Alexa For Dummies
John Wiley & Sons Inc (Verlag)
978-1-119-56586-4 (ISBN)
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Amazon's hugely popular family of Echo devices has made Alexa a household name. She can answer your questions, entertain you, and even help around the house. Alexa for Dummies is the perfect guide for Alexa users who want to get up and running with their Echo devices. From basic setup to making the most of Alexa’s powerful smart home capabilities, this is your one-stop resource to all things Alexa.
Whether you’ll use Alexa to send text messages, play music, control your thermostat, look up recipes, replenish your pantry, or just search the internet for information, you’ll find detailed instructions in this fun and easy-to-understand guide.
Set up and personalize your Alexa device with an Amazon account and custom settings, including your preferred Alexa voice
Use Alexa to play music throughout your home, stream videos online, and meet all your entertainment needs
Unlock the power of advanced features like Alexa Skills and make your Alexa accessible
Turn your ordinary house into a modern smart home with advanced smart home features and Echo accessories
The virtual assistant you've dreamed of is now a reality with your favorite Echo device. Let Alexa For Dummies make your wish Alexa's command.
Paul McFedries has worked with, programmed, and, yes, talked to computers large and small since 1975. Although he's now primarily a writer, Paul has worked as a programmer, consultant, database developer, and website developer. He has written more than 95 books that have sold more than four million copies worldwide.
Introduction 1
About This Book 1
Foolish Assumptions 2
Icons Used in This Book 2
Beyond the Book 3
Where to Go from Here 3
Part 1: Getting Started with Alexa 5
Chapter 1: Getting to Know Alexa 7
What Is This Alexa That Everyone’s Talking About (Or, Really, To)? 7
Meet your new assistant 8
Alexa’s components 9
How Alexa works 11
Where Do You Get Alexa? 12
Figuring Out Which Alexa Device You Need 12
Checking out Amazon’s Echo devices 13
Choosing an Alexa device 16
Learning What Alexa Can Do 17
Playing media 17
Communicating 18
Shopping 18
Getting help around the home 18
Getting news and information 18
Answering your questions 18
Accessing skills 19
Automating your home 19
Having fun 19
Chapter 2: Setting Up Alexa and Your Devices 21
Installing the Alexa App 21
Signing in to your Amazon account 22
Taking a tour of the Alexa app 25
Giving Alexa access to your device microphone 26
Alexa Feng Shui: Positioning Your Alexa Device 27
Adding Your Alexa Device 27
Adding your Echo device 28
Adding a third-party Alexa device 32
Personalizing Your Alexa Device 33
Creating a voice profile 33
Giving the device a fun name 34
Setting the device location 34
Setting the device time zone 35
Changing the device language 36
Changing the measurement units 36
Changing the background image if your device has a screen 37
Connecting External Speakers to Your Alexa Device 37
Connecting speakers or headphones using a cable 38
Connecting speakers or headphones via Bluetooth 39
Disconnecting paired Bluetooth speakers or headphones 40
Chapter 3: Learning Alexa Basics 43
Getting to Know Your Echo 43
Taking a closeup look at the far-field microphone 44
Pushing the Echo’s buttons 45
Getting feedback from Alexa 46
Operating the Echo touchscreen 47
Getting to Know Alexa 48
Getting Alexa’s attention 48
Keeping Alexa’s attention 49
Ending the conversation 50
Enabling Brief mode 50
Some Useful Alexa Commands 51
Everyday-info commands 51
Information requests 52
Audio commands 52
Video commands 53
Alarm and timer commands 53
Calendar, reminder, and list commands 54
Communication commands 54
Shopping commands 55
Smart-home commands 55
Part 2: Having Fun with Alexa 57
Chapter 4: Playing Media 59
Listening to Music on Alexa 60
Playing music through Alexa 60
