Voice in Canada Podcast

Teri Fisher

In this weekly podcast, Teri Fisher from Voice in Canada and The Voice Den, reveals all of his top Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Apple Siri, Microsoft Cortana, Samsung Bixby, and other smart speaker strategies, skills, actions, capsules, shortcuts, news, power tips and tricks for Canadians. Discover how you can get the most out of your conversational AI voice first service so you can have the time and freedom to make your life more organized, relaxed, stress-free, entertaining, and fun!

Teri interviews the top leaders - the Voicefluencers - in the voice-first industry, and we cover it all - from Echo, Nest, Home, Homepod, and iPhone devices, to personal digital assistants, smart home automation, flash briefings, voice recognition, natural language understanding, and artificial intelligence (AI). We talk about everything that works (and doesn’t work) to help you better understand how to get your digital assistant working for you.

Voice in Canada is an independent publication and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Samsung, or any other company.

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Top 10 Voice in Canada Podcast Episodes

Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best Voice in Canada Podcast episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to Voice in Canada Podcast for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite Voice in Canada Podcast episode by adding your comments to the episode page.

5 Ways Voice Technology Can Help with COVID-19

Voice in Canada Podcast

03/17/20 • 16 min

In this episode, Teri will talk about what’s going in the world, and specifically about the Coronavirus (COVID-19) epidemic and how voice technology could be used to help in the fight against it.

Let's Do This!

With the epidemic leading to people being told to practice social distancing, Teri has been considering how voice technology can lessen the problems people are facing with that. He will share the five different ways that he thinks voice technology can have a profound impact on what we are experiencing today with the epidemic. Some of the solutions are futuristic but they have a lot of potential going forward.

And the Five Ways Are:

#1 - Voice Enabling Diverse Gadgets

This is voice enabling gadgets that we touch every day including kiosks, ATMs, elevator controls, and others. This is already being done today and it definitely helps with curbing the spread of the coronavirus.

#2 - A Coronavirus Flash Briefing

This would be very beneficial in delivering accurate information about what is happening with the virus globally. Teri is launching the Coronavirus tips to keep people informed, up-to-date, and current with evidence-based, proven and good information.

#3 - General Information Skill

Teri has already created a skill that provides general information about COVID-19 and it’s called “Coronavirus Doc” and it’s on the Alexa Skill Store. He is also working on launching it on Samsung Bixby. The skill covers information such as general info about the Coronavirus, how it’s transmitted, some of the symptoms, how to avoid contracting it, and other things.

#4 - Voice Doctor

This is futuristic but we are already seeing hints of it. In this case, a voice assistant would act a little bit like a doctor and would ask the user questions like, “Do you have a fever? Do you have a cough? Do you have trouble breathing? Have you been exposed to someone who has the virus?”, and those sorts of questions. Then based on the responses, the voice assistant will use its algorithm to determine your risk level of having the Coronavirus. The voice assistant would then order a home test kit for you if the risk is high enough, so you could test yourself at home, and you could discuss the results with the voice assistant in such a way that you will start to obtain your medical information and care at home.

#5 - Epidemic Management

Teri believes that voice technology could help with the management of an epidemic like Coronavirus in the future through voice assistants serving as home-based healthcare providers. A great scenario is if one was diagnosed with the Coronavirus and they had a skill that would monitor how they are doing, ask them to rate their symptoms, look for patterns, and other things.

List of resources mentioned in this episode:

Other useful resources:

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Voice First Startups with Collin Borns of VoicePunch

Voice in Canada Podcast

10/29/19 • 23 min

In this episode, Teri has a conversation with Collin Borns of VoicePunch about voicefirst startups and the investment side of voice technology.

Welcome, Collin!

Collin Borns is a creator/host of the Voicing Startups Podcast and has a background in institutional investment consulting. He worked for VaynerMedia as a financial analyst, before finding a passion for audio, voice, and conversational technology a few years back.

