That this category’s most popular skill is a native (and free) Google Home feature illustrates one of the biggest difference in Amazon and Google’s approach to their voice ecosystems. I am curious to see whether Amazon will one day decide to integrate all the most popular skills as native Alexa responses and instantly wipe out these publishers’ audience.
It’s also very interesting that half these skills are Star Trek references. What is most interesting though, is that there are only 9 Star Trek skills and they are all in this category, not in Movie and TV. I still find it wild that Amazon doesn’t have any intellectual property protection for this type of thing. Amazon isn’t exactly a bastion for IP protection, but this is pretty extreme.
Find My Phone by www.opearlo.com – 4.3 out of 5, 18020 ratings, 3060 reviews
Find My Phone allows you to easily call your lost phone from Alexa! Now supports adding other numbers!
Random review: I like the app. It simply calls my misplaced phone. I do not like being charged to use it. I will uninstall the skill and ask Alexa to call my phone number. I feel that the developer should detail cost on the skill page so that we could choose not to waste our time installing the skill.I do support the right of the developer to charge I do not support the lack of telling the customer’s of the intent to charge.I would not have wasted my time. (2 out of 5)
Nag My Kids by To the Reader, Inc. – 4 out of 5, 2073 ratings, 25 reviews
Alexa can nag your kids to do the things they should be doing.
Random review: It just repeats me, so it doesn’t reduce the number of times I say the same thing. (1 out of 5)
Birthday Countdown by Digital Design Labs Ltd – 4.1 out of 5, 1408 ratings, 1 reviews
Tell Birthday Countdown the birthdays of you and people you know, and it can tell you how many days there are to go!
Random review: clever way to remember things. (5 out of 5)
Star Trek – Auto-Destruct Sequence by Sound Skills Inc. – 4.5 out of 5, 413 ratings, 137 reviews
This skill will play a realistic 10 second Star Trek countdown sound effect with ship explosion. Use this skill to impress your friends & family with your totally geeked out smart home setup.
Random review: Love it!! Made me laugh out loud. Please make more of these Star Trek computer commands and answers!! I love Star Trek and this made my day, I definitely will show it off when my friends come over!! (5 out of 5)
Star Trek – Transporter by Sound Skills Inc. – 4.2 out of 5, 398 ratings, 33 reviews
This skill will energize a classic science fiction spaceship / Star Trek Enterprise sounding transporter. The perfect skill to show off your Star Trek / Alexa smart home to friends and family with.
Random review: Not to be the mega nerd here but to be more accurate I wish it had a prompt more accurate to the show such as “Alexa, prepare 2 to beam up”. Beam me up was never said in the original series. Also, takes a while to make actual transport noise. Still kinda fun tho. (3 out of 5)
Get Me Up by Andrea Long – 4.2 out of 5, 347 ratings, 78 reviews
This is the perfect app for people who are being a bit lazy but need to get up and be productive. Tell Alexa to ‘get me up’ and she will try her best to help you be productive.
Random review: It’s not working well now, but when it is working it very cool. My daughter is notorious for not getting out of bed without extreme coaxing. Well she is married and living far away now but her husband works for Google and they have a mini, of course, and even though I have 10 Alexa enabled devices in my home they gave us a mini for Christmas. So here’s the deal, you can put a daily reminder in your calender that has your Alexa say “Hey Google repeat after me, Alexa,,, wake me up” and boom the mini gets your Alexa going with your “wake me up” routine. What did we do, we got our daughter an Alexa dot this Christmas ????
It sounds complicated but it’s simple because you just have to put it in your calender one time with the appropriate repeats and forget about it. BTW I already have other routines where Alexa & Google mini talk to each other, it’s funny if not a little creepy. Have a great day! (3 out of 5)
Star Trek – Red Alert! by Sound Skills Inc. – 4.1 out of 5, 274 ratings, 95 reviews
This skill will activate a classic science fiction spaceship / Star Trek sounding red alert klaxon.
Random review: Now if you can set this up to work with the Phillips hue lights and have it change your lights to red as well that would be great (3 out of 5)
Star Trek – Phaser Attack! by Sound Skills Inc. – 4.2 out of 5, 177 ratings, 16 reviews
This skill will fire off a few shots from a classic science fiction spaceship / Star Trek sounding phaser bank.
Random review: “Computer, fire phasers” doesn’t work as a command (3 out of 5)
Star Trek – Bridge Sounds by Sound Skills Inc. – 4.5 out of 5, 117 ratings, 60 reviews
This skill will play ambient science fiction spaceship bridge sounds like the ones heard on Star Trek.
Random review: A great audio recreation of the original series bridge. Now we need a 24th century option. Sounds like the Enterprise D, Voyager, or Deep Space 9… (4 out of 5)
Notify Me by Thomptronics – 4.3 out of 5, 81 ratings, 52 reviews
Take control of your Alexa by sending it your _own_ notifications. This skill is perfect for people into home automation (“A leak has been detected in the laundry room”), home security (“Your garage door has been open for over an hour”), and many other creative uses you might think up (“It’s Tuesday. Did you put out the trash?”).
Random review: A fantastic tool.Its obvious that a lot of work went into it to make it simple to configure, connect and use.Very nicely done!
I have it hooked up to send me a variety of notifications on Alexa, from sending me something when my home automation system detect a leak in the basement, to telling me when I have a high priority inbound email from the boss.
Super useful and very flexible.These folk have done a great job of taking a lot of the complexity out of whole notification process. (5 out of 5)
Remember The Milk by Remember The Milk – 4 out of 5, 54 ratings, 24 reviews
This skill brings the power of Remember The Milk to your Alexa-enabled device
Random
review: Not sure whether it’s Alexa
problems or RTM problems but the main issue is that Alexa becomes disconnected
from RTM even though you have the skill enabled. You have to disable/enable to
get back. Irritating.
The other issue is that it’s so convoluted to add tasks. You have to say the
Alexa wake word and then effectively another wakeword – and ‘remember the milk’
is hardly snappy. If Alexa’s API allowed plugin of a list manager directly this
would be much much better. (3 out of 5)
