You can now use your Amazon Echo to schedule events to your Google Calendar

If you’re an Amazon Echo user, the device’s new feature could be a big step in helping you plan your days and weeks. The latest Echo update allows you to ask Alexa to add items to your Google Calendar.

The Amazon Echo has taken the smart home world by storm, signaling a new era of home assistants. Not only that, but the device has slowly been opening up into supporting other ecosystems, allowing you to use Echo with a range of other services, notably Nest and now Google Calendar.

To set up the new feature, all you have to do is head to the settings section of the accompanying Alexa app and hit the “calendar” button, then follow the on-screen instructions. As part of the process, you’ll obviously have to link your Google account in the Alexa app, if you haven’t already.

Of course, it’s important to note that the Echo has had some level of Google Calendar support for a while — including the ability to read back items from your calendar. Still, it has not been able to actually add items to that calendar until now. Sure, it may be just as easy as using voice activated features on your iPhone or Android device to add items to your calendar, but at least you now have the option to use Echo in case your phone is in the other room when you remember that lunch you set up with your boss the next day.

A number of recent updates to Alexa, the software inside of Amazon Echo, have been aimed at improving how Echo acts with other smart home devices. Late last month, Amazon started offering an update allowing the Echo to control the Nest smart home thermostat. Not only that, but a few weeks ago the Echo also started supporting Lutron’s connected lighting system.

Amazon certainly seems to be stepping on Google’s toes a little, however its likely Google won’t take it sitting down — recent reports indicate that Google is working on its own Echo competitor. The Echo is available for purchase at Amazon.

from Planet GS via John Jason Fallows on Inoreader http://ift.tt/219iah6
Christian de Looper