Working long hours at a desk, whether you use a computer all day or some other tool to get your work done, can wreak havoc on your wrists, knees, and other joints. Here are ten ways you can keep them in good health, and reduce the pain and discomfort your day-to-day may be putting you through.
Drinking more water has a ton of benefits , one of which being better joint health (not to mention better overall health.) You don’t have to drink a pre-prescribed amount or anything— just drink when you’re thirsty , or better yet, keep a nice big bottle of water near your desk and make a point to drain it every now and again.
Keeping yourself hydrated will keep your body happy (and seriously, you’ll feel better too,) but it’ll also keep you from reaching for hand-to-mouth snacks. Perhaps more importantly from an at-the-office perspective though, it’ll get you up and moving around on a regular basis as you go to refill that water bottle, and…well, as you go to the bathroom because you’ve been drinking so much water. Consider them small, short breaks where you get a chance to get up from your desk and move around a bit.
Speaking of taking every opportunity to get up and move around, doing so is another good way to stave off muscle and joint pain or soreness at work. Whether it’s giving your poor wrists a chance to rest and recover between long sessions of typing, or giving your knees a break and alleviating the pressure on them that comes with sitting for long periods (not to mention all the other ways sitting for hours on end is bad for you ,) getting up just to stretch, walk around the office, and maybe get some face time with your coworkers, is a great idea. Ideally you wouldn’t go more than 9o minutes without taking one.
Of course, once you’re sitting at work doing your thing, inertia makes it really difficult to break that focus and get up to stretch. That’s where technology comes in. Apps like previously mentioned Rest for Mac , Aware for Mac , or Workrave for Windows and Linux , can all remind you to take breaks periodically. Either way, make it as painless as possible so you actually do it, and your body will thank you. Bonus, taking more breaks will actually make you more productive , as well as healthier.
If you have the flexibility to, switch up where you work. If you have a work-issued laptop and an office with common areas or conference rooms—or even phone rooms you can escape into, grab one for a few hours at a time. Of course, not everyone has the privilege to have a desk they work at for a few hours, and then some comfy couches or a common area they can work at for the rest of the day (especially if people swing by your desk looking for you often), but if you do, take it.
Alternatively, consider switching desks with a colleague from time to time, or even hitting a nearby coffee shop , or better yet, a library , where you can settle in, focus, and there’s Wi-Fi and power aplenty. Wherever you roam, here are some tips to stay productive when you’re working from not the office.
In the same vein as working from different desks and locations whenever you can, consider working from home too, if you have space to do so. For many of us, working from a home office is more relaxing, more comfortable, and in most cases, just more space. Of course, just like above, your home office, a coffee shop, or a library may not offer better ergonomics, but being able to choose and change the position you work in can be a benefit in itself.
Even if you opt to work from bed, you can do so with good posture —better than sitting at an uncomfortable desk all day, for sure. In fact, just about anywhere you go, you probably have some control over ergonomics , so don’t hesitate to exercise it.
If you can’t just work from a place not your desk, and you do have a little flexibility about what your desk is like, consider a sit/stand setup. You don’t have to go full standing desk ( unless you want to, of course!) but a flexible sit-or-stand desk gives you the best of both worlds. Check out our guide to choosing (or building) the perfect standing desk for some inspiration.
Keep in mind though, sometimes you’ll just want to sit, and other times it’ll work better to stand. The real point here is to make sure you get some regular movement and don’t wind up in one place and position all day long. If you do use a standing desk, check out this standing desk yoga routine. Either way, there’s plenty of other things you can do to keep yourself limber , even while you sit.
Regardless of the dress code at your office, make sure you wear comfortable, well-fitted clothes. Even if you have to squeeze on professional garb every day, the least you can do is make sure it’s not too tight, uncomfortable, or worse, so hard to move around in that you can’t stretch or move your arms and legs with full range of motion. After all, you spend eight hours of the day in these clothes. They should be comfortable, supportive, and healthy to work in, whatever your job may be.
I learned a long time ago that even if your approach to work clothes is to buy cheap as long as it remotely fits, you’re doing your look—and your health—a disservice every time you cut off circulation to your legs, or wear something just too tight around the arms or sleeves that your wrists feel awful at the end of the day. Then you inevitable have to replace them. Bottom line: cheap clothes are too expensive. Buy quality instead.