Linking to a music provider 60
Setting up a default music provider 61
Voice commands for controlling music 63
Accessing Alexa via the Amazon Music app 68
Playing third-party music through Alexa 69
Adjusting music quality 70
Listening to Other Audio Sources on Alexa 71
Tuning in to a radio station 71
Listening to a podcast 74
Hearing an audiobook 75
Having a Kindle book read out loud 77
Streaming Mobile Device Audio through Alexa 78
Watching Video on Alexa 79
Watching a movie trailer 80
Locating and playing web videos 80
Watching Amazon’s Prime Video 81
Taking Photos with Alexa 81
Chapter 5: Communicating with Alexa 83
Managing Your Alexa Contacts List 84
Giving Alexa access to your contacts 84
Giving a contact a nickname 85
Editing contacts 86
Blocking a contact 86
Managing your profile and settings 86
Exchanging Text Messages 87
Sending a text using voice commands 87
Sending a text using the Alexa app 88
Receiving a text message 88
Making Voice or Video Calls 89
Making voice calls with voice commands 90
Making voice calls using the Alexa app 92
Making video calls with voice commands 93
Making video calls using the Alexa app 93
Connecting Alexa to your landline with an Echo Connect 94
Answering an incoming Alexa-to-Alexa call 94
Ending a call 95
Dropping In on Other Alexa Users 96
Letting folks drop in on you 96
Dropping in on someone using voice commands 97
Dropping in on someone using the Alexa app 98
Configuring global Drop In settings for your Alexa device 98
Using Your Alexa Device as an Intercom 100
Chapter 6: Using Alexa at Home 101
A Quick Word about Household Profiles 101
Shopping with Alexa 102
Enabling voice purchases 102
Getting product recommendations 103
Placing an order 103
Reordering an item 104
Ordering multiple items 104
Setting up a Voice Code for purchases 104
Check your delivery status 105
Getting delivery notifications 106
Making a donation 107
Creating Lists 107
Creating and managing lists 109
Adding and managing list items 111
Getting the Information You Need 112
Getting the weather forecast 113
Checking traffic 113
Hearing the latest news with the Flash Briefing 114
Configuring Alexa’s sports update 116
Letting Alexa Manage Your Calendar 117
Linking your calendar to Alexa 118
Setting the default calendar 119
Unlinking a calendar 119
Managing calendar events 119
Setting Alexa Alerts 121
Getting Alexa to remind you of something 121
Setting an alarm 124
Running a timer 125
Customizing your alarm sounds 127
Putting Alexa in Do Not Disturb Mode 128
Part 3: Getting More out of Your Relationship with Alexa 131
Chapter 7: Asking Alexa Questions 133
Searching for Nearby Places 134
Asking for Financial Info 134
Getting Symptoms and Other Medical Facts 135
Asking Alexa to Do the Math 135
Converting Units 136
Getting Science Answers 137
Quizzing Alexa about the Culture 138
Bugging Alexa about Books 138
Asking Linguistic Questions 139
Asking Questions about Companies 140
Asking about Dates and Times 140
For Everything Else: Querying Wikipedia 141
Chapter 8: Adding Skills to Alexa 143
Understanding What a Skill Is 143
Checking Out Amazon’s Alexa Skills Department 144
Enabling a Skill 147
Enabling a skill with a voice command 147
Enabling a skill using the Alexa app 148
Working with Skills 149
Invoking a skill 149
Viewing your enabled skills 150
Changing skill settings 151
Disabling a skill 152
Thirty Cool Alexa Skills to Try 153
Building Your Own Skill 155
Chapter 9: Making Alexa Accessible 159
Controlling Alexa If You Have a Speech Impairment 159
Making Alexa more speech accessible 160
Installing a text-to-speech app 160
Using Tap to Alexa 160
Texting without speech 162
Checking Out Alexa’s Features for the Hearing Impaired 163
Making Alexa more hearing accessible 163
Enabling Closed Captioning 165
Enabling Alexa Captioning 165
Enabling Alexa’s Features for the Vision Impaired 166
Making Alexa more vision accessible 166
Navigating with VoiceView 168
