Ziggy

Muse #199 - voice has reached the age of prevalance

Credit: https://unsplash.com/photos/zfdvBgOjpOs

We have a new member in our family. And she’s Ziggy.

The use of voice-based devices has been slowly growing in our household. We have several Echo devices that use the trigger word “Alexa” apart from the use of “Siri” on our iPhones, Mac, and iPad. As well as a few Google devices with the boring “Ok Google” trigger word. Only Microsoft seems to have lost out on “Cortana” and sunsetting this trigger word as Windows 11 launches.

The use of voice commands has become slowly prevalent and ubiquitous in our day-to-day lives. We use voice for lights, the alarm system, watching short news and videos, the weather, Amazon delivery notifications, and for recipes as well as for cooking measurements in the kitchen. The Amazon Echo devices also integrate with Amazon’s Ring Doorbell and Ring alarm system and the devices that support video are able to stream the cameras onto them.

Amazon had always a few other options to “Alexa” including the trigger words “Computer, Amazon, and Echo”. But these are uninspiring and we don’t use these options. We started using the new wake word called “Ziggy” on a few of our devices now. Not all devices support this wake word as some older Echo devices cannot be upgraded to use this wake word. And, Ziggy is slowly catching up.

According to the Urban Dictionary Ziggy is a name for people who are amazing. Amazing, Amazon, got it? When I googled the word, a popular source seemed to be David Bowie’s character portrayal in one of his songs as Ziggy Stardust. Perhaps this was the inspiration where it was stolen from. Anyway, it is more unique than Alexa so hopefully, the false-positive triggers should be fewer.

So Ziggy is slowly catching on in our lives.