Maybe you don’t have the type of job that allows you to just up and walk around whenever you want, or take a break whenever you’d like to stretch. That’s okay—frankly, few of us really do. Most people have to be at their desk to get work done, and if they’re not at their desk working, someone’s missing them, whether they have to take calls, crank out reports, or write code. For those folks, fidgeting and small movements are where it’s at.
When I worked in a call center and had to be on a phone for hours and hours a day, fidgeting and other minimal exercises I could do while I was on the phone with someone or within reach of my headset from my desk were a windfall. Embrace them. Swing around in your chair a bit. Stretch out your legs where you can, either into the space behind your desk or under it. Do wrist stretches and small exercises through the day. Get whatever activity in your joints and muscles you can, even if you can’t get away from your desk. Bonus: it helps you focus , too.
Stretching, bending, working from different locations, and staying hydrated are all good, but there’s a certain point where you just need to buckle down and rearrange your desk. If your desk is set up to cause you pain, well, no amount of trying to fidget and stretch will really fix it. Take a little time to completely reboot your workspace, and do it with ergonomics and healthy posture in mind.
Start by cleaning everything out and come up with a plan for how you’d ideally like to work. Then start with your chair, then your keyboard and mouse, and your monitor, working around all of the items you have and use on your desk and position them so you’re not craning to use them , bending awkwardly to type or read, and the things you need are within easy reach. If you need to make a few ergonomic upgrades to your desk while you’re at it, we have some suggestions there, too.
The next big thing you can do to relieve joint and wrist pain while you work is to make sure you keep yourself flexible, limber, and healthy outside the office as well as inside the office. Luckily, good joint health and flexibility isn’t hard to maintain. Simple stretches, foam rolling, and some easy-to-do mobility drills can do a world of good but at and outside the office. Foam rolling is also good for improving your posture , and can even help you with strength training.
Beyond keeping your joints limber, don’t neglect the rest of your body. A good bodyweight workout will keep you healthy and you don’t need any special equipment, but if you already hit the gym regularly, don’t forget to do some strength training. They can do a world of good for those aching joints and muscles. Even some simple hip flexes and regular stretches at home can offset some of the effects of all that sitting.
Finally, no matter where you work or what you do, there’s always room for some light stretches at your desk , a little office yoga ( at your desk , or even in the stairwell,) or some posture exercises and stretches up against a wall to help you combat the effects of sitting in front of a screen or over a keyboard all day. If you have a little room to stretch out, these three exercises only take four minutes. Even shorter on time? Try thirty seconds.
Don’t neglect your posture , either. These exercises are perfect for the gym , while these ones are easy enough while you sit. These back stretches keep your lower back healthy , and these ones will keep your neck from craning forward. They’re just the tip of the iceberg though. Find some good ones that work for you, your desk, and the amount of time you have between meetings, calls, or other activities, and you’ll do your body good.
Illustration by Angelica Alzona. Additional images by Sam Woolley, Brian Robinson , etraveler ( Shutterstock ), Tony Alter , Angelica Alzona, Barry Peddycord III , Rennett Stowe , and Joe Loong.
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Recomendo is an email newsletter from the editors at Cool Tools filled with interesting recommendations about useful tools, interesting books, and more. And it’s particularly succinct.
Cool Tools is a site by Kevin Kelly which, broadly speaking, recommends useful tools that range from apps to websites to actual mechanical tools. Their newsletter Recomendo, launched last year, delivers six such recommendations to your inbox once a week. I don’t have a lot of patience for email newsletters—there are so many, and are often too verbose for my frayed attention span—but Recomendo is brief, charming, and to the point. The recommendations from Mark Frauenfelder , Claudia Dawson, and Kevin Kelly, and include items you might want to watch, books to read, and the practical tool tips too.
I don’t often write recommendations for newsletters or podcasts or anything like that (although I certainly do suggest you subscribe to the Lifehacker Newsletter ), but was ironically looking through old Recomendo emails for something to write about. It occurred to me that I should probably just recommend Recomendo. It’s directly inline with what a Lifehacker reader might like.
