I hear the tone of my voice could be a problem.
That's where the Amazon Halo Band comes in.
This thing Help me be a better person and better dad by watching my fun Fun toe.
Let's start the beginning, shall we?
There's a new device from Amazon called the Amazon Halo Band.
If you don't know anything about it, it's another fitness device.
But the real thing the thing that got my attention was the fact that there's a microphone on it that could determine what your tone of voice is.
And if you know me at all, or you've watched some of my videos, all of my videos, Sometimes people think that my tone is aloof, condescending, jerky, snarky and all kinds of other things.
When I'm just simply being sincere, I just happened to sound like this.
So when the Amazon halo was announced and I heard it can listen to your tone, I was all over it.
It was invite only.
So I signed up for an invite ASAP, paid the 65 bucks and ordered E got the device.
And here it is.
Look at it, very nondescript.
Not very pretty, not very ugly replacement bands are 15 bucks.
So I didn't get a replacement van because I thought it was too expensive.
Keep in mind that if you get a halo, you need a subscription to use its service, which costs four bucks per month.
You get a free six month membership when you buy the band.
When you set up the Halo Band, you have the option to turn the microphone on.
In my case, I wanted that.
Now one of the things that you get is two different modes of listening.
One is called less tone, the other more tone.
If you choose less tone, that means the mic is not working as much.
Battery life is around two days.
If you choose more tone like I did.
Battery life is cut down to one day because this was my thing and I really wanted to do this.
I had to charge this thing nightly, so I was not using it for sleep tracking because it could do that, too.
When you set it up, you have to read a couple of lines to create a baseline for your tone, read the lions with your normal tone.
From that baseline, Amazon will try to figure out what you sound like.
I'll show you something that I found amazing about this.
There's a live feature in the halo app.
The live feature will determine how your tone is going right then and there.
The halo is not just listening for tone, but can also listen to certain kinds of words.
So I'm going to get a little loud a little bit angry so things might get bleeped out.
But just watch what happens on the APP Open up the hello band Goto live going to see a real time voice analysis with live mode.
So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna read these lines with all kinds of passion.
Take a look at what happens.
All right, here we go.
This is my normal tone.
So I'm saying hi, everybody.
And here is me getting mad about something.
Are you telling me that you guys don't have a table for four at three o'clock?
Why not?
It's the perfect time for a late lunch.
I think it should be fine.
Why isn't it fine off hell you?
Why?
It doesn't work.
OK, listen, listen, I'm really sorry.
Sorry.
That was very out of line, and I think you know a table for three at four o'clock would be excellent.
What's that?
That that doesn't work?
You know, that's that's a shame, but I think you could go yourself.
Okay, so there you can watch the halo jump around and see.
I was totally kind of all over the place.
I wear the halo for 30 days.
The halo can give you a daily summary.
There's this little set of emojis breaking down your tones.
The APP tells you when you were the most positive and highest energy.
Then there's the notable moments section.
You can see a 9 50 on this day.
I was stubborn with five phrases that sounded stubborn, condescending or irritated.
Unfortunately, you cannot click through to find out exactly what you said at the time.
Currently, I do a lot of teaching.
Since my son is doing remote learning and I will admit it.
I could be impatient.
So when I was teaching my son, I had the live hello app open to see my tone as I was talking and teaching.
Now you can press the button on the halo to make it listen personally, I didn't have a lot of success with that.
So maybe it's a bug.
Or maybe I'm doing it wrong.
Let's put that aside.
I had the live feature on so I could see it and I could see I was getting Mawr and more agitated as I was trying to explain something so I would look at the APP, tried to recompose myself and before talking, see if I could get the right tone zone in my mind.
Then another day happened and the halo said I was super negative.
The red faced, angry emoji guy had the number 12% next to it.
Why?
Because my son and I were clashing heads like two rams hitting each other in the head, going back and forth and back and forth, not the best thing.
But it also lets me know that yes, perhaps some a little too stern, and sometimes my language choice has to change.
So I use this the next time and the next time and the next time, so any time there's schooling going on I keep the live view on it, it keeps me in check for right now.
On top of that, I'm trying to make sure I don't make those negative bars too high.
I'm not perfect, but at least I'm sounding a little bit better.
Well, in real life, I was very happy that the halo sets of a baseline with your voice.
Because if I sound like a typical nice person, I think a lot of my friends would think I was actually being sarcastic.
So I'm glad that Halo figures it out.
But there was one weird hiccup I like to listen to podcasts, and one of the podcasters I listened to apparently was registering as my voice on the halo.
So as I'm listening to this guy and he's angrily ranting about professional wrestling, which I love, the halo was thinking I was being super negative, but I wasn't saying a word.