He now works with an early stage venture fund, VoicePunch.VC, and is trying to invest in and bring awareness to the different startups and founders in the voice space who are shaking up industries.

Working with VaynerMedia

He was a financial operations analyst for VaynerMedia and had a great experience working there.
He thinks the VaynerSmart team (the voice team at VaynerMedia) is doing fantastic work and recommends them for anyone looking at doing a voice related project.

His Flash Briefing and Podcast

He was looking to do some things in the voice space and felt that a flash briefing was an interesting format to start playing around with voice and also put out valuable content consistently.
He wanted his flash briefing to be fresh and to consist of everything that he finds interesting in the world of audio and voice that businesses should be considering.
He focuses on batching up a number of episodes and recording them ahead of time so he can be able to release them consistently.
He started his Voicing Startups Podcast to bring more awareness and attention to the founders and companies that are trying different things in the audio and voice space.

The VoicePunch Fund

They look for consumer apps like games and different types of experiences that have some sort of voice aspect to them.
They are also interested in the picks and shovels of the voice space like design tools and content management tools.
They invest in early stage companies that are yet to raise their Series A funding and also look for founders who are determined and highly focused on achieving their core goal with their company.
They look into whether a company is in an interesting market that has the potential to come into fruition.
They expect to close their sixth investment by the end of 2019 and raise a closed-end fund in 2020 that will enable them to invest in more companies in the voice space.

List of resources mentioned in this episode

Other useful resources:

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Alexa Whisper Mode, Celebrity Alarms, and Alarm Routines, oh my!

Voice in Canada Podcast

09/10/19 • 11 min

In this episode, Teri will talk about the newest Alexa features that are now available in Canada.

Enjoy!

One feature in particular, Whisper Mode, is very new and Teri will update us on a couple of the other features. Some of them are really cool, some of them to add some nice functionality to Alexa, and some of them are more gimmicky, but people really enjoy them.

Alarms

Alexa is often used for alarms. It can be an alarm in the morning, during the day, or any other time of the day.
There is a feature that enables a user to choose a customized sound for their alarm, and the new feature now includes the option to choose celebrity sounds which are mostly excerpts from movies.

Routines

When a user is starting a new routine, they can now choose, “when this happens” where they can choose to use their voice to start a routine, schedule it, or have a smart device action trigger the routine.
The new option in routines is, “alarm” which works by triggering a routine when an alarm is dismissed.

Privacy

Privacy with Alexa has been a concern for some people.
There is a new feature in the Alexa settings that will now enable a user to delete their voice recordings by voice by simply saying, “Alexa, delete everything I said today” or “Alexa, what I just said.” Users can give Alexa different time ranges to do that.

Whisper Mode

Whisper Mode is the ability of Alexa to understand when a user is whispering so that she can then respond to the user in a whisper. This is great when someone doesn’t want to say things loudly.
To enable it, you go into the app, then to the menu icon, click on settings, click on Alexa account, and then you will see Alexa voice responses. Click on that, and then you will see two options, whisper mode and brief mode. You just turn on whisper mode.

List of resources mentioned in this episode:

The Comprehensive Flash Briefing Formula Course

Other useful resources:

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Amazon Echo Show 5 Review

Voice in Canada Podcast

08/06/19 • 16 min

In this episode, Teri will share his impressions of using the new Echo Show 5 that Amazon recently sold tons of during Prime Day (s).

Let’s Begin!

There are a number of Echo devices available in Canada including the Dot, Echo, Echo Plus, Echo Spot, Echo Show, and the new Echo Show 5. The Echo Show 5 is very well priced at $99.99 which offers great value.

What is the Echo Show 5?