Recomendo | Cool Tools

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We’ve already highlighted the best of CES 2017 , so now it’s time to turn our attention to some of the wackier things. Because they’re just as important in their own way too – if only as a cautionary tale…
Being a new and exciting technology, virtual reality is providing the ultimate opportunity to get creative with peripherals. You might be entering a virtual world visually thanks to your headset but there are so many more senses to immerse, so many more body parts to track!
Your hands already have motion trackers but Cerevo wants to bring your feet into play with its Taclim VR shoes. These shoes track the motion of your feet and provide haptic feedback so that you can really feel yourself walking across different surfaces or giving an enemy the boot.
Rather than targeting high-end headset owners, Cerevo is initially launching its shoes for Google’s DayDream headset which is interesting since they’ll cost a steep $1,000 (£813) to $1,500 (£1,220) when they launch later in 2017.
The weird VR peripherals don’t stop with Cerevo. Going ever so slightly further, Theory has developed a whole body exosuit. Hypersuit is supposed to let you feel like you’re really flying through virtual reality worlds while you’re lying down in your living room, controlling your movements with your arms.
Theory paired the suit with the HTC Vive to demonstrate base jumping, space, and superhero experiences. The suit doesn’t have a price or even a plan for release right now, but we’re not sure who would have the room for it anyway.
You’ve probably never expressed a desire to chat with a projector but it might one day be a possibility with Panasonic’s egg-shaped desktop robot. Like a mini R2-D2, the robot can wheel around your desk and chat with you as well as project video content straight onto your wall. At the moment the nameless egg that we have dubbed Humpty is just a proof of concept, but it could be a sign of the direction Panasonic is considering taking the home assistant market.
Egg-shaped devices were unprecedentedly popular at this year’s CES. PowerEgg from PowerVision is a quadcopter drone that claims to have the world’s first gesture-controlled remote that can be used with just one hand and easily flown by anyone.
PowerVision say PowerEgg was designed to be “a consumer drone for everyone” but considering it’s expected to launch at over £1000 we’re left feeling a bit hard-boiled towards it.
You probably thought brushing your hair was one of those daily activities that didn’t require much thought. But you’d be wrong. The Kerastase Hair Coach , created by Withings and L’Oreal, is a connected hairbrush that will assess the condition of your hair and the way you’re brushing it and offer feedback via a companion app.
The Hair Coach will launch in late 2017 for less than $200. It’s fascinating but at that price it feels unnecessary – we think we’ll leave it to ‘concerned’ friends and family to point out our split ends.
As far as we can tell, the only smart thing about these boxers is that they take advantage of paranoia around an unproven claim that phone radiation is damaging men’s sperm count to sell exorbitantly expensive underwear.
Spartan , the company behind the boxers, claims that it’s woven silver into its product to create an “electromagnetic shield” that will protect you from radiation and provide antibacterial properties. We can’t vouch for whether or not these actually work but if you need the peace of mind or a Faraday Cage for your bits these should do the trick.
If you’re not ready to go the whole nine yards and fork out the money for a full smart fridge, you could always opt for this $150 fridge camera from Smarter instead. Finally, the light question will be answered.
The FridgeCam sits on the inside of your fridge and takes a photo of the contents each time you close the door, sending the image to a companion app on your smartphone.
It could be useful to remind yourself of what’s in there while you’re out grocery shopping but since the camera only captures what’s directly in front of it, you’ll have to remember the eggs and butter are on the back of the door for yourself.
According to Smarter, the camera will be able to let you know when foods are expiring and will provide you with recipe suggestions for what you’ve got in there which, we admit, actually is smart. And much more affordable than a full smart fridge.
In what could be the first step towards toddler-only spin classes, Fisher Price has created a stationary bike for kids. The Think and Learn Smart Cycle looks like a mini gym bike, but it’s essentially an incredibly interactive game controller; simply plug a tablet into it and fire up one of Fisher Price’s educational games which your child can control by pedaling at different speeds.
It does feel slightly like a hamster wheel for kids, but if it keeps them active and entertained on rainy days who are we to complain?
Just how particularly are you when it comes to toast? If your answer is “unbelievably” then you might be interested in Griffin Technology’s Bluetooth connected toaster.