So I guess my tone is similar to this fellows tone, and that was a bit of a monkey wrench.
[MUSIC].
You should also know that the Hello will not be listening to you when the band is off your wrist.
What I would like is for this feature to be built into Amazon smart speakers.
Does that mean I want to Amazon to listen to everything I'm saying all the time?
You know?
Not really.
But if I'm opting in for total tutoring, I will totally take it.
And it's also a fitness device.
You can track your activity.
You contract your sleep.
You can even track your body fat.
This is pretty cool.
With the halo app, you could take a 3D scan of yourself by taking several photos.
I did not need the band to tell me I'm fat and sarcastic, but the device knows what it's talking about.
I wanted to find out more about the halo and why it exists.
So I talked to Amazon and here's how that went.
Could you tell me the origin of the tone function on the halo?
Since it's so unusual.
So for the tone feature, right?
So when we started out designing and building Halo from day 1 of the critical point of the mission for us was to take a much more holistic and comprehensive you off health and wellness by focusing not only on physical health but also focusing on social and emotional well being, which at the end of the day are the core components of a true definition of health, right?
I think, for the most part, historically, we're very focused on physical health activity and nutrition sleep.
But for the first time, we're trying to get customers more awareness and insight into how they sound to others and how they that may impact the social well being.
So one of my favorite features about the halo when it's doing the tone is the setting the baseline by reading a couple of things.
Because I know my baseline is different than other people's.
Baseline can tell me exactly what the halo app is listening for.
And how is it determine tone based on that baseline?
Yes, let me clarify a couple of things.
So the halo app.
You know, there's a couple different modes of the tone feature, but really, you have to opt into the feature.
So the thing you mentioned specifically around what we call creating a voice profile is for the machine learning models to.
Learn your voice, so if you're in a group situation or group setting it on, Lee analyzes your voice and your voice alone.
So that's actually the fundamental role of the creating, the voice idea, the voice profile.
Once you enroll into town, then the microphones are turned on and in the tone captures short samples of speech throughout the day in the default mode.
So that's actually specifically how that function works.
And once it captures the signals throughout the day, it really processes it locally on the phone and provides you at the end of the day with this idea of what we call you know, positivity and energy.
Which of the two main axes and then, of course, the wars, the descriptors that describe how you sound to others.
Okay, so what I want to know about this listening function.
I know it's opt in, and I've I've covered that in the video already at this point.
So don't worry about that, because I'm making sure people know that it's not listen to unless you wanted to be.
And in that following up with that, I'm curious about whether or not that function could be extended to the smart speakers, because I know it eats up a lot of battery life that might to be on and off.
But if you have a plug in speaker, I mean, I would love to be able to opt in for this tonal analysis with my speakers around.
Is there any plans to have this feature be on other devices?
Yes, I obviously can't speculate into the future product roadmap, but I think one of the purposes of this early access program we have is actually gathered this kind of feedback from our customers.
And of course, if we get a lot of feedback from customers around what interesting features or thing they're looking for, I think that's something we obviously take into consideration as part of just making very customer focused and making sure way meet their demands.
Okay, two more silly questions this time Number one I like.
I like to listen to podcasts and turns out my halo thinks I'm one of my favorite podcasters, and that guy's really angry when he's talking about the topic.
So my halo has been noticing this person's voice and clogging up my information.
I know I can delete thes voice recordings or change how it is, but is there any way that's stoppable to go?
Hey, no, no, that's not me.
That's Bryan Alvarez.
Interesting.
So I think as I mentioned the speaker that the specific feature we're talking here, the speaker idea when you enroll into tone by creating this voice profile the speaker, I'd supposed it actually again learns your voice alone so it should not in In the default mode actually capture voice around your other individuals.
There is the other mode of tone, the live mode.
When you turn it on, I'll capture all voices just to analyze activation, violence or the positivity energy levels of those voices.
So So, yeah, I think in the in the default mode it should only analyze your voice.
So okay, my last question is, and you can do you want to give me a comment on this?
What's this?
Makes Jeff Bezos didn't know to talk like a person because I don't know, to talk like a person.
This is this, I mean again, going back to the value of tone.
You know, my first statement itself, right?
Well, the goal has really helped customers become more aware off how they come across and sound to others.
And at the end of the day, the number of sort of health implications off that feature.
And that's really where the focus is E. So that is the Amazon.
Hello, it's 65 bucks.
It's invite only.
Do I care about the other fitness stuff.
For me, getting this tone of voice under control is worth the price of admission on my as actor, and I'll see you online that sarcastic.
I don't know.
I'm working on it
