Set up traffic and sports updates
The Echo setup process prompts you to provide your home address, so Alexa can immediately offer local weather and news reports. If you tell the Echo where you work, you can also get traffic reports for your commute. To do this, open the Alexa app, go to settings>traffic and tap to enter your work address, along with any relevant waypoints along the route. You can now ask “Alexa, how’s the traffic?” for a live update. Alexa can also read you headlines and more from our sister publication, the Guardian: just enable the “skill” on the Echo app, then, for example, say: “Alexa, ask the Guardian to give me the football headlines.”
Connect your smart home devices
The Echo can control a wide range of connected home devices, such as thermostats and smart lighting. In some cases, this may require you to equip Alexa with a new “skill”: to do so, go to skills>categories>smart home and search for your device. Once you’re set up, simply tell Alexa to “discover devices”. You can then issue commands such as “Alexa, set the Nest temperature to 20 degrees” or “Alexa, brighten the bedroom light”.
Connect your Spotify account
If you’re an Amazon Prime member, you can ask Alexa to play selections from more than 1m popular hits and playlists in the Prime music streaming service. The Echo can also play songs from your personal Amazon music library – you can upload up to 250 tracks free. If you have a Spotify premium account, the Echo can stream from there as well: simply link it in the Alexa app under settings>music & media, then issue a command such as “Alexa, play In the Air Tonight from Spotify”.
Order a takeaway
Skills allow the Echo to interface with real-world services, and it doesn’t get much more real than JustEat. Once you’ve installed the skill (and linked it to your Just Eat account), you can order dinner without having to lift a finger. Of course, no one wants to listen to Alexa read out an entire menu, so for now the service is limited to repeating orders from your history: you might say “Alexa, ask Just Eat to reorder pizza”.
Enjoy games and Easter eggs
In the skills library, under games, trivia & accessories, you’ll find dozens of games you can play with Alexa, including interactive quizzes, bingo, and even blackjack. Alexa can roll virtual dice for you too – with any number of sides – and she plays a mean game of rock, paper, scissors. If that’s too simple for you, she can also play the more sophisticated “rock, paper, scissors, lizard, Spock” variant.
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