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The Best New Skills for Alexa This Spring

Give the A.I. assistant behind Amazon’s Echo an upgrade

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The Alexa Plex skill will allow you to control your digital media across a variety of devices simply by speaking to your Echo.

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The Alexa Plex skill will allow you to control your digital media across a variety of devices simply by speaking to your Echo.
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Spring, which is ever so slowly taking hold in the Northern Hemisphere, is a time of rebirth and growth, and in the self-improving spirit of the season we have cataloged the best new skills for Alexa, the artificially intelligent assistant behind Amazon’s wildly popular Echo and Echo Dot smart home hubs.

Below, the latest and greatest skills for the digital lady in your life.

More:How to Build a Hack-Proof Home

Unless otherwise noted, all skills are free to enable on Alexa.

Help Around the House

While the Harmony skill by Logitech only works with Logitech’s Harmony series of hub-based remote controls, it’s clever enough to warrant an upgrade of your clicker hardware. The skill essentially turns your voice into a universal remote, allowing users to control their television—from switching the power on/off and channel selection to volume control and even interaction with third-party programs like Netflix. Logitech recommends users also enable the Harmony Smart Home skill, which will remove the need to say "Ask Harmony" each time you want to do something like switch to CNN.

The Plex skill operates similar to a Logitech’s larynx-powered universal remote skill, but for a wider variety of devices including iOS, Android, Apple TV, Playstation 4, Roku and more. After installing the Plex Media Server on their device of choice, users will be able to get information and play out a variety of media—be it movies, music or TV—by voice alone. Yes, we live in a truly wonderful time where you can be watching "The Bachelorette" on your iPad while cooking and simply say "Pause" to address a batch of burning brownies.


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For Echo-owning readers who are, like this Smart Homes author, plagued by the scourge of being a light sleeper, the Babbling Brook skill is an essential night time addition. The sleepytime skill provides an ambient loop of natural noise to shepherd users off to slumber—or alternatively can be employed to provide distraction-free background noise in loud environment. If stone-filled streams aren’t your speed, the makers of Babbling Brook have also built Thunderstorm, Rain and Ocean sound skills.

Since the invention of the smartphone, and the rise of nomophobia, no skill has been more necessary than Find My Phone by TrackR. Yes, the aptly named skill will allow users to set their missing mobile a-ringin’ with a simple utterance of the phrase "Alexa, ask TrackR to find my phone," quickly reuniting an owner with their smart device security blanket.

"Alexa, Up Productivity"

For the worker bee who needs a hands-free smartphone experience because they are permanently attached to their computer keyboard, there is the Mastermind skill that allows users to send and read texts, make and answer phone calls, get notifications and caller ID and launch apps on their mobile devices (or smart TVs) simply by conversing with Alexa. An undoubtedly handy (yet handless!) skill, Mastermind comes with a few caveats. First, it is only available for Android devices—sorry, iPhone fans. Second, the skill is in closed beta, which means new users (and there are many) who want to enable the skill will be waitlisted—unless they pay $15, at which point the waitlist is bypassed and all the skill’s functionality becomes immediately available.

If multiple languages are a part of your daily life (Hey—Did you know that Mansion Global has Spanish and Chinese sites?), then you’ll want to enable the Translated skill, which is able to translate short sentences from English into 36 languages, complete with pronunciation help.

Alexa-Enabled Personal Growth

For a daily dose of informative inspiration, Alexa users should enable the recently released Ted Talks skill. Drawing from the TED Conference's vast library of symposiums, the Ted Talks skill offers users the opportunity to hear speeches from celebrated thought leaders on a wide variety of topics, expanding their breadth of knowledge by simply yelling at their Echo.

And if you’d like to yell at your Echo in another, increasingly relevant language, you should enable the Chineasy skill. Featuring a rotating cast of guest experts, Chineasy will teach users a sentence of Mandarin Chinese a day while also sharing interesting stories of Chinese history and culture.

More:Modern Technology for Man’s Best Friends

Out of the Echo Chamber

The greatest growth Alexa made recently is one that is immediately available to all iOS users. Amazon recently rolled out an update to their iOS app that liberates Alexa from her Echo (and Echo Dot) chamber and puts the artificially intelligent assistant on equal, if not better, footing with Apple’s native smart home servant, Siri.

The updated app will allow iOS users to activate Alexa’s skill set by simply speaking to their smart device—essentially removing the essentialness of the Echo family of products. And allowing users to turn on their TV from anywhere in the world.

This is something we, ahem, predicted would be the way of the future for such smart home helpers.

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