It’s the second Echo device with a rectangular screen. Its name refers to the size of its five and a half inches screen.
It has two microphones which helps in using the far field recognition.
It has a volume up and down button on top of it, a micro-USB port, and a 3.5mm audio output which can used to plug into a higher quality stereo system or speaker.
It has the power port at the back which plugs into the wall.
It’s about 5.8 inches wide, 3.4 inches in height, and 2.9 inches in depth, and comes in either sandstone or charcoal color.

Echo Show 5 Versus Echo Show

Compared to the Echo Show, the Show has double the screen size with a higher resolution, but the price difference is huge with the Show going for $300. The Show has better two 10-Watt speakers while the Echo Show 5 has a 1.65 inch 4-Watt speaker.
The camera on the Echo Show 5, which enables the user to do video calling, is a one megapixel camera while the one on the Echo Show is a five megapixel camera.
The Echo Show 5 lacks a built-in zigbee smart home hub which means if a user has some zigbee compatible smart home devices, and they want a hub to control them, they will need some additional hardware to control them, that is if they only have the Echo Show 5.
The sound on the Echo Show 5 is better than the Echo Dot and Echo Spot.
The one feature that it has which is not in other Echo devices, is the built-in camera shutter. This is good for people with privacy issues. The physical camera shutter that covers the camera ensures that nobody can hack the camera for whatever reason.
There is however a software method of shutting off the camera and the microphone on both the Echo Show and Echo Show 5.

Teri’s First Impressions

When he first plugged it in, there was very little setup to do because the Echo devices that are already set up with his home network including the passwords, are already stored with Amazon.
He went into the settings to see what he could set up and found several options for how to customize the screen background. It can even be used as a photo frame.
It’s a voice-first device but it can also be used as a touch screen.
It has the sunrise alarms feature which simulates a sunrise in the morning between 4 am and 9 am.
Teri prefers the Echo Show 5 as the best buy compared to other Echo devices, especially the ones with a screen.

List of resources mentioned in this episode:

Other useful resources:

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The Future of Alexa in Canada

Voice in Canada Podcast

03/26/19 • 13 min

In this episode, Teri talks about the changes that have been taking place in the Alexa in Canada Community stemming from the involvement of community members.

Enjoy the Show!

Based on the way voice technology is evolving, Teri realizes that at some point in the future he might have to slightly change the focus of the Alexa in Canada community, but he wouldn’t want to do that without feedback from community members. He shares his thought process on the show so that community members can share their feedback on how the community should move forward.

The Voice in Canada Flash Briefing

March 25th 2019 was the 400th episode of the flash briefing.
It’s been fantastic, a lot of fun and a lot of work for Teri, but it’s a way that he can stay in tune with what’s going on in the world of Alexa and provide that to the Alexa in Canada community and the world on a daily basis.
It has been downloaded and listened to well over 100,000 times in just over a year.

The Alexa in Canada Podcast

It has been doing exceptionally well.
Teri has been doing it on a weekly basis.
The show continues to grow and generate interest.
There’s a lot of interest in having guests come on the podcast to share their stories and what they’re doing in the voice technology space and specifically with Alexa.

The Blog

It has been very successful.
People are finding the community organically through Google searches due to the content. When they search something, very often it’s the Alexa in Canada Community that comes up when they are searching on Google. That has been guided by what the Alexa in Canada members want to hear, and so Teri creates content that the members want to hear about and spread to others.

The Future of the Community

There are several competitors for Amazon Alexa including Google, Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, and so on. There are people who ask Teri about these other voice assistants and he is currently conducting a survey at AlexainCanada.ca/Future to find out the following:
Would you like to learn more about these other voice assistants and the way that they impact Canadians specifically?
How do you use your devices (Are you using other devices in addition to Alexa)?
Are you using voice technology during your everyday life, or as part of your business?
What are the challenges that you have with voice technology and how can Teri help you with those challenges?

