page, there's an Android app for it, too. http://www.amazon.com/oc/echo/ref_=ods_dp_ae

[emeraldsedai]

Oh dear oh dear oh dear. Now I want an Echo! And I didn't even know such a thing existed until five minutes ago.

Google has a similar function built into its most recent Android versions--you say "OK Google" within microphone range of your device and it dings and awaits orders. It gets more sophisticated with every update. Its speech recognition is really good, and the available voices that it answers in get better and less robotic all the time.

There are two problems. Well, three problems. I have both a phone and a tablet, and they tend to both hear me say "OK Google" at the same time when I'm at home. So that's one. A second is that it can't hear me say "OK Google" over my headset, so it's still not quite where I need it to be for when I'm on my bike.

And finally, it's been known to wake up and listen when it hears me just say "OK" which, let's face it, is something one says...even, I might add, to oneself while home alone.

Still, JARVIS grows ever nearer!

[emeraldsedai]

OMG I just watched the Echo video and now I want one so bad! If it works half as well as in the ad...

Well, I just want one!

[helenajust]

I don't know whether to feel guilty, or pleased that I helped you find what you want!