Amazon has been working towards improving the Echo smart speakers capabilities since its inception and that's why it is the most popular smart home appliance in the global market. With Fifa World Cup 2018 underway, football will be the topic of conversations at least for next one month among friends and family. The company in a bid to make the Echo smart speakers more helpful to the consumers during the ongoing football season added several new skills. This will particularly be helpful for a cricket-crazy country like India.
The device owners can improve on their football knowledge by getting to know about its history, Fifa match schedules with the help of Alexa on Amazon Echo speakers. For some baseline knowledge on the Fifa World Cup tournament as a whole, you can ask things like:
- "Alexa, what teams are playing in the World Cup?"
- "Alexa, who won the last World Cup?"
- "Alexa, when is the last time France won the World Cup?"
- "Alexa, what country has won the most World Cups?"
- "Alexa, who is the top scorer for Argentina?
- "Alexa, what group is Sweden in for the World Cup?"
Latest updates on Football stats: Amazon Alexa-powered Echo speakers will offer latest scores, team standings, the player who scored the goal and many statistics. You should try following phrases below:
- "Alexa, what World Cup games are on today?"
- "Alexa, when does Argentina play next in the World Cup?"
- "Alexa, who scored for Germany?
- "Alexa, what's the score of the Panama game?"
- "Alexa, who scored for France?"
You should checkout witty side of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered Alexa: Amazon Echo owners can ask Alexa for football jokes, her favourites and predictions.
- "Alexa, which is your favourite football team?"
- "Alexa, who is your favourite football player?"
- "Alexa, which footballer has the coolest hairstyle?"
- "Alexa, which is your favourite football anthem?"
- "Alexa, who will win the World Cup?"
Besides the skills, Amazon has introduced a scavenger hunt-like game The Striker Challenge for Echo smart speaker owners. Once users say "Alexa, start the Striker Challenge", they will be taken through a series of five questions. At the end of it, they will get a fun limerick that Alexa has made up for the winners. The set of questions and the fun limerick will change each week, so users can actually take part in the challenge over 4 weeks. The challenge went live on June 17 and a new challenge will go live every Sunday thereafter till the end of the world cup. It has to be noted that there are no prizes or giveaways; this is purely a fun set of interactions on the Echo device.
In a related development, Apple, earlier in the month, too made a similar announcement ahead of Russia 2018 football world cup. It has updated the company's digital assistant Siri, also iOS App store, podcasts and more to serve users with real-time information on world's most popular team sport.
