Have you met Alexa? She is a voice activated cloud service that lives inside the Amazon Echo and she’s here to help you control your smart home. Through Alexa the Amazon Echo, Amazon Dot and Amazon Tap can control everything from your music, to your lights to the temperature in your smart home – all without you having to move off the couch. She’s completely controlled by voice, and does exactly what you’ve asked, unlike some of the other people who live in your house! You can see exactly what Alexa can do here.

The devices fit right in to your home. They are sleek and require no wires or installation. All you need is an internet connection and you can customize Alexa to work with a number of apps. Alexa can play music on Spotify, read you the latest news on NPR News app, and she’s even connected to your Amazon account. In the laundry room and realize you’re out of detergent? Don’t fret, just tell Alexa and she’ll make sure your favorite brand is delivered to your door. Alexa is also compatible with smart home apps that control components of your home such as Phillips Hue, wemo and Samsung SmartThings, to name a few.

But that’s not even the most exciting thing about Alexa. Her best characteristic is that she’s a quick learner! The technology is very intuitive – Alexa is learning new skills at quite an impressive pace.

Last month, the Coldwell Banker team attended a special presentation from Amazon about the future of Alexa. The Amazon skills platform is now open to all sorts of companies, meaning that Alexa will be able to do even more, even sooner. A skill could be anything from requesting an Uber to ordering a pizza or changing the color of the lighting in your room, all without you lifting a finger – all you need to do is ask Alexa!