These Amazon Echo Hacks Do More Than You Can Imagine

The world is changing faster than ever, and if the rate of new hardware is anything to go by, we’re all going to have some seriously cool gadgets in no time.

But if CES 2017 is anything to go by, it seems like the next big thing is going to be home helpers like the Amazon Echo. And to help you get the most from your Echo, we found the best Amazon Echo hacks.

1. Basic conversions when you’re cooking

We’ve all been there – you’re cooking a new recipe and you didn’t measure everything beforehand and now your hands are all gunky and you’re frazzled and in a rush and you DON’T KNOW HOW MANY GRAMS ARE IN ONE CUP OF BUTTER.

Fortunately, you can use this Amazon Echo hack to bring some much-needed Zen to your cooking.

Alexa comes pre-programmed to do all sort of things in the kitchen, including convert things on the fly for you.

So you might ask ‘Alexa, how many grams are in a cup of butter?’ and she’ll tell you. And you didn’t even have to gunk up your phone.

2. Get Alexa to be your own personal news briefing

Yes, just like the president. Instead of trying to butter your toast and learn what the stock market is doing today, you can actually relax with this Amazon Echo hack.

By saying ‘Alexa, read me the news’ you can get a full news briefing of what’s important to you. And if you’re not really getting the news that you want, you can just customize it with both time (hourly briefing, anyone?) as well as source.

So you can set it to catch all the sports news of the day if that’s your thing. You can even integrate Alexa with your Google Alerts if you want.

3. Use this Amazon Echo hack to create your own eco-friendly smart home

Yep, that’s right. You use this Amazon Echo hack to actually create a smart home for a MUCH more attractive price tag.

Basically, all you need to do is get smart plugs and then program  Alexa to recognize which plug is which, so you can ask for specific stuff to be turned on and off.

For example, you might use a Belkin Wemo Switch plug to plug in your patio lights. Then, you just program Alexa to read that plug as ‘patio lights’ and voila! You can turn then on with the command ‘Alexa, turn on patio lights.’ It also means you can adjust your home electronics from the Alexa web interface, allowing you to turn stuff (e.g. heat) on and off when you’re out of the house.

4. Get Alexa to read you Wikipedia pages

That’s right. With the simple command ‘Alexa, Wikipedia [what you want to wiki].’ For example, you might want to learn more about the Viking Missions to Mars.

Alexa can help with that.

Wrap up

The world of smart home help is deepening and expanding all the time. Alexa provides a fantastic interface for total tech integration, and with these four Amazon Echo hacks, you can start to really see what it can do.