Zooming in with Screen Magnifier 170
Part 4: Controlling Your Smart Home 173
Chapter 10: Setting Up Your Smart Home 175
What’s So Smart about a Smart Home? 176
Working with smart-home devices 177
Understanding smart-home connections 178
How does Alexa fit in? 179
Do you need a smart-home hub? 179
Setting Up Your Smart-Home Devices 180
Installing a Wi-Fi smart-home device 180
Understanding Wi-Fi Simple Setup 182
Discovering smart-home devices using an Alexa skill 182
Discovering Zigbee smart-home devices 184
Managing Smart-Home Devices 185
Viewing your smart-home devices 185
Renaming a smart-home device 187
Changing the device type 188
Disabling or deleting a smart-home device 189
Working with Smart-Home Devices 189
Controlling a smart-home device 189
Working with device scenes 190
Turning smart plugs on and off 192
Working with smart lights 192
Controlling smart thermostats 193
Keeping an eye on things with smart cameras 194
Other types of smart-home gear 195
Chapter 11: Uncovering Some Smarter Smart-Home Techniques 197
Creating Device Groups 198
Creating a smart-home group 198
Controlling a smart-home group 200
Managing a smart-home group 201
Alexa in Stereo: Working with Speaker Sets 202
Creating a speaker set 203
Playing music through a speaker set 205
Streaming Music to Multiple Rooms 207
Setting up multi-room music 208
Playing multi-room music 209
Fixing multi-room music sync problems 210
Automating Alexa with Routines 211
Understanding routine actions 212
Creating a routine 212
Running a routine 214
Working with IFTTT Applets 215
Connecting your IFTTT and Amazon accounts 216
Enabling an IFTTT applet 216
Checking out some Alexa applets 218
Part 5: The Part of Tens 219
Chapter 12: Ten (Times Ten) Ridiculously Fun Alexa Tricks 221
Ten Ways to Ask Alexa to Tell a Joke 222
Ten Alexa Wordplay Tricks 222
Ten Ways to Get Alexa to Sing 223
Ten Oddball Things to Ask Alexa to Do 224
Ten Funny Questions to Ask Alexa 224
Ten Ways to Get Alexa to Tell a Story 225
Ten Ways to Get Personal with Alexa 226
Ten Movie Easter Eggs 226
Ten TV Easter Eggs 227
Ten Music Easter Eggs 228
Chapter 13: Ten Things That Can Go Wrong with Alexa (And How to Fix Them) 229
Troubleshooting 101 230
Restarting your Echo 230
Updating your Echo 230
Resetting your Echo 231
Alexa or Your Echo Device is Unresponsive 232
Your Echo Device Isn’t Using the Latest Software 233
You Can’t Connect to Your Wi-Fi Network 234
You’re Having Trouble Streaming Media 236
You’re Having Trouble Connecting a Bluetooth Device 237
You don’t see a Bluetooth device 237
You can’t pair with a Bluetooth device 238
You Ordered Something Accidentally 238
Alexa Doesn’t Understand Your Commands 240
You’re Having Trouble Making Calls 241
You Changed Your Wi-Fi Network Password 242
A Smart-Home Device Doesn’t Work Properly 243
Chapter 14: Ten Ways to Beef Up Alexa Security and Privacy 245
Make Sure Your Wi-Fi Network Is Locked Up Tight 246
Change Alexa’s Wake Word 248
Stop Alexa from Listening (And Watching) 250
Trash Sensitive Alexa Recordings 250
Configure Alexa Not to Use Your Personal Data 252
Shut Down Alexa’s Communications 254
Turn communications off 254
Revoke access to your contacts 255
Secure Your Amazon Account 255
Give your Amazon account a bulletproof password 256
Turn on Amazon’s Two-Step Verification 257
Delete Your Saved Wi-Fi Passwords 258
Revoke a Skill’s Permissions 260
Deregister Your Alexa Device 260
Index 263
| Erscheinungsdatum | 08.12.2018 |
|---|---|
| Verlagsort | New York |
| Sprache | englisch |
| Maße | 193 x 230 mm |
| Gewicht | 578 g |
| Themenwelt | Informatik ► Weitere Themen ► Hardware |
| ISBN-10 | 1-119-56586-3 / 1119565863 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1-119-56586-4 / 9781119565864 |
| Zustand | Neuware |
| Informationen gemäß Produktsicherheitsverordnung (GPSR) | |
| Haben Sie eine Frage zum Produkt? |
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