Image credit: Saga Magazine
In recent years, voice assistants have become an integral part of daily lives for many of us, making tasks easier and more convenient than ever before.
At the forefront of this technology is Amazon Alexa, the AI-powered voice assistant. One of the key reasons for Alexa’s popularity is its extensive library of skills, which are voice-activated apps that enable users to perform a wide range of tasks.
You might be aware you can ask Alexa to play your favourite tunes or news headlines, but did you know that Alexa can also remember birthdays and even track parcels? Find out how with our list of the best Alexa skills available right now.
An Alexa skill is a specific feature or function that you can add to your Amazon Echo device, which is powered by Alexa’s voice assistant. Think of it as an app for your Echo. Just like how you can download apps on your phone to perform different tasks, you can enable skills on your Echo smart speaker or smart display to expand its capabilities.
These skills are created by developers and cover a wide range of activities and services. For example, there are skills for playing music, checking the weather, setting timers, answering questions, ordering food, controlling smart home devices, and much more. Each skill adds a specific ability or service to your Echo device.
The great thing about Alexa skills is that they constantly evolve, and new ones are added regularly. You can browse through the Alexa Skills Store to discover and enable skills that interest you or to be useful in your daily life.
Enable the Birthday Tracker skill and you’ll be ahead of the birthday game. Once you’ve set the skill up (see below for how to do that), it’s just a case of saying something like, “Alexa, ask Birthday Tracker whose birthday is next,” to make sure you never miss a birthday again.
You can also pre-set reminders. You can add 10 birthdays for free – if you want to add more you need to create an account at the official Birthday Tracker site and upgrade to premium, which is 80p a month.
You can also ask Alexa things such as, “Alexa, ask birthday tracker what day [name’s] birthday was in 1980,” and if you add in the year, it ups the questions you can pose, including ones around big birthdays, for example, “Alexa, ask birthday tracker when [name] will be 40?”
If you love puzzles, this is the skill for you. Puzzler is a daily crossword, which you complete with just your voice. It’s a simple premise – Alexa asks you the clue, including how many letters the answer contains, and you answer. You can also get hints or skip clues, to come back to them later.
They’re not the most difficult crosswords we’ve ever tried but the key is to try and do them in the fastest speed ever. You can even set a reminder so that Alexa prompts you daily to take part. All of which is good if you want to improve your brain health, as puzzles, such as crosswords, have been shown to improve memory and all-round brain health.
We bet that tracking parcels is one of those things you didn’t know you could ask Alexa. Thanks to the Evri skill you can ask Alexa to track your packages and even ask the courier to leave them in a safe place.
We use this one a lot and it works well. You just need to make sure your Amazon account uses the same email that you’ve bought stuff with.
Via the Ted Talks skill you can hear from a range of fascinating folk just by asking Alexa to play the latest Ted Talk. You can also ask Alexa to play something funny or a talk about a specific subject. You won’t get the whole talk, but instead, an interesting segment that ranges from 10 to 30 minutes in length.
Our favourites that we’ve listened to recently include Al Gore talking about climate change, anthropologist Rich Benjamin’s funny talk about whiteness in America, and industrial designer Ross Lovegrove on how he uses nature for his design inspiration.
It’s an effortless way to learn new facts, get different opinions on lofty ideas and generally expand your brain.
Have you ever had one of those days when everything seems to go wrong? On days like that, it can be hard to stay positive. But what if you could have a personal cheerleader on call to boost your self-esteem?
That’s where the Your Compliments skill comes in. Once you enable the skill, you can ask Alexa to “Open Your Compliments” and she’ll give you a random compliment. These compliments are designed to make you feel good about yourself, no matter what’s going on in your life.
One personal favourite? “You’re incredibly intelligent; even Einstein would look up to you.” Aw, shucks!
British tennis player Liam Broady incorporates mindfulness into his routine by engaging in breathing exercises to alleviate pre-match jitters. Even if you’re not a professional tennis player, you can still reap the benefits of taking a pause and practising controlled breathing. It can effectively help in stress management and enhance concentration.
To simplify the process, the 4-7-8 Breathing Exercise skill is invaluable. The numbers correspond to the duration of each breathing step, which might initially seem confusing. This skill provides clear, step-by-step instructions, guiding you through each stage and allowing you to focus solely on the breathing itself.
Alexa’s voice even slows down, making the entire process more relaxing. By asking Alexa to initiate the breathing exercise, you can effortlessly incorporate this mindfulness practice into your daily routine.
To find more skills, you can ask Alexa, “What are your skills?” or browse the Skills Store on the Alexa app.
Scottish radio broadcaster James Alexander Gordon was best known for reading the classified football results every Saturday on the BBC. Sadly, he passed away in 2014, but this skill allows you to hear up-to-date football results all in the voice of the great Gordon.
Enable the skill and ask Alexa to open the classified football results to hear the final results read as they would have been by Gordon. It cleverly uses artificial intelligence to recreate his voice and is a lovely, nostalgic way to keep up to date with all the football scores.
As well as using your smart display as a pet monitor, you can use your smart devices to play music made to calm down your dog.
This Alexa skill plays relaxing music to settle your dog when they’re stressed, either when they’re home alone or perhaps outside noise such as fireworks is upsetting them. It’s backed by years of research and the music is created especially for pooches.
We’ve tried it out on our dog on various occasions, more recently through a thunderstorm, and we can say it had the desired effect. It’s also very calming for humans, so the perfect backdrop to practising yoga for beginners or a little meditation.
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