The latest household name these days isn’t Trump or Kanye – it’s Alexa.
All over the country, people are repeating this name in their homes over and over again.
Who is Alexa and why is everyone talking about her?
If you don’t know, you’re about to find out and chances are you’ll want to be speaking her name in your home too.
‘Alexa’ is the name of the voice command technology found in Amazon’s Echo, Tap, and Dot.
These devices are wireless speakers that are voice controlled by – you guessed it – Alexa.
Simply say ‘Alexa’ and the device ‘wakes up’ to respond to your commands.
But what can a tiny little speaker do for you, you may ask.
There are tons of things Alexa can help you to do with more being added every day.
Some of the more common tasks that most users are familiar with are playing music, updating you on traffic and weather, and controlling home automation- a rapidly growing industry that keeps getting closer to making the life of ‘The Jetsons’ seem more like a reality.
Alexa can connect to Amazon Prime, Spotify, iHeartRadio, and TuneIn Radio to play just about any song you can think of.
And if you don’t subscribe to any of these services and have your own personal favorite or just want to play songs from your phone’s playlist, all you have to do is tell Alexa to connect to your phone where your songs are queued up and she can be used as a wireless speaker, connected by Bluetooth.
You can ask what song is playing, adjust the volume, or even set the music to stop and start at a certain time, all by voice command.
Integrating the music and home automation apps allow you to create such neat effects as having the color of your lights change every time a new song comes on.
Home automation is expanding and as time goes on the possibilities of what can be done are endless.
Just a few things that are available right now are integration with lighting, TV, security, and thermostats.
There are the obvious, practical uses like having Alexa turn on the lights at sundown every day or having her turn on the A/C in the summer before you arrive home from work, but there are also some frivolous and fun uses too.
For example, using Amazon’s Fire TV and Hue lighting system, you can have Alexa flash the lights every time your favorite team scores.
When Alexa is set up with the corresponding apps, there are so many more fun and useful things you can do.
You can have her order you a pizza or an Uber, track your packages, order household supplies for you, tell you when your favorite TV-shows are on or even tell you a joke or play Jeopardy with you.
With so many fun and useful applications, Alexa is sure to be a well-used name in your household.
