Articles about Alexa

One of the newer features of iOS 14 is the ability to add widgets to the Home screen. This is more useful than Apple’s previous implementation and if you’re looking to get more use out of it, you might be interested to learn that Amazon’s Alexa app has been updated where it now supports widgets.

Amazon’s Alexa is a great digital assistant that can help you do things like set reminders, alarms, and all that jazz, but now it seems that it can even take over some of your parental duties by reading with your kids and helping them with things like their accuracy or pronunciation of certain words.

Carriers usually sell devices made by other companies, but from time to time and as we have seen in the past, they do make their own products. In fact, it seems that Verizon could be making something of their own, according to a report from Protocol who spotted an FCC filing last week.

If you’re in the market for a new smart display, you’re in luck because Amazon has recently announced an update to its Echo Show 8 smart display. With the new update, the smart display will come with a 13MP wide-angle camera that has the ability to track you around the room, meaning that you can walk around and have a conversation instead of sitting in front of it.

Amazon has recently made a surprise announcement for a trio of smart home products that you could be interested in. This includes a smart cuckoo clock, a smart nutrition scale, and also a smart sticky note printer. All of these are, of course, integrated with Alexa which will allow you to use your voice to control them.

One of the benefits of devices like the Ring video doorbell is that it comes with a two-way intercom system. This means that even if you’re not home, you can use the camera to see who’s at the door and use the intercom to speak to that person remotely. It’s useful, but that’s assuming you have the time to use the feature.

Usually before you fall asleep, you would turn off the lights. However, sometimes you might be too tired and fall asleep without realizing it, and you’ve left the lights on through the night which can eventually rack up a pretty hefty electricity bill. Thankfully, if you have an Amazon Alexa-enabled device in your home, it can help you on that front.

If you want to track your workout, your best bet would be to get a fitness tracker or a smartwatch. However, if you’d rather not wear a tracker and also a pair of earphones/headphones, then you might want to consider getting your hands on Amazon’s Echo Buds.

Last year, Amazon decided to take the plunge and enter the world of smart glasses. This resulted in a device known as the Echo Frames which are a pair of prescription-ready smart glasses with Alexa built into them. However, they were only available to those who received an invitation to buy it.

While digital voice assistants are great at helping us control our smart homes and answering questions, they still aren’t very “smart” in the sense that it only does what we tell it to do. However, with Amazon’s Alexa digital assistant, the company has announced some changes that will make it smarter where it will be able to better anticipate your needs.

In addition to announcing the new Amazon Echo and Echo Dot, Amazon has also taken the wraps off their brand new Echo Show. For those unfamiliar, the Echo Show is an Alexa-enabled smart display where it will come with all the features you might expect from an Alexa-enabled device, with the added bonus of having a display so that you can use it to watch videos.

If you thought that the design for Amazon’s Echo and Echo Dot speakers were a little dated, then you might be interested to learn that the company has since taken the wraps off a brand new design for its Alexa-enabled speakers. As you can see in the photo above, Amazon has decided to give it a makeover, resulting in a spherical design.

Alexa’s routines feature is a pretty useful one. If you’ve ever played around with macros before, then you might be familiar with it. For those who aren’t, basically routines allow users to group together a bunch of different Alexa features and with a single command, you can run them all at once.

One of the more fun features of Amazon’s Alexa is that the company allows you to switch out the voices of Alexa to those of your favorite celebrity (where available). If you love the idea, you might be interested to learn that Amazon has since updated its Samuel L. Jackson voice feature where it will now have a new wake phrase.

You can pay for gas using cash or credit card. Those payment methods aren’t new and have been around for a while now, but it seems that you will now be able to pay for gas using your voice, thanks to an Alexa skill that is making its way to thousands of gas stations located throughout the country.

Our smart speakers are listening to us all the time. This isn’t really spying, but rather they are listening out for commands so that they can respond whenever we ask a question. However, we totally get it if you feel a bit uncomfortable knowing that a company could possibly be listening to your every word and you don’t know for sure if they aren’t.

Apple’s iPhones and Google’s Android devices come with their own digital assistants in the form of Siri and Google Assistant. One of the advantages of having a native digital assistant is that it is deeply integrated into the operating system, allowing them to do things that third-party digital assistants can’t.

Over the years, Amazon has come up with all kinds of creative ways to help its customers quickly shop for products. This has come in the form of Dash Buttons where these buttons lets users quickly order a product at the press of a button. They also launched the Dash Wand which combines Alexa and a barcode reader.

Back in 2017, Amazon expanded on its Echo series of smart devices with something called the Echo Look. This was basically a smart camera of sorts, where users could rely on AI and also crowdsourced information and feedback to determine if what they’re wearing looks good and to seek out advice on what to wear.

Bang & Olufsen’s speakers are pretty well-known, and if you are in the market for a new set of Bluetooth speakers, then you might want to check out the company’s Beosound A1. If this sounds familiar, it is because the A1 was originally launched back in 2016, but this particular model is the second-gen model that comes with some changes and improvements over its predecessor.