Coffee and music: two unbearable morning chores! Now, Alexa wants to make your life even easier by handling a myriad of mundane routines.
Great news for Alexa users who hate doing routine tasks. Amazon is now adding more features, including a new music feature, for Alexa Routines.
For those who are not familiar with Alexa Routines, these are basically automated features available to Echo users. It can be as simple as starting your day with the weather and some headlines. Or, it can go ‘full-blown smart home’ by including tasks like starting your coffeemaker, opening your blinds, gradually brightening the lights, and even changing your home security settings.
And all of these tasks can be triggered with a single voice command. For example, you could make a morning routine that starts with ‘Alexa, start my day’. This will prompt Alexa to start your wake-up sequence as previously defined.
Of course, you can start Routines at any point in the day. Or, for any occasion, including entertaining guests.
Besides a morning routine, this also comes in handy for wrapping things up before bedtime. Routines can lock the door, shut off all the lights, and even set a nighttime thermostat temperature.
The music part of Routines works with a range of streaming services.
Streaming services such as Amazon Music, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Deezer, Saavn, and TuneIn are compatible with the new Routines update. You can even add your own playlist if you so desire.
Podcasting is also part of this update. The game-changing feature can also automatically play your favorite artist, playlist, or podcast from the Alexa-enabled speaker of your choice. You can even put a playlist in shuffle-mode, and pre-determine the volume.
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More on the volume part: the volume control has 10 settings, which actually comes in handy. At night, maybe you want your news at a lower volume. Or, want your music softer (or louder).
Of course, you could also press play on your Spotify app (or Pandora app, or whatever). But then again, you could also check the weather on your iPad. All of which makes Routine and interesting bet on a simple personal assistant, and just how much task automation people want.
1) ??? Coffee and music: two unbearable morning chores!
If music is a chore, you probably shouldn’t be in the biz.
2) With all this yakking at a device, your spouse will be the one without sleep and then woken up with lighting not needed. Better left for people who need to talk to themselves- alone