15 Amazon Echo tips and tricks – CNET
Amazon is always adding new features to its Echo devices.
With so many voice commands that work with Alexa, it’s easy to overlook some of the more helpful ones. You might’ve also missed some of the features added since you first unboxed Echo.
If you want to get the most out of Alexa, here is a list of useful tips that will help you get what you want from Alexa.
1. Make profiles for every family member
If multiple people in your home have Amazon accounts, you can add them to your Alexa household profile. To check which profile is currently being used, simply ask, “Alexa, which profile is this?” And to switch profiles, say, “Alexa, switch profiles.”
While adding additional members doesn’t give you separate shopping or to-do lists, it does allow you to share content libraries. Beware, though, as it also allows them to use your Prime account to order items.
Here’s everything the Amazon Echo can do…
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2. Change the wake word
Whether you have someone in your house by the name Alexa or you’re tired of movies or Amazon’s commercials waking your speaker, changing the device’s wake word is often the best course of action.
Unfortunately, you can’t set your own wake word (yet), but you can choose between Alexa, Amazon or Echo. To select one of the two alternate wake words, open the Alexa app or echo.amazon.com, open Settings, choose your Echo device, click Wake Word, choose one of the three options from the dropdown menu and click Save.
3. “Can you say that again?”
If you ever miss one of Alexa’s responses or need her to repeat something, just ask. Say, “Alexa, can you repeat that?” or “Alexa, can you say that again?” She will repeat what she said as many times as you need.
You can also look up recent responses in the Home tab of the Alexa app, as well as listen to the recordings of the things you’ve said to Alexa.
4. Delete all your Amazon voice data
Speaking of, everything you say to Alexa is recorded and uploaded to Amazon’s servers. If you don’t like the idea of hundreds of voice recordings of things you’ve said to your speaker floating around in the cloud, there are two ways to get rid of all those old recordings. Just know that even after purging all the recordings, a new one will be added every time you speak to Alexa.
5. Solve quick conversions and math problems
Primarily, I use Alexa for controlling my smart home using my voice. It’s far more convenient than digging through my phone to open one or two applications just to control the lights.
The second most convenient use of Alexa for me is quick calculations or conversions, especially while cooking or making coffee. You can convert currencies or measurements and even do rather complex mathematic equations. Just say, “Alexa, 15 times 32” or “Alexa, one dollar to pounds.”
6. Add non-supported smart home devices
If you’ve got a mixture of smart home devices, chances are, there may be a few that aren’t officially supported by Alexa. But you may not be out of luck.
First, double-check that there isn’t an Alexa Skill for that smart device. It there isn’t, check both Yonomi and IFTTT to see if your devices are supported. If so, get to know Yonomi or IFTTT, as they can greatly expand the usefulness of Alexa, allowing you to tie several actions to a single voice command, export your Alexa to-do or shopping list to Apple Reminders or Todoist and much more.
Here are some Alexa IFTTT recipes to get you started.
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7. Stream any audio using Bluetooth
By default, you can listen to Amazon Prime Music, Audible audiobooks, iHeartRadio, TuneIn Radio, Pandora and Spotify with the Alexa speakers. You can even have your Kindle books read to you by Alexa herself.
But if you’re looking to play Apple Music, Google Play Music, your own music library or some other unsupported audio, you will need to first pair the Alexa device to a computer or mobile device using Bluetooth. Then you can stream any audio you want through your Echo, Echo Dot or Tap, using it as a Bluetooth speaker.
8. Set the default music service to Spotify
Chris Monroe/CNET
Not surprisingly, Amazon devices always push in-house services — such as Kindle, Amazon Music, Audible, etc. — anywhere they can. However, with the Alexa speakers, you can replace Amazon Music as the default music library with Spotify or as the default station service with Pandora or iHeatRadio. Just open the Amazon Alexa app, go to Settings > Music & Media > Choose default music services and select your preferred services.
What this changes is the need to specify “on Spotify” every time you want to stream music. Instead, you will need to say “on Amazon Music” when queueing up a song to play it through Amazon’s music service.
9. Add Alexa Skills with your voice
Until late last month, you could only add Skills to your Alexa devices by using the Alexa app or echo.amazon.com to browse or search the Skills database and manually add them to your device. The process is clunky, mainly because the poor organization of the Skills repository.
Now you can add Skills by voice. Assuming you know the name of the Skill you want to add, just say, “Alexa, enable LIFX” or “Alexa, enable Magic 8-Ball.” After just a few seconds, the skill will be enabled and available to use.
10. Turn on the wake up sound
You don’t need to wait on Alexa to light up after you’ve spoken your wake word to say a command. You can say “Alexa, turn on the lights” without pausing.
