amazon alexa
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Amazon Wants You to Start Paying for Alexa
More than 75 million people use Alexa, but by Amazon’s standards, the service is a total failure. The problem is Alexa doesn’t make any money, and the service is a huge drain on company resources. Apparently, Amazon has a last-ditch plan to save its digital assistant by supercharging it with AI and charging you for…
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Program Your Smart Speaker to Automatically Play Music in Your Bathroom
Being a good host is about predicting what guests might need and creating small moments of delight. A well-stocked bathroom is a great example—keeping mouthwash, Band-Aids, tampons, and painkillers, all accessible and ready to be grabbed when needed. At some point, I found myself noticing what fancy restaurants and hotels have in their bathrooms to…
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How to ‘Haunt’ Your House Using Smart Speakers
Whether you have a Google Home, Amazon Echo, or Apple’s HomePod, your smart speaker shouldn’t go ignored this Halloween. Just as you can ask Alexa to set a timer while you cook, or inquire about the weather with Google, you can also ask your smart speakers to embrace spooky season — if only you know…
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How to Initiate Your Alexa Routines by Using Different Phrases
Custom Routines are one of the handiest features of the Amazon Echo — you can use them to launch a cascade of home automation actions before bed or play specific media each morning — all in response to a single request. And now Alexa can respond to up to seven unique phrases per routine (versus…