If there is one silver wrap for our reduced holidays, it could happen that this year is less – less cooking, less cleaning, less travel, less shopping and, most importantly, less stress. So you may be wondering, “why do Do I feel stressed?”
Look around. You feel the absence of a full crew – an aunt and uncle who would take care of the cooking, nephews who would chop wood for the fireplace, grandparents who would make everyone laugh. Somehow, instead of reducing the scale of production, the pandemic turned the holidays into a complex single-person show.
And you are currently in the middle phase, preparing the ingredients for the linguine with shellfish sauce which is a competition to Aunt Ruth. Take out the pasta, garlic, white wine and mussels – when you suddenly remember! At 8 p.m., you should make a video call with West Coast tapas. You go to set a reminder when a voice in the other room says, “Is it cold? Why is it so cold? “Next:” I’m bored. What should I watch? ”
At this point, that urge is bubbling – a desire to scream, to cancel an ambitious plan, to order food to take away, a joke in a tray of cookies by the fireplace, and to call the night. Hell, call it a year! But instead, the moment you think of the Amazon device package – Echo Show 8, Fire TV Cube and Amazon Smart Plugs – you were treated like (ahem, very deserved) early gifts. So instead of waving a white flag, you use this as an opportunity to use them.
Echo Show 8, with an abundance of features you are familiar with (Alexa, your trusted helper) rather than (bigger, better screen; video and messaging capability; amazing sound) is your invaluable partner in crime. And your new Amazon smart plugs are the infrastructure that instantly connects your entire home. With smart plugs, almost any device can be “smart”. Simply plug in a coffee maker, lamps, appliances and everything else so you can control your voice or set up routines.
So, with a series of simple commands as you pass through the house, raise the temperature by a few degrees on the thermostat by saying “Alexa, raise the temperature to 70 degrees;” take care of the night entertainment thanks to your Fire TV cube in the living room saying, “Alexa, play Snowy day on Prime Video ”(or other 500,000 movies and TV shows); and then ask “Alexa, set a reminder to enter my tazba at 8pm”, not only using Echo Show 8 as a reminder, but also as a means of video calling. Using the new group call feature, up to seven friends and family members can connect at once via their Echo devices. Just set up and name your group in the Alexa app. Then anyone in your group can simply say, “Alexa, call mine [group name]”To start a group call. You can also use your Echo Show 8 to join Zoom video calls. Just say, “Alexa, join my zoom meeting” and Alexa can help you join the next video meeting with colleagues or friends and family. And for those who have older relatives or family and friends who can keep a close eye, Alexa offers a new call subtitling feature on Echo Show devices that can display the text of what the other person is saying during an Alexa call to one Alexa.
And last but not least, get ready for your flawless sous chef to guide you through the tricky recipe.