Now Hear This: Successful Farming on Alexa

We’ve all seen people talking into their phones to get answers or directions, such as Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa. Now farmers can talk to their Amazon home devices and get updates directly from Successful Farming.

Each day, news, weather, and markets information is now available on any Alexa-enabled device such as the Amazon Echo. Alexa is a voice-activated “digital assistant.” Basically, it is a smart speaker that can read you news or weather, create personal shopping lists, or allow you to listen to music – even control your other smart home devices through your wireless internet connection in your home.

Alexa is embedded in a number of Amazon’s products: the Echo Dot, Amazon Tap, Amazon Fire Stick, Amazon Fire TV, the Kindle Fire HD 10, and the Amazon Echo (more than 11 million have been sold since 2016).

You can find the Successful Farming Flash Briefing in the Alexa app on your phone, under Skills. Try searching for “farming” or “agriculture.” After you enable the app, you simple talk into the Echo device to trigger the news. Just say, “Alexa, what’s my Flash Briefing” or “Alexa, what’s in the news?” and it will read today’s agriculture news from Successful Farming.

Are you getting a new Amazon Echo for a gift? It would be worth enabling the Successful Farming skill to keep up on news and weather every morning.

Will farmers use it?

Successful Farming has a history of launching innovative communications tools, having been one of the first websites in agriculture, in addition to developing mobile websites, mobile apps, and more. This is another in a long line of innovations we have introduced to farmers.

This app is an example of how voice-activation technology is permeating our lives. Think Siri on the smartphone. A number of third parties have built the Alexa app into their devices: phones, lamps, thermostats, TVs, refrigerators.

Farm equipment won’t be far behind.

Alexa Commands

From cNet, here is a list of common Alexa commands:

• Show your calendar: “Alexa, show my calendar.”
• Show pictures: “Alexa, show my photos" or, “Alexa, show me pictures of cats.”
• View movie trailers: “Alexa, show me the trailer for ‘It.’”
• View the forecast: “Alexa, show me the weekend forecast.”
• Display recipes: “Alexa, show me a slow cooker recipe from Allrecipes.”
• Play music: “Alexa, play some music.”
• Play Spotify music: “Alexa, play [playlist] on Spotify.”
• Play an audiobook: “Alexa, play [title] on Audible,” “Alexa, read [title]” or “Alexa, play the book, [title].”
• Set a sleep timer: “Alexa set a sleep timer for 45 minutes” or “Alexa, stop playing in 45 minutes.”
• Reorder essentials from Amazon: “Alexa, buy more deodorant” or “Alexa, reorder deodorant.”
• Track packages from Amazon: “Alexa, where’s my stuff?” or “Alexa, track my order.”

Alexa also has a sense of humor. Just ask these:

• “Alexa, good morning.”
• “Alexa, tell me a joke.”
• “Alexa, beam me up.”
• “Alexa. Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.”
• “Alexa, my name is Inigo Montoya.”
• “Alexa, I want the truth.”
• “Alexa, party on, Wayne.”
• “Alexa, show me the money.”
• “Alexa, surely you can't be serious.”
• “Alexa, party time!”
• “Alexa, open the pod bay doors.”

For more information, or to buy a device, try amazon.com.