Voice Activations News: Amazon Alexa Sends Texts Now

Voice Activations News: Amazon Alexa Sends Texts Now

Voice and technology are quickly becoming an inseparable pair as more and more people start to use this 21st century concept.  People now say they use voice 60% of the time they are performing online searches.  That is tremendous as the technology has been refined.

So now that many people have Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and Siri at their fingertips and in their homes, it is time to see if Alexa can help us take part in an activity that seems to far surpass the traditional phone call.

Yes, now Alexa can help us to text, hands-free.

Send Text Messages by Amazon Echo

Alexa has already been able to make phone calls to landlines in the US for us, but now text messaging is added to her resume.

Now this may not be entirely new, as Alexa could send text messages, but only to users of Amazon’s Echo, Echo Plus, Echo Spot, and Fire TV. The user’s friends had to be hosting the same devices.

That has changed. If the recipient of the text sent from someone using one of the above Echo devices doesn’t have a device, it will be forwarded to that person’s smartphone.
It is only available for Android phones right now without any notice of when it will be available to iOS products.

Here’s how you can make this work.
Open the Alexa app in your Android phone.
Select “Contacts” within the conversations tab
Go to “My Profile”
Click “Send SMS”

Google Home and Apple Homepod both can also send text messages.

Amazon HQ2 City Sweepstakes Big Deadline October 19, 2017

Amazon HQ2 City Sweepstakes Big Deadline October 19, 2017

Amazon is planning for their second headquarters which is expected to be the same size as the first headquarters in Seattle.  The tech e-commerce giant will invest $5 billion to build what is fondly called #HQ2.  Tens of thousands of additional jobs are expected to come from the new location and it will inject the local communities with tens of billions of dollars in additional investments.  Amazon wants to stay in North America.  The company decided to make the requests from cities countrywide public to involve as many people as possible along with seeing the creativity cities could bring forth.  Not to mention, it created quite a bit of publicity for Amazon. Continue reading

3 Reasons to Use from Amazon Chime

3 Reasons to Use from Amazon Chime

Screenshot 2017-02-20 at 8.23.33 PM - EditedAmazon just came out with their answer to Microsoft’s Skype.  We took a look at the app and have come up with what we see are the three benefits of using Amazon Web Service’s Chime.  Read this earlier post Introducing Amazon Chime.

 

1.  One App Download one app.  No need to deploy any other files, no downloads, nothing that will slow down your computer or device.  The app is hosted through the cloud which gives it speed and a seamless connection.

 

2.  Screen Sharing If you’ve been part of a conference call we’re pretty sure you’ve probably had to share your screen.  However, if you’re not on a computer/laptop then you can’t typically share your screen.  With Amazon Chime you can share your screen from any device, laptop, desktop, tablet, smartphone.

 

3.  Be Mobile We are all mobile, just about all the time, but we are very connected at almost all time.  With Amazon Chime take your meetings in the car, on the road through the easy to use app that works with Android, iOS, Mac, and Windows.  The chats are synchronized.  You can also switch between devices easily during the same meeting!

 

Want to try a free trial of Amazon Chime?  Get your 30-Day Free Trial of Amazon Chime now.