The toaster comes with a companion app through which you can control temperature and degree of toastiness. It even remembers individual user preferences, so you don’t have to worry about that flatmate who doesn’t understand the meaning of good toast messing up your perfectly curated settings.
The smart toaster is set to launch early next year for $100 (which converts to roughly AU$140 or £60).
At CES, if your product doesn’t have a touchscreen it’s really not fulfilling its potential. At least that must be what Vinci thought when it designed its headphones.
With their touchscreen earpads that show details about the song you’re listening to, Vinci’s headphones mean you’ll never have to be interrupted by someone asking what you’re listening to again. You can also swipe the screen to change the volume of your music and switch tracks.
A screen isn’t the only technology these headphones attempt to cram in – they’re also Bluetooth connected, wirelessly charged, fitness tracking, noise cancelling, voice controlled, and have internal storage for standalone listening. It’s possible they’ll drag down your head with the weight of their ambition.
Vinci’s headphones have been in the works for a while, having started life as a very successful Kickstarter campaign. However, they’re still in their prototype stages and don’t have all their planned features functioning just yet.
A final product is some time away, but with so many features to support we wonder if Vinci should wait for improvements in battery technology before releasing them.

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The perfect treadmill to keep your resolutions, Bushnell hunting gear , and a Roku smart TV lead Saturday’s best deals.
Bookmark Kinja Deals and follow us on Twitter to never miss a deal. Commerce Content is independent of Editorial and Advertising, and if you buy something through our posts, we may get a small share of the sale. Click here to learn more, and don’t forget to sign up for our email newsletter.
Prepare for the apocalypse your next hunting trip with Amazon’s sale on Bushnell hunting gear. Pick up a quality HD trail camera for $75 and a pair of XLT roof prism binoculars for under $100. Personally, I would just use the trail camera to look at all the weird animals that hang out in the woods, but that’s just me.
A 55″ Roku LED 1080p HDTV for under $350 is a no-brainer if you’re in the market for a great TV. This Sharp option also includes an app to control with your smartphone, so you don’t need to dig through the couch for the remote ever again.
Another day, another Kindle sale. This one is an aggregation of the Best of the Month books from 2016 , including some super popular titles. Fill your kindle with some highly-rated ebooks.
Here are a few of the most popular titles, but it’s worth sifting through the three pages on Amazon.
A wall charger with QuickCharge is something you should always have lying around (if your device is compatible). So for $5 with the code ITSVP356, it’s pretty stupid not to buy this Mpow charger.
If you don’t have room for a full at-home gym, this folding treadmill is a great option. With ProShox cushioning to help your knees and iPod connectivity to make you hate running just a little less, it’s a great solution to hitting your resolution target of working out more.
Inflatable hot tubs might look a little bit cheap, but for $300 , I’m willing to forgive it. This model has great reviews, can accommodate 4-6 people (depending on how much you like them, I guess) and normally sells for around $400.
Who doesn’t like saving money with their khakis (I bet Jake from Statefarm does). Dockers giving you an extra 50% off all sale styles with the code EXTRA50. Grab work pants, chinos, and maybe cross off working about what you’ll be wearing for the holidays next month, all in one shot.
A lot of people are reflexively appalled by the idea of a bidet, which makes no sense, because they’re amazing. Today on Amazon, you can score a Luxe Bidet Neo 120 that will work with just about any toilet for just $32. That’s nothing for a product you’ll use just about every day, and it’s particularly good for a model with a self-cleaning and retracting nozzle, let alone one with over 4,000 reviews. This deal could sell out any time though, so purchase or get off the pot.
Back down to its lowest price ever, this handy $20 wall charger from Aukey not only features four USB ports, but has an added USB-C port as well. You’ll be able to charge all your devices at once without fiddling with any special adapters. No one likes to fiddle. Plus, it supports everyone’s favorite Quick Charge capability.
PUMA has made some very strategic moves to stay relevant, but they also have managed to stay pretty true to what they’re known for. So when they launch their Semi-Annual Sale full of staple styles of clothing and sneakers , it’s a win-win. Up to 50% off stuff that isn’t weird and celebrity-backed? Count me in.