Supporting the Community

Teri is looking into some ways of generating some revenue from the community in terms of having sponsors for the podcast, flash briefing or website.
People can support the community by purchasing things through Teri’s affiliate link at AlexainCanada.ca/Amazon.
Teri is thinking of creating a voluntary subscription model where members can choose to contribute a small financial amount on a regular basis to support the community. There is a great service called Patreon that allows people to do that.

List of resources mentioned in this episode:

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The Alexa Conference 2019 with Harry Pappas

Voice in Canada Podcast

01/01/19 • 23 min

In this episode, Teri welcomes Harry Pappas, the Founder and CEO of the Intelligent Health Association (IHA)

Welcome Harry Pappas!

Harry is a serial entrepreneur and has never worked for the corporate world. His core goal is to get the healthcare community to adopt new technology, software, apps, voice and other forms of technology that can have a dramatic impact on improving patient outcomes, patient care and patient safety while driving down the cost of Healthcare for all citizens.

The Intelligent Health Association (IHA)

A healthcare incident concerning his mother made him realize how bad the healthcare system is the US and worldwide. He promised his mother that he would use all his talents, resources and connections all over the world to improve the delivery of healthcare by educating the healthcare community around the world to adopt new technologies and processes.
He divested his companies and decided to do social good.
He started out by forming the RFID in Healthcare Consortium which then led to the formation of the Intelligent Health Association because he realized that RFID and RTLS technologies were only tools that needed to be surrounded by other complementary technologies.
They have an Alexa in Healthcare Consortium and other technology oriented alliances.
IHA is focused on education. They are vendor neutral technology agnostic and the association is by invitation only.

Similarities of Voice to the Early Stages of the Dotcom Boom

Voice is similar to the Dotcom enterprises, but Voice is more consumer oriented because an individual doesn’t need a laptop or any knowledge about how the web works.
Voice is going to be the next WWW.

Getting involved with the Alexa Conference

When he was approached by Bradley Metrock to contribute to the organization of the conference, he jumped on-board because his goal is always to help educate the community. They decided to create a track on healthcare and bring in real-world applications of voice.
He will be doing a panel session where they will have both vendors and end-users talking about real-world application of voice.

List of resources mentioned in this episode:

Other Useful resources:

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An Alexa Startup Story with Klove Chef

Voice in Canada Podcast

10/23/18 • 29 min

In this episode, Teri once again welcomes Bahubali Shete and Mario Rodriguez of Klove Chef. They talk about being a startup in the voicefirst world, and how it is important to continue to innovate at lightning speed.

Welcome Bahubali Shete and Mario Rodriguez!

Today we welcome Bahabali and Mario back to the podcast. They first appeared on Episode 44. Today we talk about their experience of being a startup company in the voicefirst world. As a reminder, Bahubali Shete is the co-founder and CEO of Klove Chef and Mario Rodriguez is its Chief Culinary Officer. Klove Chef is a voice-guided cooking assistant that helps keep your hands free for cooking, while giving you relevant cooking tips.

Klove Chef

Klove Chef is a conversational solution which takes consumers through meal planning, recipe discovery, buying ingredients and cooking with the support of a conversational assistant.
Focusing on becoming the primary interface for consumers in the kitchen.
Includes a chat bot feature.
Facilitates an easier cooking experience for home cooks by giving them chef tips, hacks and tricks.
It is available in Canada! Yeah!

