New to Alexa... Hints? Tips? Skills?
June 19, 2017 7:53 PM

I recently jumped into the world of Amazon's Alexa and am having fun with it. I've set up some Smart Home plugs and enabled the Dish skill. I have used it for playing music, making a shopping list, alarm, and when I wake at night I love being able ask what time it is. However, I am sure I am missing out on all kinds of fun. Fill me in people. What are the best skills to enable? What else can I use it for? I eagerly await all of your suggestions!
posted by OkTwigs to Computers & Internet (13 answers total) 29 users marked this as a favorite
Listen, I'm not telling you how to run your life or anything, but you COULD program Alexa to respond to "Computer" rather than "Alexa" (It is now one of the four options) and you COULD buy programmable lightbulbs, and then you COULD walk in and out of rooms ordering the computer to turn the lights on and off like you're on the Enterprise, if you knew how to live your life correctly, is all I'm saying.
posted by instead of three wishes at 8:04 PM on June 19, 2017


I use Alexa as a audiobook player and interface to Tune-In Radio, and a source of Jeopardy trivia questions :) Other than that, I'm not sure.
posted by Alensin at 8:50 PM on June 19, 2017


Scheduling ( through Google Calendar)
Alarms
Timers (Great for cooking)
Shopping list (awesome)
Reminders (new feature)
Light control, on/off/brightness
Shopping (with a numeric activation code and no one in earshot)
Jeopardy (M-F)
Jokes (so bad)
Messages
Voice calling (new feature)
Weather (mostly temperature. Sunny California weather is fairly uniform)
Music (Amazon Prime, Amazon playlist, Pandora)
Arithmetic calculations
News
Movie trivia questions
Reading Wikipedia entries
Distance between two points
If our commutes were longer, traffic reports to our work place
To do list
posted by rw at 9:16 PM on June 19, 2017


"Meow-meow" is fun, especially if you have cats. ("Alexa, meow-meow"). I use timers ALL THE TIME, especially for cooking and for laundry (so I don't forget to flip from washer to dryer). I have her turn on and off my lamp. I do most of the things rw mentioned, especially news and weather and music. I still don't have a playlist, so maybe some day I'll add that. She's better than Siri (I can type that here because I'm on my desktop and Siri will never know) at answering random fact questions, so I do that, too. You'll start to get email from Amazon every week that details some of what's new with Alexa, so read those.
posted by clone boulevard at 9:45 PM on June 19, 2017


This is silly stuff, but ask Alexa to sing you a song or tell a dad joke. (Or a dog joke, or a cat joke.) The results aren't bad! I especially love the song. Oh, and today was my mom's birthday and we asked Alexa to sing happy birthday, she got a kick out of it.

I really love using Alexa to play NPR (live) or requesting music stations like "fun pop music" or "indie music", if you're not already doing that. You can also play white noise, I use Alexa to play rain sounds at night.

My most used skill is the Flash Briefing, which you can customize through the app. I hear a five minute NPR news summary, a longer morning program, Planet Money, Washington Post and the weather. There's a ton of options for sports or other news sources. It's nice when I need to entertain myself for five or ten minutes while I do a task.

Also, baking! I use Alexa constantly to find out how many ounces of AP flour are in a cup or things like that.

You can sign up for the weekly Alexa email that lets you know about new skills. It's how I find out about most new things to try!
posted by the thorn bushes have roses at 9:56 PM on June 19, 2017


My kids LOVE the dad-joke skill. Alexa's also pretty good at 20 questions.

Skills we particularly like are "Astronomy guide" (which will tell you the viewing conditions and prominent stars and so on) and "magic door" (which is like a choose your own adventure basically). "Seven-Minute Workout" is also good.

We use Tune-In radio non-stop.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 10:28 PM on June 19, 2017


Echo-ing (ha!) what everyone else has said. Also:
- If you listen to podcasts, try Pod Buddy.
- Browse the skills section in the app (or use its search function) to see if there are skills for any of your favorite smartphone apps. I was delighted to find one for Our Groceries.
posted by _Mona_ at 1:45 AM on June 20, 2017


The Echo also integrates VERY well with Spotify if you have that. And you can ask for specific radio stations, as long as they're on Tune-In.
posted by rabbitrabbit at 6:05 AM on June 20, 2017


Um... just in case you find yourself in this situation, there is an Alexa skill that calls out Twister moves so no one needs to spin the wheel-thingy.
posted by rachaelfaith at 6:11 AM on June 20, 2017


Don't underestimate the beauty of being able to say "Alexa, wikipedia X" and getting back a short summary of the matching wikipedia article. Great for when you can't remember something or want to win an argument.
posted by cosmicbandito at 7:47 AM on June 20, 2017


Instead of three wishes...Yes! I always think of Scottie in Star Trek IV picking up the mouse and saying, "computer."

What wonderful ideas. Thanks everyone.
posted by OkTwigs at 8:04 AM on June 20, 2017




New skill today = playing Colossal Cave aka Zork!
posted by rw at 6:30 AM on June 21, 2017


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