‘Alexa, what’s in the news?’ Your Echo will now read you Digital Trends headlines

By Digital Trends Staff September 2, 2016

twitter alexa app sonos amazon header — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Starting today, anyone with an Alexa-enabled device can get the latest and greatest headline from Digital Trends directly through Alexa. With the simple command, “Alexa, what’s in the news?” Alexa will list off the latest headlines from your favorite publications, including the biggest stories on Digital Trends. In addition, a card will appear in your Alexa app that includes links for further reading.

In order to add Digital Trends to your Flash Briefing, visit the Skills Store on the Alexa app, and enable the Digital Trends Skill. There are feeds available from numerous other news and media sources, too, such as NPR and BBC News. To manage your Flash Briefings, just open the Alexa app, navigate to Settings, then select Flash Briefing. From there, you can manage and reorder the content in your flash briefing.

You can use the feature on Alexa-enabled devices, such as the Amazon Echo, Tap, Dot, and FireTV, as well third-party devices like CoWatch, Pebble, Nucleus, Triby, and more.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Digital Trends Staff

Digital Trends has a simple mission: to help readers easily understand how tech affects the way they live. We are your…

Smart Home

Alexa can now show more emotion when your sports team loses

Echo Alexa

Folks who converse with Alexa on a regular basis may be interested to know that Amazon’s voice-activated digital assistant will soon be putting a lot more feeling into her responses.

The team behind the smart technology has been making gradual adjustments to Alexa since its launch in 2014, and these latest changes continue that work.

News

Amazon Alexa can now remind you to take your medication

3d printer custom medication magic pill mem2

If you struggle with remembering to take your pills every day, Amazon Alexa can now remind you to take them.

Amazon announced that it has partnered with Giant Eagle Pharmacy locations to provide its customers the option to create medication reminders that will prompt participants to take their medicine at a particular time of the day, or even request prescription refills. Amazon is using Omnicell medication management tools to implement the new feature.

Smart Home

Alexa can now set sleep timers to simulate a sunrise using your smart lights

amazon echo show on bedside table

If you have Alexa-compatible smart lights and live in the U.S., you've got some new features that will be rolling out this week. With the new Alexa lighting features, you can set up wake-up lights or sleep timers and create new Alexa Routines to dim or brighten over a certain stretch of time, giving you a huge amount of control over how your home is lighted. Here's how the new features work.

Wake-up Lighting
One new feature is called Wake-up Lighting. This feature basically makes your smart lights mimic the sun rising in your home, but on your schedule. For example, you can make it so your bedside lamp turns on and gradually gets brighter when it's time to wake up. To set up Wake-up Lighting say something like, “Alexa, set an alarm for (time) with my bedside lamp.” If you want your light to do this every day, you'll need to set up a recurring alarm by saying something like, “Alexa, set up an alarm for every morning at (time) with my bedside lamp.” If you have a lighting group set up you can say, “Alexa, wake me up at (time) with lights.”