My Echo in its New Home, My Island Don't you just love new tech? For Hanukkah, on the fifth night, I asked for, and received, the Amazon Echo from my hubby. What is it? In a nutshell, you can give voice commands to the Echo from anywhere in the room and it listens and obeys. It can add items to a shopping list and to do list. It can add things to your Amazon cart. It can report the weather, or what's on your Google calendar. It can answer questions about common facts and math equations. It doesn't wash your dishes or put your kids to bed. But I have a hunch there's someone at Amazon headquarters working on it. Here's an example of why this thing is so cool: While I was washing dishes last night, everyone left for frozen yogurt. So, while hands still soapy, I asked Echo to turn on my favorite playlist. ( "Alexa, play my Pandora playlist." ) She did. I asked her to turn up the volume. And then I had her skip a song. All while doing the dishes....