amazon echo

How to Make a DIY Smart Home Security System (No Monthly Fees!)

We no longer live in a time wherein order to have a security system at home, you have to call the likes of ADT, Brinks, or some other giant security conglomerate to come and install expensive cameras, alarms, etc. and then charge you a ridiculous monthly fee to “monitor” your home for you. Instead, there are a ton of smart home devices that can easily be used to create a smart home security system that will not only do the same thing for less money and no monthly fee, but also have a ton of other benefits that you can […]

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Amazon Just Launched a Way to Make Custom Alexa Skills (& It’s Super Easy to Use)

This morning, Amazon made Alexa Blueprints available. Alexa Blueprints is a website-based way of creating your own custom Alexa skills with custom questions and responses. From simple things like asking a specific question and having a pre-programmed answer repeated back to you, to templates (aka blueprints, get it?) that allow you to tell bedtime stories, play trivia games, help a houseguest find the remote or other items, etc. Each of these are super easy to make and are fill-in-the-blank templates for the most part. Now, because of this, they’re obviously not that advanced, but I could see how they could

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How to Give Alexa Multiple Commands Without Saying Alexa Every Time (Video)

Amazon finally allows you to have a more human-like conversation with Alexa. What I mean by that, is they’ve allowed you to give multiple commands in a row without having to say, “Alexa” Every. Single. Time. So for this tip and trick Tuesday, I wanted to show you this new feature and why it saves so much time. The feature is called Follow-Up Mode and you can enable it in the Alexa app for each specific Echo device. This video was sponsored by Blinkist. They make an awesome app for Android and iOS that converts the most popular non-fiction books

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How to Create Custom Commands for Google Home or Amazon Echo (Video)

Voice assistants are pretty convenient. You can ask them the weather when you get up in the morning, have them set timers, even put them into infinite loops for your own entertainment, but despite these things, they definitely have a limited number of commands you can issue. Now, short of developing an app using the voice assistant APIs, there doesn’t seem to be an easy way to add your own custom actions and triggers to Google Home, Echo, etc. Thankfully though, IFTTT exists. IFTTT (If This Then That) is a popular program that allows you to create triggers and actions

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How to Send a Text Message From Your Amazon Echo

Amazon just added a new feature this week to Alexa: the ability to send text messages from an Android phone. You’ve been able to send messages from one Echo to another or to a phone using the Alexa app, but now you can send them as an actual SMS and have it show in your normal Android messaging app. Here’s how to send text messages using your Echo. How to Setup SMS on Your Amazon Echo Open the Alexa app on your Android phone. Tap on the Conversations icon at the bottom (looks like a speech bubble). Tap on the

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How to Remove Your Voice History from Google Assistant and Alexa

Whenever you say the wake word for either Alexa or Google Home, the devices don’t just listen to what you’re saying after, they record it and upload it to the cloud in order to do their magic. Personally, I don’t have too much of an issue with this myself, but I do get the concern from people about all this data being stored and somehow being used against them in the future. So, if you happen to be one of those with the odd predicament of being concerned about this but also willing to use the Alexa and Home, here’s

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Amazon Makes the New Echo Show Official: An Echo w/ a Screen

Welp, that rumor I told you to take with a grain of salt last week? Think it’s safe to say the salt wasn’t necessary. Amazon unveiled their new Amazon Echo Show this week and that leaked image was pretty much spot on (although the better renderings make it definitely look sleeker than the leaked image did). The newest member of the Echo family now has the ability to show you videos and images in addition to speaking to you and responding to your voice. The video on the product’s page is actually pretty compelling for how the device could be

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How to Add Google Calendar Support to the Amazon Echo

It’s getting there… The recently launched Amazon Echo, aka Amazon’s way of trying to become the central, voice-controlled hub in your smart home, is slowly getting support for the major apps and systems that it frankly needs. Yesterday, a big one was just added: Google Calendar. As someone who uses Google Calendar exclusively, that’s a big deal to me. The ability to say the following: “Alexa, what’s on my calendar today?” “Alexa, what’s on my calendar tomorrow at 9PM?” “Alexa, what’s on my calendar Saturday?” “Alexa, when’s my next event?” With more features (hopefully being able to add events, Amazon…)

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