Amazon Devices November Round-Up: Alexa Smart Properties, Eero Updates, and More

Amazon Alexa is getting smarter and more complex every day by finding new ways of applying learned  behaviours to different scenarios. Currently built into over 100,000,000 devices worldwide, Alexa and the Echo suite of devices continue to evolve.

Check out the top Amazon devices and Alexa updates you need to know for the month of November  2022:

Alexa Smart Properties

Alexa Smart Properties debuted in a senior living community located just outside of Ottawa in Orleans, Ontario at Bruyère Village. It is powered by a set of technologies that property owners and managers can use to deploy and manage Alexa-enabled devices at scale and easily customize their customer experience.

Senior living providers can now use Alexa experiences to keep residents connected, informed, and entertained thus improving care team productivity and operational efficiency.

Using their voice, the residents can engage Alexa via an Amazon Echo device in their room to keep in touch with their loved ones, connect with their community, access community news, and more.

Amazon adds more English voice options for Alexa

Customers can now change Alexa’s voice to any of the existing English voices available in the UK, Canada, Australia, and India. This gives customers a total of 9 Alexa voices to choose from, including the two American English voices.

How to change Alexa’s voice:

• Start by saying, “Alexa, change your voice.”
• Alexa will walk you through alternate voices one by one, and you can choose to hear another option or choose the current option.
• Once you’ve chosen an option, Alexa will confirm you’re all set, and offer you the option to change your wake word.

How to change Alexa’s voice through the Alexa app:

• Open the Alexa app and select the Devices icon on the right side of the bottom navigation bar.
• Tap the Echo & Alexa icon on the top left.
• Tap the device for which you want to change Alexa’s voice.
• Scroll down and tap Language under the General section.
• Tap the voice of your choice. You’re all set!

New eero Update

From December 5th onwards, eero Internet Backup will become available to eero Plus subscribers and select internet service provider (ISP) customers.

It allows you to set a hotspot as a backup source for when your internet goes out. When there’s an outage, it will connect to a backup source you’ve set to keep your devices online via your eero mesh systems.

Alexa Holiday Experiences

For those nights you’re staying in alone or with friends, try:

• Holiday Movie Marathon: With a seemingly endless supply to choose from, Fire TV can keep you entertained and nostalgic all season long, streaming the classics and modern favorites.
• Festive Karaoke: Holiday songs bring out a different level of joy and singing along with friends makes it even better! Stream a holiday playlist from Amazon Music on your Echo Dot speaker and sing out to spread that holiday cheer.
• Yule Log: Simply go to the Yule Log channel of Prime Video and experience 10 hours of crackling, soothing sounds.
• Fun with Alexa: Alexa will keep you laughing all season long – just ask for a holiday joke or what Alexa thinks of your ugly holiday sweater. Alexa will also be giving out daily gifts in the month of December. To get one, just say: “Alexa, what’s my present?”

Call Santa Experience

This year, Alexa users can Call Santa and hear daily updates from the North Pole from Dec 1 – 27th. Santa will provide customers with an update, thank them for calling and encourage them to call again the next day.

Each day Santa will be quite busy and unable to chat. This will be done in a delightful way, that will leave customers wanting to re-engage with the skill on a daily basis.