Cortana, Meet Alexa!
So this one gets filed under the I’m not really sure I need this file. But that is because I have about 10 Echo devices around the house and I work from home. But if you don’t have many echo dots and particularly not one in ear shot of your Windows 10 computer, this might be perfect for you. Amazon has released the Alexa skill for Microsoft Cortana. So this means that you can use you Cortana interface and PC to interact with Alexa and everything she interacts with for the most part. This would include things like Smart Home device control, volume and music selections playing on devices around the house, shopping lists and other Alexa integrated things. Some of the things you can’t do though are play any media on it. Things I would miss would be flash briefs and Echo drop ins.
Adding Alexa to your Windows 10 PC is super simple too. No software is needed or complicated installs. You can watch the video below for a quick install and demo. I think it’s great to see the Alexa Voice service penetrate so many different platforms and this will be the reason it becomes the dominant voice platform of the future.
I probably still think the best course of action is to just buy a 20 buck Echo Dot but I think this could be useful in some situations.
Happy Automating!