Voice In Canada Flash Briefing #141

Hello there and welcome to the week. Here is a very cool update to the Alexa App that I want to tell you all about and here’s something that people have been wanting for quite some time.

So this is a good feature. It’s a little bit of a milestone in terms of what Amazon is doing. As you know there has been the Amazon Alexa App on the phone for some time, but you couldn’t actually use the App to talk to Alexa.

Well, that has now changed. So the first thing that you need to do, is you need to go to the iOS App store and you need to download the latest update of the Amazon Alexa App.

So this is for iOS I should mention. And once you’ve done that, you will actually notice that the interface looks a little bit different now.

So when you open the Alexa App, you will see that there are now five icons along the bottom.

One of them on the far right, just so you know, is now a settings icon. So you no longer actually have to go into the menu, hamburger icon and go on settings.

You can still do it that way, but there’s actually a settings button in the right lower corner.

You’ve got Alexa in your phone and you can control things in your home through your phone.

Alexa iOS App Update

But what’s really interesting is you will clearly see that in the middle of those icons there is a little blue circle, the Amazon Alexa icon or logo.

And when you click on that, once you set up a couple of quick settings the first time, you can now talk to Alexa through your phone, through your iOS phone, which is great.

You simply push that button and you say your command, you don’t even have to say though the wake word Alexa because the App knows that you’re speaking to Alexa when you do that.

So you can just give it the command and it does it and it works really well. You may recall a while back in a flash briefing, I talked about an App called the reverb, which simulated Alexa on your phone.

Well, that’s kind of obsolete already because now you can do, it’s basically straight through the Alexa, the only downside to it on the IoS device of course, that you actually have to push the button to activate it.

It’s not listening for the wake word because that of course is an apple product and they have Siri listening for it’s command.

But nevertheless, this is a great way to test things out. You’ve got Alexa in your phone and you can control things in your home through your phone very, very easily now.

So I think this is a great move by Amazon and I think it’s a great feature. So check it out. I really enjoy it.

I’ve been using it a lot already and I think you will find it to be very helpful, okay?

Remember we’ve got another podcast coming out tomorrow and I will let you know about it then. All right. Have a great day.

Resources Mentioned in this Episode

Other Useful Resources

Listen on your Echo Device! Easy as 1-2-3!

Voice in Canada Skill Logo1. Open your Alexa app and click on the Menu button > Settings > Flash Briefing.
2. Click on “Add Content” and search for “Voice in Canada”.
3. Click on “Voice in Canada” and the Enable button.

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Alexa, what’s in the news?

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