You can now use Alexa to create quick routines… and play board games
Amazon’s smart speaker keeps getting smarter. Nik Rawlinson explores the latest tricks to be added to the Echo
You might not realise it, but Alexa is continually acquiring new capabilities. Due to the cloud-based way Amazon’s smart speaker works, the company can quietly add major new features and upgrades without your being aware of it – until one day you discover a new talent by chance, or through personal recommendation.
To be fair, Amazon does maintain a low-key blog detailing enhancements to the Echo platform, to which it posts roughly once a month: you can check it out at pcpro.link/312skills. We’ve rounded up the best of Alexa’s most compelling new skills here, many of which are already enabled and ready to use on your Echo devices.
If there’s a function you’re hoping for that hasn’t yet been added, you can see whether it’s previously been requested by developers in the Alexa Skills Developer Voice and Vote forum at pcpro.link/312vote – if it has, you can add your vote; if it hasn’t, you can add it yourself. Proactive events
Most of the time, Alexa just sits there, silently listening for the wake word. If there’s important information that you ought to know about, such as a severe weather warning, the Echo won’t warn you unless you explicitly ask about it.
That’s where the Proactive Events API comes in. This allows developers to craft skills that broadcast information as it becomes available, without waiting for you to ask. This might not be to everyone’s taste – it can be rather like having a talkative relative sitting in the corner, chipping in when they read something interesting – so you have to actively opt in to receive alerts, but once you have, skill developers can target you directly with information of specific relevance, or broadcast to their users
en masse. At present, there are eight categories of proactive notification: weather alerts, sport updates, message reminders, order status updates, reservation confirmations, media availability notifications, invitation notifications and – with slightly odd specificity – refuse collection reminders.
If you’re a regular Amazon shopper, you might already have encountered a proactive event as the Echo plays a sound and turns the light ring yellow when your order is due for delivery. A feature with more general application is the weather events skill, which warns you when extreme weather is expected in your location (as set within the Alexa app). You can enable it by saying “Alexa, tell me when there’s a severe weather alert”, and turn it off again with “Alexa, cancel severe weather alert”. Commute with Alexa
Alexa features several skills aimed specifically at driving, including navigation and traffic alerts.
Not all of this is new: you’ve long been able to ask “Alexa, how long will it take to drive to Watford?” In the
past, however, this has simply reported an estimated journey length with broad details of the route. Now, you can also open the directions on your phone (just ask “Alexa, send that to my phone”); you should then receive a notification that you can tap to open the directions in your phone’s maps app.
If you regularly travel the same route, you can define your home and work addresses, after which you can ask “Alexa, how’s my commute?”. To do this, open the Alexa app on your phone, navigate to the Settings menu and tap “Your locations”. You can add locations other than home or work too: to do so, tap All Locations, search for the location by typing an address and, once the app has found it, give it a meaningful name.
Echo on the road
Alexa isn’t content with doling out helpful information for drivers: it wants to be in the car with you. Earlier this year at CES, car makers including Audi, Ford and BMW all announced plans to build Echo hardware directly into some new vehicles.
For those of us who aren’t planning to buy a new vehicle in the near future, it’s now possible to buy an Echo device that’s designed to fit into your existing conveyance. The Echo Auto is a small box that can connect to your car’s radio over Bluetooth (or 3.5mm audio cable) and use your phone’s data connection to process spoken requests, giving you access to regular Alexa functions like music, news, and drop-in messaging while on the move. It can be powered by your cigarette lighter or 12V socket, or any micro-USB charger.
A £50, it’s affordable compared to most car accessories, and we provide a full review on p74.
Play board games
Most Echo devices lack any sort of screen, which means Alexa has limited capacity for hosting games itself. However, it can still contribute to certain types of gaming experience: Amazon published a white paper
( pcpro.link/312board) in March aimed at helping board game creators use the platform. One early adopter is the game Ticket to Ride, which now has its own skill ( pcpro.link/312ttr).
Rather than trying to recreate the game for voice, the skill is designed to keep track of players’ scores and provide instructions – or it can even join the game as a player.
The skill’s reception has been mixed. One user review reports that “everyone thought this was a great way to learn the game and play along”, while another noted that “Alexa… isn’t good enough to win, but she mixes the game up enough that she adds fun to the experience.” A third tester was less enthused, writing:
“She is absolutely abysmal at the game and there is no way to play without knowing her tickets.” Still, the idea certainly has promise: we hope that other game manufacturers will add their own skills to the store soon.
Play word games
To be honest, we’re not wholly convinced by Word Pop, a voice