Amazon continue to release skills. The menu is getting cluttered. I hope they bring out that app store soon. You can get them too by going to the "skills" tab of your companion app. Here, then, is this week's review of the new skills.

Fantasy Football by TayTech, LLC

Retrieve fantasy football news and player updates on the Top 300 players directly from Fantasy Football Nerd.

This is an Echo front end to the Fantasy Football Nerd website. This uses "Nerd Rank" technology to crowd source ratings. They're good enough to be quotes as "the Cliffs Notes of the Industry" by The Washington Post in 2009.

Ease of Use: 3 out of 5. It's pretty simple, you can just ask for news, or about a certain player. It was better than I expected with the player names. It did crash once, but it got all the others I tried right. When it reads the general news, it is in several segments. It can get kind of long. It would have been nice if it was split up and you could cycle through them conversationally. Player news is also in segments, but the gap between them is less clear. This can create some confusion as one news update runs into the next. Also, the text comes straight from their site, and occasionally it reads web-links, which is confusing and unhelpful.

Usefulness: 3 out of 5. I know almost nothing about Fantasy Football. But this skill seems more of a Football news source rather than much to do about Fantasy Football. That's great for football fans. I don't know how great that is for Fantasy Football fans. Perhaps it should have been marketed more towards mainstream football enthusiasts.

Novelty: 3 out of 5. It's another "read the news to you" skill. The news appears to be high quality and relevant for the topic. But it really is just about the news.

Overall: 3 out of 5. It's fairly specific in it's appeal, although, admittedly, football is rather popular. I'd like to see them add in more interaction and connect with the gameplay of Fantasy Football itself. There are several tools on the web site and I think the skill will improve greatly if they integrate those in going forward.

Focus Word by LME Skills



Focus Word provides an inspirational word or phrase along with a brief statement to serve as a point of focus you can use during meditation, or as a touchstone throughout the day.

Chicken Soup for the Amazon Echo.

Ease of Use: 5 out of 5. This is a one-shot invocation skill. The only non-trivial aspect is invoking help. But, really, "help" is only there because the certification team need to check that checkbox on their checklist, not because the skill needs it.

Usefulness: 3 out of 5. The advice given is about the level of a fortune cookie. Perhaps more humorous than inspirational. But, if you are genuinely seeking to build inner awareness and build meditation into your schedule, I can see it handy to be able to call out from your lotus position on Alexa for guidance, rather than flipping through a book or computer screen.

Novelty: 4 out of 5. This isn't terribly different from LME's Crystal Ball skill, nor what I anticipate their upcoming "Angry Bard" skill will be like. But the quotes are pretty genuine and don't appear to be just regurgitated from some internet list somewhere. It looks like actual though went into them.



Overall: 4 out of 5. I think has a moderately broad appeal. It also lays the groundwork for either branching out into other areas. Some of TsaTsaTzu's most popular mobile apps were along this line: uBlessings and uBuddha.

Word Master by Saket Agarwal



Word Master is an interactive way to learn and challenge yourself with words. Alexa starts by saying a word. You then have to respond back with a word that begins with the letter in which Alexa’s word ended. Alexa then does the same in response to your word. As you say words, you earn scores with each word. The longer your word, the higher your score. Compete with Alexa and folks at home to make a higher score. Playing with words was never so much fun! The game continues until someone fails to respond to the next word or you say Exit.

Slightly broken word game.

Ease of Use: 3 out of 5. This game itself is pretty simple. It introduces you well to the gameplay. It is, however, hung up on the general failing that Alexa's Speech To Text is not 100% perfect. In any game of more than a few moves, it is going to get something wrong. In some cases, it's handy that it recognizes something, although not the word you spoke. In others, it's frustrating as it refuses to recognize an actual word.

Usefulness: 3 out of 5. It's not a bad game, although I wouldn't go so far as to say "Playing with words was never so much fun". The scoring system is severely broken. The scores did not advance with the length of each word. Rather they seemed to oscillate around the 80 to 90 mark.

Novelty: 4 out of 5. The short interactions imposed by Alexa works well for this style of game. I'm glad to see something that is a bit less trivial than "guess the number". I'm still waiting for a game that blends complex game play with a simple interface. Something to give my upcoming Starlanes skill a run for its money.

Overall: 3 out of 5. One of the better games so far. But still not quite engaging enough for me to keep enabled.