The Bonavita BV1800 was your favorite coffee maker , and you can snag one with a stainless steel carafe for $121 today. It occasionally gets a little bit cheaper, but this is the best deal we’ve seen in over a month.
We sell a lot of cold brew coffee makers (the Takeya being the most popular) but the coolgear BRU is something pretty different. With its 21oz double wall tumbler fitted beneath the carafe, you can take your coffee with your immediately after it’s done brewing. And it’s on sale today for only $32.
With this $12 Mpow Streambot Bluetooth receiver, you can turn everything from your dusty old iHome to your legacy home theater system into a Bluetooth speaker. Just plug in the AUX jack, connect up to two devices, and start streaming.
If you missed out on all of the Black Friday and Cyber Monday console discounts this year, it’s not too late to get a great deal on a PS4 Slim. Today on eBay, $249 gets you the Uncharted console bundle , plus free shipping and no tax for most places (sorry California and Georgia).
We see our fair share of water-resistant Bluetooth speaker deals, but the Mpow Buckler has been one of our readers’ favorite models to date , probably thanks to its ingenious suction cup design that you can stick to your shower wall.
It may say 30% off on the Levi’s site, but enter the code SALE40 at checkout, and you’re in for a treat. Levi’s ramped up their sale discount from 30% to 40% off all sale styles. And the great thing about the Levi’s store is that it isn’t just denim.
I finally got my hands on a pair of the infamous Wedgie jean , and I love them (the Joshua Tree wash is on sale for $42 ). My most recent purchase was this really comfy sweater that I have worn at least three times in the past two weeks.
If you didn’t get your denim fill during the Levi’s sale, maybe check out Uniqlo’s crazy-good deal on jeans. All women’s styles are $30 and all men’s are $40 , including selvedge denim and HEATTECH jeans.
Around these parts, it’s starting to get uncomfortably cold. So, if you haven’t stocked up on winter essentials, this one’s for you. Not only is Moosejaw marking down a bunch of The North Face stuff , use the code NACHO10 and get an additional 10% off.
I have painful, yet fond memories of my college’s Athletic Trainer using one of these on my thigh after I suffered a strained quad. They are hell while using it, but heaven afterwards. And for $10 when you use the code Naipo604, this muscle roller can help further your love-hate relationship with working out.
If you need a fresh set of wiper blades to survive the winter, you can grab a pair of Bosch Insight wiper blades for $23 from Amazon today .
Just pick the two you need, add them to your cart , and the discount should appear automatically, assuming both were shipped and sold by Amazon.com. The deal even allows you to mix and match sizes, so you can almost certainly find a combination that will work for your car.
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Las Vegas’s Mob Museum is one of few museums to offer telepresence robot tours.
Pamela Forth was determined to bring a little culture into her fiancé’s life.
That was no easy feat. Two decades earlier, a car accident left Roger Sprong a quadriplegic with limited mobility. That made any trip too far beyond his Valparaiso, Indiana, home a challenge.
But Forth, a 61-year-old teacher from Palm Harbor, Florida, was determined, and learned about telepresence robots — roughly 5-foot tall machines with a large display and cameras, all on wheels — that let people with physical disabilities remotely tour different venues. As it turned out, the Mob Museum in Las Vegas had just invested in such a robot, the Beam Pro from Suitable Technologies, and was looking for guinea pigs.
So in March, Forth and Sprong sat together on his bed, turned on his computer, downloaded the software and piloted the robot through the first floor of the museum, which features a long hallway adorned with pictures of all the known mob « Made Men » and their associates.
Sprong used his keyboard to maneuver the robot, which the museum affectionately calls « Moe-Bot.  »
« It was neat to go on a virtual date together, » Forth said.
They had a blast, and made plans to see the final two floors. But Sprong died in August before he was able to complete the tour. Even so, his feedback helped shape the experience for future guests — many of whom deal with physical ailments.
The five-year-old Mob Museum is just one of 10 museums who’ve adopted the Beam Pro robot to give people a chance to view an exhibit virtually. Other museums include the San Diego Museum of Art and the de Young Museum in San Francisco. As Forth and Sprong found, that’s a massive boon to people with physical disabilities, opening a pipeline into an array of cultural experiences.
