Tell me about Alexa

[thecuriousfox]

My DC have been going on for ages about getting an Alexa, and I’m actually beginning to think she’d be quite a good addition to our household! Thing is, I don’t know much about how it (she??) works, do you pay a subscription, does it use lots of WiFi, etc? So please hit me with all you know about Alexa!

I love mine. I now have three.
I've got the OFTTT app too and have a little applet that puts shopping items actually IN my Tesco basket so I can just check out and get delivered at the end of the week. So handy for the random things you repeatedly forget to order unless it's in your hands at the time!

Alarms are great, commuting alerts, question of the day, escape room, even just telling you the time (she needed to do that a lot day with the clocks going back as I was resetting them!)
Yeah it captures some sound data to improve its machine learning but that is anonymised (mostly! But also I'm not terribly interesting...I'd take it doing my shopping for me over being overheard moaning about the dogs of children any day!)

*IFTTT
iPhone Autocorrect is more worrying than Alexa; pass it on.

Shhhhhhhh she's listening....

DH and I use it for the timer, news flashes and playing music.
Kids use it for:
Answering homework questions
Getting Alexa to play fart noises
Listening to music
Controlling it from their tablet when another is listening to music to make her play something really annoying instead 😆