Episode 22 – Scary Alexa, New Home AI, and Google’s Rich Snippets.

Uniting over odd Wisconsin winter weather, Matt and Min take a look at a rogue Alexa, new home AI robot, and some great methods for getting found by Google. Join us every Monday for new episodes and show notes on Wednesdays weekly.

Scary Alexa [2:30]
New Home AI [4:10]
Google’s Rich Snippets [9:10]

Scary Alexa

As of late, Alexa has become a major piece in a lot of homes worldwide. Min has recently heard of a couple of spooky stories about rogue Alexa’s in peoples homes. To get more information, she discuss the issues and implications with Matt.

“Recently, people have been complaining about their Alexas. There was a couple that was sleeping in the middle of the night and all of a sudden Alexa started talking in their kitchen.” -Min
“It sounds to me like someone else got on their Bluetooth system and were messing with them!.” -Matt

New Home AI

Following her discussion about rogue Alexa’s, Min looks deeper into user friendliness in AI and ultimately to a new home system called Kuri. This newer system features emotions designed by a Pixar animator and makes for one adorable robot companion.

“User friendliness doesn’t exactly mean what it meant just a few years ago.” -Min
“Think about Alexa attached to a Roomba, that’s Kuri, the newest robotic assistant.” -Min
“They really humanized this new AI through expressions instead of voice.” -Min

Google’s Rich Snippets

As SEO continues to evolve, Matt takes some time to stay at the forefront of the trends and techniques. As of late, the Rich Snippets have become the new SEO craze and some new information was released on how, exactly, to gain those snippets.

“Rich snippets are one of the newest evolutions of SEO and are almost a guaranteed boost to traffic on your website for that keyword.” -Matt
“A rich snippet shows up on the search results page as a block of text, bulleted list, or a table instead of just a link to a page.” -Matt
“According to Moz, the best words you can use to try and get a rich snippet are ‘how, have, and which’.” -Matt

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