Amazon Echo Dot Made Easy

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Dear Alice,

Long story short: I love our Amazon Echo Dot and I am more than impressed of Alexa’s abilities of learning so fast, when using our Amazon Echo dot. So today I would like to shortly enumerate the main reasons why you should consider purchasing your own Amazon Echo Dot (if not now, then why not in the near future).

What is the Amazon Echo Dot, and what is Alexa? You will definitely find a lot of information on the Amazon Echo Dot and Alexa on the internet (you just need to find the time to absorb all of the information), here is a short summary: Amazon Echo Dot is a voice controlled device that uses Alexa Voice Service to play music, make calls, control your home-devices, set alarms, provide information, news, send and receive messages, etc. In one word: it is one of the best intelligent personal assistant nowadays. Not that you would necessarily need one, but still the way in which Alexa can learn new stuffs still amazes me (it also makes sense since Alexa is built in the cloud). In one word, Alexa is the brain behind the Amazon Echo Dot. And you can have a lot of advantages while using it. Just give it a try.

Here are some of the main reasons why I love our Amazon Echo Dot and how you can use it via the Alexa voice service to help you in your every day life routines:

  • Music and Radio:
    • This is a great way to easily and rapidly turn on your favorites radio station or music song.
    • “Alexa play [Radio Station name or Song Name] from [name radio sender, i.e. lautfm for instance]”
    • You can also use music controls such as: “Alexa next”, or “Alexa play rock music from laut.fm”, or “Alexa, what’s playing?”
  • News and Weather:
    • “Alexa how is the weather like today [tomorrow] in [place]?”
    • “Alexa will it rain today in [place]?”
    • “Alexa what is the weather going to be this weekend?”
    • “Alexa what is in the news today?”
    • “Alexa what is traffic like today in [place]”
  • Setting Alarms and Timers:
    • Set timer: “Alexa set a timer of [number] minutes” comes is handy when you want to set a timer while cooking for instance.
    • Set alarms: “Alexa set an alarm for 6 a.m.”, “Alexa wake me up in the morning at 6 a.m.”
    • Check timer status: “Alexa how much time is left on the tea timer?”
    • “Alexa cancel the timer”
  • Shopping Lists: We use “Bring” application to keep track of the items we need to shop. This way we do not miss important items that we need to acquire, we do not buy random stuffs, and we optimize the shopping list tracking. Before Alexa, we used to update the Bring list via our smartphones. As alternative, now we can basically enable the “Bring Skill” for Alexa, and then we only need to open the Skill and have Alexa update the list herself. You can do this with any other application, as long as there is an Alexa skill on Amazon that you can enable for Alexa.
  • Provide Information:
    • “Alexa good morning!”
    • “Alexa what time is it?”
    • “Alexa what day is today?”
    • “Alexa, Wikipedia: [subject]”
    • “Alexa who is Albert Einstein?”
    • “Alexa give me a “Star Wars” quote”
    • “Alexa why is the sky blue?”
    • “Alexa what is 33 times 156?”
    • “Alexa who wrote Harry Potter?” 🙂
    • “Alexa what is the capital of Madagascar?” 😀
  • Entertainment:
    • “Alexa give me a [movie] quotation?”
    • “Alexa what movies are playing in [cinema theater name]?”
    • “Alexa how do you make pumpkin soup?”
    • “Alexa increase/decrease the volume?”
    • “Alexa set volume to 5?” (interval for volume is [0,10], 10 being the highest value)
    • “Alexa Happy Birthday!”
    • “Alexa sing Happy Birthday!”
  • Smart Home: Alexa can be integrated with a lot of smart home platforms, some of them can require you to enable skills for Alexa, some of them do not require any skills enabling.
  • Skills: Skills are like third party applications for Alexa, and they allow to connect all types of applications to Alexa. Some of my favorite Alexa skills so far are (just as a note be aware that there are a dose of them out there):
    • Health and Fitness:
      • “TK Smart Relax”.  Enabling command: “Alexa, open TK Smart Relax”. I love this skill whenever practicing yoga and meditation.
      • “7 Minute Workout”. Another great skill to just regularly practice your daily workout. There are plenty such skills for health and fitness training that you can enable for Alexa. So you can stay fit and healthy.
      • “Sleep And Relaxation Sounds”. This is another great activity for your yoga or meditation time.
    • Entertainment and Fun Activities:
      • “Akinator”. Enabling Command: “Alexa, open Akinator”. This is a great fun game to play with your family and/or your friends. You basically think about one character, and then have Alexa guessing it (or reading your thoughts), by simply answering with yes or no.

What I also like about amazon, is that I regularly get (I think almost once per month) an email with the latest Alexa skills and commands, so we can be up to date with the latest developments. I must say I enjoy our Amazon Echo Dot. It does make our life easier for from now and then.

Alexa set a 5 minutes timer!

Alexa what is the weather like today in Graz?

Alexa sing Happy Birthday please!

Sincerely yours,
Madalina

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