Siri has competition in my house. Alexa is the new star.
For $40, Amazon delivered the wonderful Echo Dot, which now sits next to my computer.
Me: Alexa, tell me a joke. (As you can see, I love this feature. Here are two jokes I just heard:
Alexa: I took the shell off my racing snail to make him faster. But now he’s more sluggish.
Alexa: What do you call a person with no body and just a nose? Nobody knows.
If you enjoy that kind of humor – anytime you want – then Alexa will fill the bill.
Besides telling jokes, Alexa has pleased me with the following activities.
Start each by saying, “Alexa, . . . “
- Set an egg timer for 3 minutes (you can set timers to go off at different times)
- Set a reminder to drink water in 5 minutes (or ask, “What are my reminders?”)
- Trigger computer lights on/off (coordinated with your security system, e.g. Piper)
- Wikipedia snail (or any subject, and then she will ask if you want her to read more)
- Tell me a joke (or a Knock-Knock joke)
- What is the weather in Encino?
- Volume 5 (Alexa will adjust its volume from 1-10)
- Roll a die – or an x-sided die (Alexa will provide a random number from 6 (1 die) to a one-trillion-sided die. For some reason, she did not know a quadrillion-sided die.
You also can have Alexa Apps do interesting things:
- Save the astronomy Picture of the Day
- Email me if rain is forecast for tomorrow (so I can bring in the floor mats)
- There are great games. Start each by saying,
“Alexa, open . . .
“Geo Quiz, Myth Buster, Jeopardy, 20 Questions, Time Machine, Geography Trivia, Super Brain (a memory game), and Word Master (longest words for points).”
- Alexa can play just about any song you like. For example, “Alexa, play a song by the Platters” or “play Dean Martin.”
Now I am trying to learn to program Alexa to play games that I create. Fortunately, several templates are available online.
The challenge is how to tweak the Java Script on the templates to play the specific games I desire.
I am trying to learn Java Script by watching YouTube videos. Wish me luck.
Mr. Ebsen may be contacted at robertzebsen@gmail.com