A startup in the Voice Tech space: The challenges and successes

There’s great difficulty in trying to come up with languages and terminology that fits users in different countries (with diverse cultures).
It takes much longer for people like potential investors and early adopters to understand a Voice Technology product/solution.
Klove Chef is consistently getting 5-Star reviews because early adopters love it, once they try it out.
Kove Chef is building up their recipe database.
They recently participated at the Smart Kitchen Summit; the “Sears of Food Technology.”
Klove Chef is the only Voice First cooking solution in the Food Tech space. It has created numerous partnership opportunities.
A New feature, RecipeBox, enables users to add their own recipes through either voice or chat bots. They can then convert them into speakable recipes on Alexa and Google Home. They are currently accepting beta signups for RecipeBox.
Klove Chef is building a community of people who interact with Klove Chef on a daily basis while sharing their home recipes with each other.
A one-stop shop for culinary questions: Klove Chef plans to offer a Q&A solution for users.
Forging partnerships with companies that will add other elements of functionality to Klove Chef is another goal.
The partners are helping diversify the types of recipes, and develop compatibilities with certain devices and appliances that have Wi-Fi or Bluetooth functionality.
The Mealkits partnership: Klove Chef helps Mealkits consumers with any problems they have during the cooking process, while also enabling them to provide feedback on the experience. Mealkit companies are able to get unmatched in-depth cooking analytics from Klove Chef.
They are working on offering a white label solution for brands and celebrity chefs.

List of resources mentioned in this episode:

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Inventing Alexa with Jeff Adams of Cobalt Speech

Voice in Canada Podcast

10/09/18 • 26 min

In this episode, Teri welcomes Jeff Adams, CEO of Cobalt Speech & Language, and often labelled “The Alexa Inventor”, to discuss how Amazon created the Alexa Voice Service.

Welcome Jeff Adams!

Jeff Adams has been involved with speech technology in one way or another for over 24 years. He got his start by working for a small speech-technology company in Boston, and through a series of acquisitions, ended up working at Nuance, the company behind the successful speech-recognition app Dragon. He left Nuance in 2009 to join a voice-message transcription start-up. That was a turning point. The start-up got Amazon’s attention when they found out the start-up’s technology could match the accuracy of human transcribers. Amazon acquired them and and put them to work on what would become Alexa.

How do you feel about Jeff Adams being labeled Alexa’s creator?

Amazon already had a vision for what they wanted.

Jeff says he did not invent Alexa. When Amazon got him and his team to Seattle, they explained, behind closed doors and in quiet voices, the ideas behind what would become the Echo. Amazon already had a vision for what they wanted.

Jeff’s first response was, “This is not possible”. According to him, the technology just wasn’t far along enough to allow it. At that time, the Echo’s speaker only worked if you were no more than 5 feet away from it. Amazon wanted it to work across a room. The main problem was that as we speak our voices are carried through different paths; it rarely follow a direct line. It bounces off walls and screens, and basically any surface reverberates and then reaches the other person, or in this case, the speaker. Jeff points out that, unlike machines, our brains are naturally good at picking up and merging all these signals into a coherent sound.

Jeff and his team apologized to Amazon, letting them know that they had wasted their money acquiring the start-up. But Amazon persisted and wanted the team to continue trying. The team working on project Doppler, the Echo’s code-name, quickly grew to around 60 people with talent from all over the world. The project ended up taking three years instead of one.

Jeff recounts how Amazon had a house set up to test it. They would invite people to try it out, while the Echo laid safely hidden behind a screen. There were no mentions of Amazon or the Echo, and people were not told what the recordings of their voices would be used for, adding to the secrecy, and excitement, of the future product.

Why did you decide to leave Amazon?

Jeff says it was nothing personal. He loved everyone in the Alexa team. It was a matter of logistics. It was a two-hour commute from where he lived, in and out of Boston. Jeff also says he was managing teams in Germany, California and England, so he was constantly on the road. He could not keep it up for that long. It was too much of a drain. He left one week after the Echo launched.

With his new company, Jeff says, he hopes to help companies that do not have an astronomical budget but that still want to experiment with voice and speech technology. He started Cobalt in 2014 and they are now a team of more than 30 scientists and engineers helping deliver speech and voice solutions to up-and-coming companies.

List of resources mentioned in this episode:

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Amazon Alexa Skill Development with Bob Stolzberg of VoiceXP

Voice in Canada Podcast

10/02/18 • 30 min

Skill Design, VUI, Voice User Interface Tips and Tricks.