This is what happens when a CNET editor tries to get away from CES 2017 for a little bit.
« We certainly see Beam use growing in the museum and cultural arts markets, » said Christa Cliver, director of education business development at Suitable Technologies, which at CES 2017 announced a faster, longer-lasting version of its robot .
While these kinds of robots seem like a novelty for now, you may soon see one at your local school, hospital or factory. President Obama greeted the organizer of a disability organization via a Beam Pro in July 2015.
The market for telepresence robot devices and systems is expected to reach $7 billion by 2022, according to Wintergreen Research. That’s a massive jump from its market size of $825 million in 2015.
Just four miles north of the hustle and bustle of the CES 2017 trade show at the Las Vegas Convention Center, I stood in the middle of the third floor of the Mob Museum. On one side, there was an actual wall from the St. Valentine’s Day massacre in Chicago — replete with bullet holes. On the other side, there’s a row of wooden barrels, their bases burned in with images of notable figures from the Prohibition era.
It was at that moment I got a strange sense of déjà vu.
My virtual experience in the museum was comparable to my real-life visit.
That’s because two weeks ago, I took the same tour with the Moe-Bot and a real-life guide who walked me through the various exhibits. They ranged from a look at well-known gangsters like Al Capone and Charles « Lucky » Luciano to a review of the early days of Las Vegas and how mob influence nurtured the city’s growth.
The virtual tour, which costs $80 and is only done in the morning before other visitors arrive, gave me a near-complete experience of the museum. One of the wide-angle cameras broadcast what was in front of the robot, while a second camera was angled down so I could see what was in front of its « feet.  »
A look at what it’s like to pilot the Beam robot.
Virtual lines would occasionally appear on the feed to show me where the robot was headed.
I used a keyboard to navigate, kind of how I’d do that in a PC shooter game. Every once in a while, my wife would peek over out of curiosity.
My guide, Cordia Gay, spoke directly to the camera, so it felt like she was talking to me. She even waved to my wife at one point. She was friendly and knowledgeable, and I got the sense I was getting more information than I would have with the usual self-guided tour, which cost $23.95.
There were some limitations. Video quality suffered when I zoomed in too much to read some of the history on the walls. Watching video screens was a little tough.
There were also a lot of interactive exhibits I couldn’t access. It wasn’t until I showed up in person that I was able to fire the replica « Tommy Gun.  »
But overall, the 90-minute tour was one of my most fulfilling museum experiences.
There’s just some exhibits you can’t experience with a robot.
Pamela Forth and Roger Sprong were one of the first visitors to try the Moe-Bot.
The service was made available early last year, and has done about 10 tours.
The museum was originally conceived by former mob attorney and mayor Oscar Goodman in 2002. It has since drawn interest around the world thanks hit movies like  » Goodfellas  » and  » The Godfather  » and TV shows like  » The Sopranos  » and  » Boardwalk Empire.  » The Beam robot offers a cheaper option that booking a ticket to Vegas.
« For people who can’t see it, we’re always looking for things to do that are outside the box, » said Brenda Hengel, marketing manager for the Mob Museum.
Most of the people who have expressed interest have a disability, Gay said. They’re pretty savvy about the software required to run the robot.
Indeed, Forth applauded the experience as a way to engage the mind of a person with physical disabilities.
« So many people treat quadriplegics like, since they’re body is broken, their mind should be too, » Forth said. « It doesn’t occur to them that it’s the same person. « 

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« Alexa, why are you winning the smart home market?  »
It seems every appliance that’s any appliance is adding Alexa support at CES 2017 , giving Amazon a commanding lead in the race to become the de facto smart home standard.
Here in Las Vegas, and the United States, it’s clear that there is a love of Amazon’s skill-based voice platform and how it’s bringing useful smart home features to life faster than any other platform. But as someone who lives in Australia, where Amazon Echo has not launched, I’m left wondering when we’ll get to join Alexa’s gang.
LG’s Instaview was announced with Cortana support but is launching with Alexa instead.
But this isn’t a story of FOMO or sour grapes. In the battle to become the brand that is synonymous with the smart home experience, building a global footprint will become important very soon. In a global market for smart home appliances and services, selling to two of 200 countries won’t keep you in the driver’s seat for long.
