Alexa, sing a song! A Musical World Trip with 518 Alexa Songs

Alexa, sing a song! Alexa posing in front of the skylines of all Alexa Song cities

There is this little-known, wonderful Alexa feature: she can sing. You might have enjoyed some of her songs already, as we are continuously updating Alexa’s English US song list. But, Alexa does not only learn new U.S. tunes; she can sing them in many languages and dialects! In this post, we will use this feature … Read more

Alexa Routines 2022: Create Your Personal, Helpful Voice Assistant

Alexa Routines 2022: Alexa detecting Crying babies, barking dogs, coughing, snoring, appliance beeping and water sounds

There’s this one area where Alexa continuously and rapidly learns new tricks: Alexa Routines. Years ago, we found only a handful of actions in our Alexa app and could initially not even automate our music. Nowadays, we can find 8 activations – with many variations – and 25(!) different actions in the Alexa app.  With … Read more

Alexa, Happy 7th Birthday!

Alexa eating strawberry cake in-front of many balloons after finishing her seventh Birthday Todo-List: Wake Up, Turn 7, Be Awsome

Seven years ago, on November 6th, 2014, Alexa saw the light of day. She moved into our homes, became part of millions of families, and changed profoundly how we interact with technology at home: simply by voice. Let’s celebrate Alexa’s birthday and look into seven exciting years with our voice assistant. 2014 – Introducing the Amazon Echo … Read more

Alexa, Play Some Music: All the Alexa Music Commands

Alexa Music Commands Late 2021 - Alexa playing guitar in-front of a color burst

Let’s celebrate Alexa’s birthday with an update on the new features she recently brought us to enjoy music on our Amazon Echos. We can finally move the music we hear from room to room and even take it outdoors. Amazon Music Unlimited Spatial Audio (3D Audio) is now supported on all headphones, and Alexa will adjust her speaking volume to the ambient noise at our home.

All the Alexa Timers: Meatballs, Burgers, and Dirty Socks

Alexa happy with Burger, created with the help of Alexa Timers

It’s one of Alexa’s most popular features: Alexa Timers. While we use Alexa Alarms every day, we use Alexa Timers multiple times per day. Time to get a good overview and share some tips and tricks. We’ll compare Alexa Timers to Alarms and Reminders, list a couple of use-cases, and all the Alexa Timer voice … Read more

Alexa Routines: Immersive Storytelling with Ambient Scenes and Sounds

There are many ways to turn Alexa into a storyteller. We’ll look into some of them, but this post is actually about quality time with your kids, your partner, or yourself. We will create an Alexa Routine, where Alexa magically, on cue, sets the perfect ambience to put us in the middle of the story … Read more

Alexa Alarms, the Smarter Alarm Clock!

Illustration of Alexa waking up

But, did you know, that an Alexa alarm has a built-in alarm fallback, which can replace our music and radio alarms with regular Alexa alarms? And those regular alarms work even when there’s no connection to our WiFi or the internet? And did you know that we can activate our still amazing Alexa morning routines simply by dismissing these reliable regular alarms?

Alexa and Philips Hue: Setup, Voice Commands and New Tips and Tricks!

Illustration of Alexa and Philips Hue - Setup and Voice Commands

In this post, we will teach Alexa to talk to your Philips Hue lights. You will find all the voice commands to control your lights just by voice! And we’ve also added the Philips Hue Zones (beta) feature, which works now nicely with Alexa and added some brand new Alexa smart light tips and tricks.

Logitech Harmony and Alexa: Setup, Voice Commands and a Candlelight Dinner

Logitech Harmony Alexa

This Valentine’s post is a story of appreciation, harmony and ultimately … love. In this post we are going to connect Alexa with our Logitech Harmony Hub, only to find one of the loveliest integrations of voice control. Promise. On top we will create a “candlelight dinner” routine for Alexa, to dim your lights, start your … Read more