However, if you’re far from your Alexa speaker and can’t see it, you might want to confirm she heard you before speaking the entire command. If you want an audible notification to know Alexa is listening, go to the Alexa app, open Settings > [Echo name] > Sounds and toggle Wake up sound. For an audible confirmation that Alexa heard your command, you can also enable the End of request sound.
11. Add a Voice Remote
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If you tend to sit too far away from your Alexa speaker to reliably control it, such as from the kitchen while the speaker lives in the living room, consider picking up a Voice Remote for Amazon Echo. It sells for $29.99 and works for both the Amazon Echo and Echo Dot (not the Tap).
Pair the remote in the Settings menu in the Alexa app, and you can remotely talk to your Echo from across the house, in other rooms or even while outside. It does connect using Bluetooth, so the range is limited. But it can save you some frustration if you’re not always near your Echo.
12. Order anything from Amazon Prime
You can now order millions of products just by asking for them. That wasn’t always so. Before this month, you could only reorder things you had previously purchased using Prime. Now you can order anything that is Prime-eligible and is not apparel, jewelry, shoes, watches, Amazon Fresh, Amazon Prime Pantry, Amazon Prime Now or add-on items.
In addition, you can order a Dominos pizza, Uber or Lyft using the speakers.
13. Track your Amazon packages
If you do happen to order something from Amazon with you Echo, Echo Dot or Tap, you can also track those packages by asking, “Alexa, where’s my stuff?” or saying, “Alexa, track my order.”
The information Alexa will give you about a package isn’t too detailed, but it will tell you the day the packages are expected to arrive. The hope now is for an update which will at least tell you which carrier the item was shipped with so you can better anticipate the time it should arrive.
14. Get exclusive Prime deals
Amazon likes to show its appreciation for its most loyal customers, such as those who have spent cold hard cash on an Amazon device. From time to time, Amazon will run special deals that are reserved exclusively for Echo, Echo Dot and Tap owners. For instance, the Echo Dot and Tap were initially only available for purchase for those who owned an Amazon Echo.
The most recent instance was Prime Day, where a number of deals were for official Amazon Alexa devices only — third-party Alexa devices and services like Echosim.io, Roger and Lexi were excluded from those deals.
15. Settle an argument
If you and some friends are torn between where to go for dinner or you’re not sure where you want to take this year’s vacation, you can put Alexa in control for totally random decision making. Say, “Alexa, flip a coin” to choose between two possibilities. You can also roll some dice or ask a Magic 8-Ball (if you enable the skill).
Bonus: Easter eggs galore
Chris Monroe/CNET
When it works as intended, which is more often than not, the Alexa Voice Service is an extremely powerful tool, which I love having around the house. There are countless practical uses for it.
But Amazon didn’t stop there. They’re clearly having fun with Alexa, as well, and trying to making it as personable as possible. Evidence of this is in Alexa’s extensive (and rapidly growing) library of easter eggs. Ry Crist explored the world of easter eggs on Alexa, but dozens — if not hundreds — more have been added since March. It’s impossible to know, as most of the easter eggs are added without mention.
Periscope’s ‘Highlights’ will let you peek at the best parts of a replay before diving in
Live streaming app Periscope is rolling out some new features intended to boost the experience of checking out replay broadcasts. One of the main new features included in the latest update is “Replay Highlights,” which create a “short trailer” for each replay, Periscope says. This should give you a good idea of what to expect from a replay before diving in for more, or simply make combing through your feed to find the best bits much faster.
For Android users specifically, Periscope says that a new autoplay feature will also be rolling out to the Watch Tab and Global Feed. Now, when scrolling through either section of the app, each broadcast will start playing automatically as you scroll through your feed without any input needed. And lastly, for those browsing the web, Periscope broadcasts can now be viewed in embedded tweets on any site.
Periscope says that Replay Highlights and autoplay will be rolling out in updates over the coming days, so be sure to keep an eye out for a forthcoming update on Google Play.
Google Play Books brings bigger bubbles to your comics with machine learning
Google Play Books for Android has received a new feature that’s sure to make a few comic book fans happy. Bubble Zoom can make comics easier to read, finding and automatically enhancing speech bubbles one at a time as you read.
Bubble Zoom is powered by the company’s machine learning technology, according to Google:
Using the same technology to recognize objects in photos, we trained our system to identify speech bubbles in comics. Bubble zoom expands the speech bubbles of a comic one-tap-at-a-time, making them super easy to read on your mobile device. It’s much easier to read digital comics one-handed as Bubble Zoom automatically identifies and expands each speech bubble for readability. No more compromising the full-page experience or getting lost while panning around.
While Bubble Zoom will highlight speech bubbles on its own, you choose to move to each different bubble by tapping on the right side of the screen or pressing one of the volume buttons on your phone or tablet.
