Alexa and the Amazon Echo family of products are some of the important innovations of the last decade and have revolutionized the virtual assistant market.

Vanywhere, the 1 on 1 live skill sharing platform, is revolutionizes the way that people share and access knowledge, enabling them to assist one another, monetize their skills, and provide or receive a uniquely personalized service. All interactions happen through live, 1-on-1 video, voice and chat.

Alexa is connected to powerful speech recognition and search engines in the Amazon cloud and is also enhanced by multiple third-party add-ons or skills, as Amazon calls them. What might an Alexa skill by Vanywhere look like? Which superpowers the Vanywhere Skillers and VANY tokens could give Alexa? There are definitely some exciting possibilities here and it won’t be a surprise to find such post-ICO plans on our work desk.

From zero to solution as fast as humanly possible

Having Vanywhere as an Alexa skill gives birth to very interesting use cases. Consider a user that has issues syncing his iPhone with iTunes and needs some professional assistance. Having Vanywhere as an Alexa skill is probably the fastest way to get a cost-effective solution.

User: “Alexa, call a top-rated iPhone Skiller under 20 VANY tokens per minute”

Alexa: “Calling John Richards, rated 4.8/5 in average by 48 people and costs 18 VANY tokens per minute”

John Richards: “Hello, this is John Richards, how can I help?”

User: “Hello John, nice talking to you. My iPhone won’t…”

At the end of the session the user can easily and securely pay and tip the Vanywhere Skiller using VANY tokens, Vanywhere’s crypto-currency, or using traditional payment methods.

Vanywhere-powered virtual assistants can come in many form factors

Smart assistants have a variety of form factors, and when combined with Vanywhere they could offer different capabilities. Starting with the basic form factor for home use like the Amazon Echo and Amazon Echo dot that has an audio-only interface. Such Vanywhere-powered devices could be very useful for every-day needs that Vanywhere Skillers could assist with, like in the example above.

More advanced form factors have a camera, like the Amazon Echo Look, or a camera and a screen like the Amazon Echo Show and Amazon Echo Spot. Having a camera on a Vanywhere-powered device means that the Skiller can now see the user. This allows for more advanced use cases like fashion advice, where audio alone is often insufficient. Having a camera and a screen unleashes the full potential of Vanywhere as it enables ultimate bi-directional interaction between the user and the Skiller where both can see one another.

On top of the form factors meant for home use, Amazon is now promoting Alexa integration into wearables and especially hearables for both indoor and outdoor use. While Amazon hasn’t yet announced its own Alexa-powered hearable device, it has worked with third parties on products like the Bragi Dash. These in-ear devices allow for ultimate mobility when interacting with a virtual assistant like Alexa. Combining such mobility and intuitive voice UI with Vanywhere opens the door for true superpowers. Traveling abroad and looking for a good place to eat but not interested in a touristy one? You don’t even have to open an app, simply ask Alexa to call the right Skiller for the right price and within a couple of minutes you have all the information you need.

The Alexa-powered Bragi Dash. When combined with Vanywhere it could offer live assistance on the go

Virtual assistants can step up their game using Vanywhere

While Alexa is quite revolutionary on its own and the added third-party skills offer useful complementary features, there is one aspect that can make it even better – live interaction with other people, like the Vanywhere Skiller community. As useful as a machine can be, even when boasting the best artificial intelligence available, there are a lot of cases where there is still no substitute for a human expert. Fashion advice, tech support, recommendations for foodies based on personal experience and more, in all those scenarios a Vanywhere Skiller will top Alexa hands down. Even the Amazon Echo Look, which is primarily meant for fashion advice, uses either the user or other people for final verdict of which clothes look better.

Introducing crypto-currency in the form of VANY tokens could also revolutionize payment when using virtual assistants. Payments done through latest blockchain technology like the one used by Vanywhere is highly secured, discrete and immediate and can be performed in a peer to peer manner without a third party in the way, like a bank or a credit card company. With such technology, paying a Vanywhere Skiller while using a virtual assistant becomes a breeze and doesn’t even require a smartphone. The user could easily approve the payment using a voice command, whether at home using a device like the Amazon Echo or on the go using hearables like the Bragi Dash.

All in all, just as Alexa has revolutionized the way we interact with virtual assistants, Vanywhere is about to revolutionize online skill sharing. Putting these two together makes a lot of sense as it will allow virtual assistant users to get live assistance from human Skillers and will also allow Vanywhere users to interact with the system natively using their voice.