Oliver Haslam on October 25, 2015, 7:13 am

Amazon Echo Can Now Help Find Info On Local Restaurants And Businesses

Amazon’s Echo is one of those pieces of technology that not only has great looks, but can also understand what we say. And when it gets new features and functionality, it gets us even more excited. Today, Amazon has done just that by adding Yelp support to it.

Now capable of doing something smartphones and tablets have been doing for a while thanks to things like Siri, Cortana and Google Now, the Amazon Echo can take voice commands and use them to find local businesses. That means you can now ask Alexa to find you pizza or a good place for Chinese food, and the device will use Yelp’s data to give you recommendations. It will also send details such as star rating, phone number, and a link to Yelp listings to your smartphone or tablet through the Echo app. It’s all pretty much as you would expect, though we’re not sure it’s all that useful given the proliferation of software already on our phones and tablets that can do pretty much the same thing.

Amazon Echo main

Find local businesses and restaurants

You can now ask Echo for info on local businesses and restaurants and Alexa will give you the details—straight from Yelp. To get started, go to Settings in the Alexa App, select your device, and add your address. Here are some ideas once you’re set up:

Craving cashew chicken? Just ask: “Alexa, find me a nearby Chinese restaurant.”
Wondering when the pharmacy closes? Just ask: “Alexa, what are the hours for a nearby pharmacy?”

One thing the Echo can do that most other things can’t though is order your Halloween candy. All users need to do is ask Alexa to “order Halloween candy,” or “order Halloween chocolate” for you and Echo will go off and do just that from your linked Amazon account on the device. Users can opt in or out of that particular feature if they’re concerned about kids placing orders for example, but we do like the idea itself.

(Source: Amazon)