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Below is a list of five Alexa skills worth trying, all drawn from the new, trending, and most enabled skills categories of the Alexa Skills Marketplace.
Notable recent Alexa integrations include a Microsoft Office 365 calendar integration, a heart attack skill from the American Heart Association, and the WebMD skill.
In Alexa news this week, Amazon is making up to $100 in AWS credits available to Alexa developers (remember, Microsoft’s Cortana Skills Kit is due out soon), Alexa is being added to the Amazon app for iPhone users, and Roomba maker iRobot said it plans to release an Alexa skill for controlling robot vacuums. Rejoice, house cats everywhere.
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Reorder with Grubhub
The Grubhub skill, which was first made available Wednesday, lets you easily reorder any previously purchased Grubhub orders. You can’t start an order from scratch, so this skill may not be very useful if you don’t have a big Grubhub history. People who do have a history of activity on Grubhub can now use their voice to order dinner from 50,000 restaurants.
Given the fact that Grubhub has more than eight million active users (people who have made orders within the past 12 months), that’s a lot of potential orders.
Among the dozen Alexa skills for food orders or delivery that are available today, Starbucks, Amazon Restaurants, and Domino’s have also focused their Alexa skills on preset orders.
NCAA March Madness
Tell the March Madness skill the name of any college or matchup and the skill will tell you the score, when the game is scheduled to take place, or who won.
Say “Alexa, ask March Madness what games can I listen to on the radio?” and you will hear about available games, then the skill will ask you which available game you want to hear now.
Track by Nutritionix
How many calories are in four eggs? In a half pound hamburger, an ounce of foie gras, or an entire pizza? This skill can tell you how many calories there are or give you other nutrition facts.
Try to best this skill. Not easy. It’s very smart about food. Connect it with the Nutritionix app, and you can use Alexa and the app to log food and meals.
Food logging has always had its challenges, so a good platform to log meals, especially a simple conversational one, seems like a smart way to use Alexa.
MyFord Mobile
The MyFord Mobile skill comes in the wake of Ford’s Consumer Electronic Show announcement that it is bringing Alexa to its Focus Electric, C-MAX Energi, and Fusion Energi vehicles. Now Alexa can stop and start the car, check the status of a recharge, lock and unlock car doors, and much more.
Earplay
The choose-your-own-adventure story seems pretty popular for assistants like Alexa. That’s probably why Earplay has one of the highest ratings in the Alexa Skills Marketplace.
Like The Magic Door or The Wayne Investigation from Warner Bros., Earplay relies heavily on sound effects to set the scene and delivers an experience led by an excited narrator and a cast of characters.
Earplay wants to tell lots of stories that you can play with your voice, but today there are only two scenarios available: a demo and Codename Cygnus. Ask for the demo and the skill ends up pushing you to open the Alexa app and sign up for story updates. Codename Cygnus brings you through a secret agent scenario.
