BardTech

The post More Alexa ‘blueprints’ arrive, offering customizable voice apps for families and roommates appeared first on BardTech . Earlier this year, Amazon rolled out a new feature that allowed Alexa device owners to create their own custom skills using preconfigured templates. Today, Amazon is expanding Alexa Blueprints, as the service is called, to include a handful of new templates designed for families and roommates. These include a chore chart template, a house rules template for roommates, and others. The Chore Chart template allows families to schedule and track children’s weekly chores, and even lets multiple kids (or anyone, really) compete to see who has done the most. Parents first configure the skill with a list of weekly chores and who those chores are assigned to. Throughout the week, the kids can log their completed chores by asking Alexa. (“Alexa, ask Chore Chart to log a chore.”). Anyone can then check the progress by asking for the “Chore Score.” Another bluep...

The post Lyft is offering reduced and free rides on election day appeared first on BardTech . Lyft is going to offer half-priced and free rides to polling places around the country on Election Day (November 6). The ride-hailing giant said that it’s going to give out 50 percent off promotional codes to partners that encourage voter turnout. The company has linked up with Vote.org , Nonprofit VOTE , TurboVote and others to help distribute the codes to anyone who needs them. On the day of the election the company said it will also provide a product integration that will help voters find their polling places to make it even easier to cast their ballot. This non-partisan effort to get people to the polls is only becoming more critical. Election officials in one county in Georgia have proposed closing 7 of 9 polling places because they’re not sufficiently accessible for handicapped voters. Having Lyft available to help those voters who would be impacted by the closures (some of who...