Bubble Zoom is currently in technology preview within Google Play Books of all supported Marvel and DC titles. Additionally, you can get 50% off select Marvel or DC comics in the Google Play Store when you use the code SDCC2016 through Sunday, July 24.
Action Launcher 3.8 brings Google Now integration for rooted users
Action Launcher is being updated to version 3.8 which brings a number of big changes along with it. Google Now integration has been added for those who are rooted, the base code has been updated to ensure better performance and much more.
This is the first time that the popular launcher has added a root-only feature, and the reason behind it is that Google does not offer an API for developers to use to access Google Now. Some of the biggest changes in Action Launcher 3.8 include:
- Update base code to Android 6.0.1’s Launcher3 code. Notable usability enhancements include the addition of fast scroll in the All Apps drawer, a much improved widget picker and infinite paged folders and more. This base code upgrade also sees a year’s worth of Google’s bug and stability and performance fixes.
- Can select pure black color via Quicktheme.
- Option to disable the Quickdrawer (Settings -> App drawers -> Quickdrawer).
- Option for enabling dark icons on the status bar (Settings -> Display -> Dark status bar icons). Note: requires Android 6.0 or later.
- Add shortcut to jump to weather forecast (via Google App).
- Added old material design versions of Google Play apps to in-built icon pack.
- Option to enable Google Now integration (Alpha). Note: REQUIRES ROOT. Please see FAQ for full details. Option will appear in Settings -> Desktop -> Google Now integration (Alpha) for rooted devices only.
There are also a number of features that have been improved with this release. Some of them include reducing the app’s memory usage, Samsung Knox support, a new high-res icon on the Quickbar and more. Chris Lacy, the app’s developer, has posted an FAQ to answer some questions about this update.
You can grab the latest update from Google Play now to take advantage of all the new and improved features.
AT&T reports Q2 2016 earnings with $40.5 billion in revenue, 2.1 million wireless net adds
AT&T has reported its earnings for the second quarter of 2016, noting a solid bump in both consolidated revenues and wireless net adds over this time a year ago. In total, AT&T says that consolidated revenues were up to $40.5 billion for the quarter, which is an increase of 22% over the same period a year ago.
Concerning the wireless market specifically, AT&T says that it saw a total of 2.1 million wireless net adds total. 1.4 million of those net adds came from the U.S. alone, while Mexico contributed 780,000. According to AT&T, this quarter also saw the company’s second-lowest churn on record at 0.97%. Here are the highlights:
- 2.1 million wireless net adds driven by connected devices, Mexico and Cricket
- U.S. net adds of 1.4M; including 257k postpaid and 365k prepaid
- 185k U.S. branded (postpaid and prepaid) phone net adds
- Nearly 800k branded smartphones added to the U.S. base, offsetting ~600k branded feature phone decline
- Postpaid churn of 0.97%, down from 1.01% in 2Q15 and second-lowest ever in U.S.
- Mexico: 780k branded net adds to reach about 10 million subscribers
For much more, be sure to check out AT&T’s full earnings release.
An ‘Overwatch’ graphic novel is coming
With over 10 million players on PC, Playstation 4 and Xbox One, Overwatch is a bonafide success. By now, gamers have got to grips with the abilities of its 22 playable characters, the latest of which was added this week, but the game itself doesn’t go into too much detail as to the organization’s origins or explaining why agents were urged to reactivate in the first place. Blizzard has slowly started to fill those gaps with a series of video shorts and an online comic book series, but a new partnership with Dark Horse Comics looks set to expand on that quite significantly.
IGN reports that under the new agreement, Dark Horse will republish Blizzard’s digital Overwatch comics through its own comics service. The publisher will then print a 100-page Overwatch graphic novel in April 2017. Both companies are keeping quiet on the name and the team behind it but we do know that it will follow the story of the original strike team. Finally, there’ll be an oversized hardcover book called The Art of Overwatch, which will be released in Summer 2017.
If you’re wondering why Overwatch lore appears somewhat limited, that’s actually a conscious decision by Blizzard. In an interview with GameSpot (embedded below), its developers explain that they “didn’t want to fill in the blanks” and wanted people to experience different parts of the game and form their own opinions. The game features little hints — the arrival of Ana was teased via various in-game assets — but the comics and visual novel will go someway towards rounding out Overwatch’s overall story.
Source: IGN
Edward Snowden designed an iPhone case to prevent wireless snooping
Edward Snowden is still trying to combat smartphone radio surveillance three years after spilling the NSA’s secrets. With help from hacker Andrew “Bunnie” Huang, Snowden presented on Thursday designs at the MIT Media Lab for a case-like add-on device that monitors electrical signals sent to an iPhone’s internal antennas.