To date Alexa has only publicly launched in the US and UK. That does make sense. Alexa helps Amazon make more money only when it’s integrated into its suite of services and can order you home delivery shopping from local warehouses.
In Australia, we can’t buy most of the Amazon product catalogue because they can’t be shipped to Australia from the USA. We have Audible, we have Kindle and we only just got Amazon Prime Video. To bring us the complete Alexa experience requires a massive investment in warehousing infrastructure that takes a lot more commitment than just selling a bunch of smart speakers.
But the essence of a smart home platform isn’t really about selling a few specific services and groceries. It’s about making the appliances, lights and services around my home work together seamlessly. And it’s the easy answers to quick questions about weather, news, trivia and other useful tips and tricks. Alexa just happens to have worked really well for all these things too. Hardware manufacturers seem to find Alexa to be an easy enough platform to integrate with, giving it that tipping point feeling at CES this year. A smart appliance is suddenly taking a risk if it ignores Alexa in the US market right now.
But it’s a fragile dominance. It’s a software layer that can be swapped out for an alternative without too much fuss. Vendors haven’t locked themselves into Alexa, they’re just supporting the market leader. Should another platform gain traction Alexa can be replaced, or simply become one of a number of supported options, just as quickly as it has been added to everything at this CES.
Alexa has already seen companies choose to bump other technologies in its favour. LG’s Instaview refrigerator was first announced with Microsoft’s Cortana integrated at IFA just four months ago. But here at CES, Instaview officially launched with Alexa instead.
That fridge isn’t going to sell millions of units, of course. But as an example of Alexa’s geo limitation, should it launch in territories outside the Amazon Alexa footprint, it may well go back to having Cortana in those locations instead (or something else that plays better with LG’s own webOS).
Lenovo Smart Assistant will use Alexa in the USA but a different assistant technology when it launches first in China.
One direct example of this is the Lenovo Smart Assistant speaker announced here at the show. In the USA, it’s launching with Alexa. But first, it’s launching in China with a different voice assistant technology from AISpeech.
There’s a big question for Amazon right now. Could they let Alexa spread her wings and go global regardless of where its services and warehouses have launched? She might lose a few skills, but she’ll still be useful on many levels. Most importantly, she could leverage her big American advantage and solidify Amazon’s claim to the voice assistance throne.
Some enthusiastic and impatient fans have been buying Amazon Echo to use in non-supported countries and to date it seems that there are quirks to the system. You need to pretend you’re in a supported timezone, for one, and that means the clock settings won’t be aligned with your actual location. A whole range of skills become awkward or unusable under such conditions.
(Some people have been hacking the API to get around this issue. But that’s a long way from a mainstream solution to making Alexa go global.)
When Echo launched in the UK, we saw a lot of love given to the local accent and local culture. So as a precedent we see that Amazon wants to give detailed attention to each market it launches Alexa into. It takes a lot of effort to work up cultural in-jokes and local slang, but there’s no question people love it when products care about the local details. This all takes time, so it seems unlikely Amazon has an interest in just opening the gates to buyers everywhere.
We test out Alexa, Amazon’s voice-controlled assistant, to see how well she understands British words, phrases and accents. Tally-ho chaps!
If Amazon sticks to its status quo on keeping Alexa tied to its US and UK regions, it gives its competitors a chance to gain traction. Install base is everything for smart home. People will only code for it and support it if they think there’s a good base of users to service.
In previous years at CES we’ve watched the smart home market slowly simmer along with no real sales pitch to get consumers excited. Suddenly Alexa has lit the fire under this market and competitors are on notice. Move quickly, move now, or lose your chance. But the door is not closed. There’s a big market out there with no Alexa to compete with and a lot of people eager to smarten up their homes.
In the end, we will all thank Amazon for what Alexa is doing to the smart home industry. The pace is speeding up. We’ll all have a smarter home sooner thanks to Alexa’s leadership.
Whether all of us around the world end up thanking Alexa herself, or Siri, Cortana, Viv or another personified voice in a box, remains to be seen.
« Alexa, pat yourself on the back. « 

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