Dot to Dot - the daily 5min Alexa demo show

Thanks to Mark from London our Alexa habits will now be revolutionised. Revolutionised I tell you! You'll have to listen to today's episode to find out how/why. We also look at the kinda cool Repeat Me skill... that's the kinda cool Repeat Me skill.

The other day I mentioned that you might want to mark my words as indeed, Chris Chaffin is back! He's brought us another brilliant demo of a skill for anyone who loves words wonderfully combined with mind-mangling maths. That's a killer combo in my book.

Did you know that this podcast holds the (unofficial) world record for the most number of Echo skills of varying quality demoed in a year by someone called Robin who used to have freckles but doesn't any more and with a little help from Bob Dylan who sometimes pops round and with  a lot of help from his excellent family and friends? Hard to believe I know, but it's true!

Bob's back to help with an explosive episode all about the Bomb Or Not skill. Isn't it great that he keeps popping round? And I've no idea how many roads he has to walk down to get here. Good ol' Bob.

Actually enabled/invoked with "The TARDIS Box", this skill is the bees knees when it comes to sound effect skills. I'd actually go so far as to say its the cats pyjamas. I don't know why I'm using animal analogies for this Dr Who-related skill so I'll stop. I wonder if K9 wears pyjamas…

Double hooray! Today we have two new listeners joining the skill demo gang. The brilliant Juliet and Rob Winter demo a really very good version of Blackjack. The skill's narration, help  and sound effects are all fantastic and Rob and Juliet do it proud. Thanks guys and keep 'em coming!

Three Questions is a nicely executed multiple-choice quiz skill that gives you - wait for it - three questions at a time. They're on a random topic each round and our A-lady then goes on to give you a bit more info about the correct answer. This one's a keeper.

Just a quick additional episode to let you know that I was very pleased to be a guest on the brilliant The Blind Side podcast which went out today. For around an hour myself and the excellent Jonathan Mosen discussed all things Alexa-related and, whilst The Blind Side is a vision-impairment focused podcast (as the name might give away), this episode really is for everyone - especially if you live down under where Echos are fresh and, if it's possible, even more exciting.

Hooray! Today we have another listener contributing a fab skill for the very first time. Chris Chaffin takes us on a tour of the wonderful Word Play skill. Keep 'em coming Chris (in fact he does with another brilliant demo in just a few days time - mark my words).

We're still in January (just) and so 2017 hopefully isn't too distant a memory as yet, so let's see how much we remember of that very memorable year that's just bound to go down in history…