It looks like an external battery case with a small mono-color screen and is being described as an “introspection engine.” The device’s tiny probe wires have to attach to test points on the iPhone’s circuit board, which are accessible through the SIM card slot. The phone has two antennas that give off electrical signals and they’re used by its radios, including GPS and Bluetooth.
The probe wires read the radio’s electric signals, and by doing so the modified phone warns you when these signals transmit information when they’re meant to be off. You’ll instantly receive alert messages or even an audible alarm, and the phone can even shut off automatically. The intention here is to allow reporters to carry their phones into hostile foreign countries without revealing their locations to government-funded adversaries. They’ll still be able to record video and audio while their iPhone’s radio signals are disabled.
However, the device is still nothing more than a design for now. Snowden and Huang are hoping to build a prototype over the next year, and eventually start offering these modified iPhones to journalists.
Via: Wired
Stem cell-based cartilage could fix your broken hip
Doctors want to 3D print transplantable organs from your own stem cells, but now they might be able to replace a bum hip, too. A team of scientists in St. Louis and Durham used stem cells to grow cartilage on a 3D “scaffold” that can be molded into the exact shape of a patient’s hip joint. It could then be implanted onto the surface of the bone, replacing the regular cartilage that acts as a “lubricant” for the ball and socket-style joint. Since it would be made from your own stem cells, there’s no chance of rejection.
The 3D scaffold is made from a woven material that can bear up to 10 times a patient’s weight, letting them to exercise and otherwise live normally. It can even solve the original cause of the program, which is usually osteoarthritis. Using gene therapy, they genetically programmed the joint to release anti-inflammatory molecules on demand to keep the arthritis at bay. “Our hope is to prevent, or at least delay, a standard metal and plastic prosthetic joint replacement,” says Washington University Professor Farshid Guilak.
Lest you protest that this potential treatment is reserved for your elders, think again. “We envision in the future that this population of younger patients [aged 40-55] may be ideal candidates for this type of biological joint replacement,” says researcher Bradley Estes. That’s because doctors are often reluctant to perform joint-replacement surgery on patients younger than 50, because they’ll need a second operation when they’re older and more at risk for infection and other issues.
Via: Science Daily
Source: WUSTL
Nintendo tries to salvage ‘Star Fox: Zero’ with a late demo
Despite being one of Nintendo’s most highly anticipated Wii U games, Star Fox: Zero landed with less than stellar reviews. It wasn’t that the game was bad, just sort of hard to play. Critics and fans alike lambasted the title for having an obtuse, disconnected control scheme that moved half of the action to the Wii U gamepad — forcing players to divide their attention between two screens. Now, Nintendo is letting players judge for themselves: three months after hitting store shelves, Star Fox: Zero finally has a free, downloadable demo.
The demo itself is little more than the full game’s tutorial mode with Nintendo’s Star Fox Zero: The Battle Begins animated short tacked on for good measure, but it’s enough to give players an idea how the game controls. If it’s enough to boost the game’s sales is anybody’s guess, but at least Nintendo seems to have learned its lesson about demos: a free version of Metroid Prime: Blast Ball launched today too — over a month before Federation Force, its retail counterpart, hits store shelves. Both demos can be found on their respective Wii U and 3DS eShops.
Via: Destructoid
Facebook’s solar-powered drone makes first full test flight
Facebook’s solar-powered, internet-beaming plane Aquila is finally ready for takeoff after two years of engineering and scale model flights. As the company reports today, a full-scale version of Aquila made its first official flight on June 28th, staying aloft for 96 minutes while the ground crew tested everything from the autopilot system to the aerodynamics and radios.
The full-size Aquila has the wingspan “comparable to a commercial airliner’s, but weighs only one-third as much as a car” and can fly at 60,000 feet on about 5,000 watts of power, or “about as much as three hair dryers.” While the test flight was obviously much shorter than the two months that Facebook plans to fly the drones in their final version, it pretty much verified the Facebook aeronautics team’s computer models across the board. As the team wrote in a blog post today, the only hiccup appeared to be a structural failure just before landing. The landing itself, however, was also a success. Naturally, the plane was strapped with cameras so it could also help produce its own promotional video:
Although the flight was a success, the team notes a few more challenges for the next test run: namely, will the plane be able to get enough sun to charge the batteries and keep the engines running at night. The team also notes that “for Aquila to succeed, it needs to be an economically viable alternative to current network infrastructure.” Or, in other words, is building and maintaining a fleet of drones going to be more of less expensive than laying fiber optic cable to the remote, internet-less regions of the world? For now though, the team will focus on gathering even more data with more test flights and new aircraft designs.
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