Amazon Alexa is everywhere these days, while it continues to expand its dominance in Amazon’s standalone bluetooth speakers, standalone smart displays, etc. Alexa also seems to have unfoiled connectivity code with several offerings from competition now being labeled as “Alexa enabled“.
So in short, Alexa is gaining skills which have come to notice to smart device manufacturers and market players. For Alexa, a “Skill” would typically mean an application that can be developed out of the given hardware adna software ecosystem created by Amazon. These skills are aimed to make a user’s life work, home and travel simpler. This is much beyond they advertised “Alexa! play my favorite song” to “Alexa play my favorite movie on TV screen”. We try to capture Top 5 Alexa skills that you din’t know exist.
1. Alexa! Put my kids to bed!
No, Alexa isn’t skilled anough to put your kids into the bed, but it surely can tell them bedtime stories, which you, admit it, fell asleep telling. As soon as the kids are put to bed, Alexa can be hurled in to tell them a bedtime story and kids just love it. Alexa does know names of your kids by now, so it will speak to them directly, and perhaps answer their naive, yet picky, questions for you too.
Whats more, as soon as Alexa realises your kids are fast asleep and there is no ambient sound, Alexa too goes to sleep. You can ask it to play nature sounds like that of a forest or a river or even the ocean to sooth kids’ sleep.
2. Alexa! ?make sure I eat healthy!
You can ask Alexa to maintain a calorie log of things you eat and remind you of the calorie uptake on daily basis. Sure Alexa will score over your mom in calculating your calorie count per meal. And Alexa isn’t occupied with any other work than to serve you, so there would be no mood swings or any other hiccups in keeping you on track.
Alexa also suggests you with healthy cooking ideas that meet your diet regime.
3. Alexa! Make sure I stay fit!
If you are already an Alexa user, chances are that you are also the owner of a activity trackers band like FitBit, Garmin, Samsung Gear, mi band, etc which you would be using to achieve a minimum daily steps target of 10k. Alexa’s wellness skill suitably augment your tracker data and help you achieve your fitness goals in a better way. Make sure Alexa is catching the data from your activity tracker wristband by synchronizing it with Apple iOS or Google Android primary Fitness Apps. and Yes, your favorite 10 minute workout sessions sync with Alexa speakers to keep you covered. Alexa also prompts you to catch-up if you miss out on any of your sessions.
4. Alexa! Plan my travel please!
This sounds more like a dream. Imagine you start planning for a family vacation, you’d either leave it all to a Holiday planner guy or bang your head onto several travel websites for journey tickets, Hotels, and even manage the intermediate logistics. Set Alexa to monitor flight and hotel reservation prices and prompt you when the prices hit an acceptable budget. And Alexa also gives you up-to-date flight delay announcements and track usual airport passage timings to give you heads-up whenever needed.
5. Alexa! manage my grocery supplies
With the Amazon Dash Wand, which is “Alexa enabled“, you can simply lookup recipes to your favorite foods and order any groceries that your kitchen is missing just by speaking to the Wand. The wand also has the capability to scan bar code off your favorite item, so you don’t need to remember or say its full name and packing size. Items scanned onto the Wand go to your Amazon Prime cart and checked out for a 2 day prime delivery. Whats more, you can also convert those confusing cups to ounces to understand the actual quantity of ingredients for a recipe.
Owning an Alexa enabled device means a world of convenience at your finger tips. And that’s just one way how Amazon has you tied to their market ecosystem. Order your Alexa Speakers, Alexa echo and other Alexa enabled devices here. If Amazon helps you save on items that you were already gonna order form your nearby convenience store at better prices, its worth the comfort, aka effort 😉
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