I received an email from Amazon a couple of days ago announcing the possibility of a soon-to-be-available SDK (software development kit) and API for the Amazon Echo. This is exciting, because once this SDK becomes available, anyone with an Echo will be able to perform countless home automation tasks as well as open the entire internet to voice control.

Currently the Amazon Echo, which you refer to as “Alexa” when addressing it can play music from Amazon Prime (not nearly as good as Spotify or rdio), can tell you the news and weather, and can be coaxed to play just about any radio station. It will also query bing for some questions and can tell you horrible jokes. It’s nifty, and for $99 for Prime members, it’s not too awful, but it COULD do tons more, and it will once a proper SDK is released.

Up to now, software engineers, including myself (Echo-Commander), have been able to get Alexa to access APIs via a pretty nasty hack involving javascript injection. This, for example, lets me turn my Philips Hue lights off and on, but it won’t allow me to get Alexa to tell me any information retrieved from those APIs, and using this hack, Alexa can still complain about not understanding your commands, while still completing them, which can be very confusing. This does, though, make Alexa a lot more interesting than the simple music and news player which she is right now.

With a proper SDK and API, Alexa, with the help of relatively simple web service coding, should be able to connect to and make CRUD calls on any accessible APIs — all public APIs (think stock services, weather info, RSS feeds, etc) as well as any private APIs that we write ourselves. This will bring simple and quick voice control for just about anything into the home and office.

Home automation seems like the biggest win for Amazon with Echo, especially since the possibility will drive sales of automatable products like Philips Hue bulbs and Nest’s thermostat and cameras (as well as tons of other devices from other manufacturers all available on Amazon). “Alexa, turn on the lights in the bedroom.” “Alexa, make sure the front door is locked.” “Alexa, set camera one to security mode.” Maybe even, “Alexa, start the car,” on sub-zero mornings when you have to commute. Every video of home enthusiasts showing exciting automation possibilities will generate sales.

An SDK will also allow me to easily have Alexa read me any RSS feed — TechCrunch, the news, political blogs, anything that exposes RSS. Amazon could integrate its Kindle books with Echo allowing Alexa to read children (or adults) their favorite books. If you haven’t heard Alexa’s voice, it’s surprisingly good, making Siri and Google Now seem quite artificial in comparison.

We should also be able to easily have Alexa alert us to things based on any sorts of triggers. For example, Alexa could chime in when our Dropcam notices movement, or when our August-controlled door lock is unlocked. Alexa can interrupt our daily flow with news alert deemed very important, or she can tell us when our portfolio goes up or down 2% during a day’s trading.

Generally, anything possible now via APIs should soon be voice driven with Echo. I’d expect within 6 months of making the SDK available to software engineers, that home automation will be in the hands of most technically savvy consumers and within a year, a simple site like IFTTT for Echo will exist enabling non-programmers to get Echo to do just about anything they can imagine.