These short top tips and skills for the Amazon Echo are for everyone who’s simply dotty about Alexa.
Tiffany Black (@1modernmonster on the Twitters) is in the driving seat today, bringing us a brilliant demo of a brilliant crossword-related skill. I think it's; 9 letters, meaning luminescent like a star. That's right; brilliant.
Opened with 'Premier League Quiz', this skill quickly illustrates how little I know about the beautiful game. I was a member of the Tiddly-Winks Society at university, you know, but we were asked to leave as we weren't taking it seriously enough. True. Was also into rowing and ballroom dancing at uni, as was Judith - but at a completely different uni. That's true too.
Thanks to friend of the show Patrick Steggle, I now know about the excellent online community that enables one to flag questions the A-lady currently doesn't know answers to, as well as providing those answers for others to access. Let's all help make Alexa smarter and more useful day by day. Check out Alexa Answers at https://alexaanswers.amazon.com/about.
Two skills today; 'Fireworks' gives us a choice of several 20-minute displays (sound only) and 'Fireworks display (Audio & Video)' (that's actually it's name) provides the visuals too. Funnily enough, both are recommended by reviewers for desensitising their pets.
This skill supplies the BBC History Magazine's decidedly brief biographies of historical figures - including Henry VIII, Adolf Hitler, Queen Victoria, Genghis Khan, Julius Caesar, Tutankhamun, Cleopatra, Napoleon Bonaparte, Catherine the Great, Anne Frank, William Shakespeare, Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Anne Boleyn, William I, Elizabeth I and Queen Elizabeth II
Probably one of the most sophisticated skills of its kind I've seen to date, this one truly is an interactive adventure in a class of it's own. If you like all that role-play rigmarole, why not give this one a subterranean stab to see if you like it.
Hmmm. I may not be recommending today's skill particularly to pacify your pooches during an on-going onslaught of nearby fearsome neighbourhood fireworks this bonfire night, but the general idea of masking massive explosions with music is a sound one (nice).
Good old Aunty Beeb has updated her superb skill to serve up more news stories that include optional dollops of additional detail on each and every story. Excellent.
Developer of 'The Zoo Game' and 'Silly Stories', Jamie Reeve (on LinkedIn by same) has come on board to bring us an additional demo today of a new, spooky story in his superb skill to terrify your children this Halloween night. Nice.
A nice skill to scare or delight trick or treaters at your door tonight. I'm a bit slow on the up-take, which is why I don't twig that the treat is whatever you give the successful trickers that have scared the witch half out of her wits. You'll see what I mean.
