Paul McFedries - Alexa For Dummies

Alexa For Dummies, 2nd Edition

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Copyright 2021 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

Media and software compilation copyright 2018 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

Published simultaneously in Canada

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2021942692

ISBN: 978-1-119-82208-0; ISBN (ePDF): 978-1-119-82209-7; ISBN (ePub): 978-1-119-82210-3

1. Chapter 10
2. Chapter 12

1. Chapter 1
2. Chapter 2
3. Chapter 3
4. Chapter 4
5. Chapter 5
6. Chapter 6
7. Chapter 7
8. Chapter 9
9. Chapter 10
10. Chapter 11
11. Chapter 12
12. Chapter 14
13. Chapter 15

Okay, I know just what youre thinking: Why, oh, why would someone write a book about Alexa, Amazons famous and wildly popular virtual assistant? After all, dont you just plug in an Echo or any of the umpteen other devices that come with Alexa built in, say, Alexa," and then ask a question or give a command? What else does a person need to know, for pitys sake? Im surprised Alexa requires even three pages of explanation, so how can this book have hundreds?

First, wow, you ask a lot of questions. Second, well, youd be surprised. Sure, Alexas basics are readily understood. Thats part of the beauty of Alexa and the devices that run it: The initial learning curve is pretty much a horizontal line.

Ah, but Alexa is way deeper and more powerful than those out-of-the-box basics would indicate. You have a serious piece of software at your beck and call. (Well, your call, anyway; Alexa does not yet respond to becks.) Im talking high-end artificial intelligence (AI), world-class voice recognition, and tons of third-party extensions. All that adds up to an amazingly sophisticated app that contains hidden depths just waiting for you to find them.

Alexa For Dummies, 2nd Edition not only takes you on a complete tour of Alexas capabilities, tools, settings, and skills but is also fully updated to cover all the latest Alexa devices and features. Youll even see that Alexa has a hidden whimsical side that its just dying to show. In the end, youll discover everything you need to know to get the most out of your Alexa investment. Best of all, youll have a ton of fun as you go along.

This book boasts 15 chapters, but just because they appear sequentially, that doesnt mean you have to read them that way. Use the table of contents or index to find the information you need and dip into and out of the book when you have a question about Alexa.

If your time is limited, you can also ignore anything marked by the Technical Stuff icon or the information in sidebars (the gray-shaded boxes). Yes, these tidbits are fascinating, but they arent critical to the subject at hand, so you wont miss anything critical by skipping them.

Within this book, you may note that some web addresses break across two lines of text. If youre reading this book in print and want to visit one of these web pages, just key in the web address exactly as its noted in the text, as though the line break doesnt exist. If youre reading this as an ebook, youve got it easy just click the web address to be taken directly to the web page.

Finally, throughout this book, when you see an italicized word in a command to Alexa, thats a placeholder. That is, you replace the italicized word with something else specific to your command. For example, the placeholder title means you replace title with the actual title of something (such as a song or an album).

This book is for people who are new (or relatively new) to using the Alexa voice-activated virtual assistant. Therefore, I do not assume that youre an Alexa expert, an Alexa maven, or an Alexa aficionado. However, I do assume the following:

• You know how to plug in and connect devices.
• You have a running Wi-Fi network with an Internet connection.