Are we ready for video drop ins? Amazon hopes so.
Are you ready to have friends and loved ones drop in unexpectedly? By video no less?
That’s precisely what Amazon will let you do via the “Drop In” feature that’s part of the company’s new voice-driven $229.99 Alexa-ready Echo Show, the first Amazon Echo to add a (7-inch) touchscreen.
You’ll have to “whitelist” or approve someone before they can drop in on your Echo Show; they, in turn, must approve you so that you can drop in on them.
Thankfully there are privacy protections—it would have been a major omission if there weren’t—though we’ll have to wait until Echo Show becomes available in late June to see if these protections satisfy most users. After asking Alexa to drop in on a close friend, you’ll initially see the person you’re trying to communicate with behind “frosted glass,” a view that remains for 10 seconds, after which the frost automatically disappears. If your pal isn’t fully clothed or hasn’t put on makeup yet, he or she can choose to continue the call in an audio-only mode. And of course, the person can decide not to take the call at all, or turn on a setting in which they won’t be disturbed.
There’s no limit to the number of people who can be approved for such a Drop In, which you can arrange through Echo Show or the Alexa app. Amazon says the Drop In feature is kind of like giving grandma or your next door neighbors the keys to your house, so you best be comfortable with the persons with who you share this privilege.
You’ll be able to Drop In from Echo Show to Echo Show, or from the Alexa app to Echo Show.
You can also use Echo Show to make regular video calls, similar to what you might do if you have Skype or Apple's FaceTime.
You can get a taste for how Drop In works as part of this promotional video from Amazon that introduces Echo Show.
Email: ebaig@usatoday.com; Follow Paste BN Personal Tech Columnist @edbaig on Twitter