One of the Amazon Echo’s many features is the ability to add Skills. Amazon has provided a set of built-in capabilities they refer to as skills. These skills are what allow Alexa to deliver your morning traffic report, tell you what the weather is based on your address, and play your favorite morning tunes.
Amazon has added a huge amount of resources to Alexa development by opening up the skills development to the masses. You can register for your own Amazon Developer account, and start developing your own skills for Alexa.
One of the nice things about how Amazon has deployed the Echo is the software interfaces. As I mentioned before, you can use the Alexa app, or the website and both have the same interface.
By clicking the menu icon in the Alexa app, or on the Alexa website you can click skills. You can add the skills to your Amazon Echo from both interfaces. The skill will be added and immediately available for use.
The screen shot to the left shows just a snap shot of the large amount of skills available. The skill count is close to 2000 probably more.
I couldn’t find an easy way to find a total count. As you browse for skills to install, you will find they have organized them into somewhat relevant categories.
There are skills for Business & Finance, Education & Reference, Lifestyle, Novelty & Humor, and Smart Home. As you browse through the different skills I would recommend paying attention to comments and ratings. There are new skills coming out everyday. While Amazon has put a good system in place to ensure compatibility, there is no guarantee the skill will work as advertised. This is where you can rely on your fellow users as they rate the skills and leave valuable feedback.
There are a lot of well rated skills. The skills section of the app will show you what others are using and what skills are trending at the moment. You can see from the images below, the title and feedback are pretty clear. You can also select them and quickly view user feedback. If you don’t like it.. its just as easy to disable it.
Once you start to install skills, you can easily access all of your skills on the top of the skills section. There is a button for Your Skills. Then you will see them in one easy list. You can click on the skills and leave feedback right from the app or site.
This is a good option to view your skills that have been installed. There are so many available this could easily get out of hand and end up like that MP3 collection you have always wanted to organize better.
While there are plenty of entertaining skills with trivia and games, there are also some great skills to help make your home automation voice activated. A scan of the smart home skills section was like a who’s who in the home automation arena. There were skills for your Wink hub, Samsung SmartThings was represented as well as Nexia and HomeSeer.
There were also a lot of single device skills from Nest, Osram and Frigidaire. I use the Wink hub skill below to enable voice control of all my home automation products.
