The Amazon Echo continues to be one of the must-have devices for home use. According to the details shared by the online retail giant about the update released on Friday, the device can now tap into Yelp search results and give users the names of the best restaurants or the top local supermarket.
The Amazon Echo Bluetooth speaker’s Alexa voice assistant can now plug into Yelp to find local search results. Users will now be able to ask Alexa to provide info about restaurants that are close by and other local businesses. It will also be able to tell them about the Yelp star ratings for the restaurants under consideration by them.
The Yelp recommendation is a huge addition to Amazon Echo making the device a useful asset in the home than it was before. Users just need to plug their home address into the settings screen of the Alexa app to find results pop up on the Alexa app situated on the smartphone or tablet.
Alexa taps into Yelp’s huge database of suggestions to offer information about businesses based near the user’s location. Echo users can tap into Local Search results for nearby businesses and easily see what options are available close by.
To make the Yelp recommendations work, Amazon suggests using the local address in the Echo app. According to Amazon, it’ll be adding more local search features in the coming weeks.
Other new updates that hit the Amazon Echo include a new sports update feature, which will allow users to ask Alexa for the most up-to-date information about their favorite sports teams’ games and schedules.
The product got off to a rocky start in the beginning, but steady updates like this have added new features, like traffic reports, sports scores, and perhaps most interestingly, highly-adaptable IFTTT integration. The new IFTTT triggers built into the Echo will allow the device to activate an action after an Echo alarm or timer goes off.
With all the new functionalities introduced, it all boils down to how well Amazon Echo can recognize what users have to say and deliver the correct results. While voice recognition is not perfect yet, mainly for those with a strong accent, if Amazon Echo can perform well for most people, then Amazon would be well on its way to becoming the first company to have a voice recognition software that works wonderfully.
