Rest of the Day: Twitter Launches Amazon Alexa App
Listen – it’s a great sound when a robot reads tweets aloud. Twitter just launched a new “skill” for Alexa-powered devices like the Echo that lets you interact with the service with just your voice.
- You can now ask Alexa to read your timeline, your mentions, and more. You will need to learn specific phrases that Alexa can understand, but this is all pretty common sense. For example, “Alexa, ask on Twitter, has anyone retweeted me?” or “Alexa, ask me for mentions on Twitter.” However, it looks like you can’t dictate tweets yet. You can enable a new skill in the app or the Alexa web portal . [Twitter via TechCrunch ]
- With regard to other news, you can now send links to albums Facebook Moments, which can be viewed on the Internet , regardless of whether the recipient application or he is a friend to Facebook. You can now also save full-resolution versions of photos, presumably to promote the Facebook Moments app into Google Photos territory as a destination for all of your photos. [TechCrunch]
- Speaking of Facebook, their algorithmic curation of trending topics isn’t doing so well. Fake tabloid articles, including 9/11 conspiracy theories, are surfacing. And then Facebook decided to remove the iconic photo of a girl fleeing napalm during the Vietnam War when it was published by a Norwegian newspaper; they have since reversed their decision . [Vocative and New York time].
- Rumor has it that Microsoft will unveil the Surface PC in late October. ZDNet says PC is likely to spearhead the October hardware launch event. (“All-in-One PC” usually refers to stand-alone desktop computers such as the iMac). [ZDNet]
- Sling TV has a new Windows 10 app. Nothing groundbreaking here, but it does have all the essential versatile Windows 10 app features like Cortana and Live Tiles integration. [Sling TV]