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Flash Briefing Coaching with Lucien Lu

Voice in Canada Podcast

04/07/20 • 31 min

In this episode, Teri shares a coaching call he did with Lucien Lu to take him through how to set up his own flash briefing.

Listen in and Learn!

Lucien is an extraordinarily talented and creative filmmaker, pianist and a vital member of the Alexa in Canada team. When he is not busy capturing the best content and producing premier videos for Alexa in Canada, he and his team are creating videos to build brands. His motto is: “Let’s tell your story right, 1 video, 1 podcast, 1 post at a time.” He has been studying and playing piano for 20 years and is becoming well known for teaching piano online. He’s also very successful on TikTok.

Purpose of His Flash Briefing

Lucien wants to set up his own flash briefing to give daily advice to people who want to learn piano.
He hopes it will help people become better musicians.
His flash briefing will be geared towards beginners who are just starting out with learning piano.
He has discovered that a lot of adults and kids are learning piano through apps, and so he is very confident that these are the people who will form a majority of his flash briefing audience.
He has a lot of credentials and a strong background in piano playing which makes him a qualified teacher in the area.

Where He’s At

He has gone through Teri’s Flash Briefing Formula course and he currently knows how to record and upload his flash briefing.
He has a logo and a considerable batch of content, and all he wants to know is how to put up the RSS feed and other things.
He’s going to name his flash briefing “Easy Piano Hacks”
Teri asked him to check into his description and his Alexa developer account, which he already has, and so Teri advised him on where he will host his audio.
Teri advised him on how he can rewrite his description to include keywords that people are searching for and incorporate them in the description to improve on his SEO in Amazon. He also advised him to include a paragraph about himself so people can know how to reach him and so he can improve on his credibility.
Lucien has been thinking about doing a length of 3 to 4 minutes for his flash briefings and Teri highlights that Amazon’s limit is 9 to 10 minutes, though the surveys he has done with his audience show that most listeners prefer flash briefings that are under 3 minutes.
Teri will advise him on the importance of having a sonic brand for his flash briefing and recommend Trebble.FM as the hosting service.
Once he puts one episode of his flash briefing onto Amazon, he has to wait 48 hours for Amazon to certify the flash briefing.
Teri will also advise him on how he can submit his flash briefing content to multiple regions.

List of resources mentioned in this episode

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FAQ

How many episodes does Voice in Canada Podcast have?

Voice in Canada Podcast currently has 184 episodes available.

What topics does Voice in Canada Podcast cover?

The podcast is about Show, Skills, Canada, Apple, Microsoft, How To, Podcasts, Google, Technology, Education, Amazon, Canadian and Alexa.

What is the most popular episode on Voice in Canada Podcast?

The episode title 'Detective X Alexa Skill with Clint McLean of Budgie' is the most popular.

What is the average episode length on Voice in Canada Podcast?

The average episode length on Voice in Canada Podcast is 26 minutes.

How often are episodes of Voice in Canada Podcast released?

Episodes of Voice in Canada Podcast are typically released every 7 days.

When was the first episode of Voice in Canada Podcast?

The first episode of Voice in Canada Podcast was released on Nov 27, 2017.

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Voice in Canada Podcast

Teri Fisher

Top 10 Voice in Canada Podcast Episodes

Welcome Bahubali Shete and Mario Rodriguez!

Klove Chef

A startup in the Voice Tech space: The challenges and successes

List of resources mentioned in this episode:

Welcome Jeff Adams!

How do you feel about Jeff Adams being labeled Alexa’s creator?

Why did you decide to leave Amazon?

List of resources mentioned in this episode:

FAQ

How many episodes does Voice in Canada Podcast have?

What topics does Voice in Canada Podcast cover?

What is the most popular episode on Voice in Canada Podcast?

What is the average episode length on Voice in Canada Podcast?

How often are episodes of Voice in Canada Podcast released?

When was the first episode of Voice in Canada Podcast?

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