Alexa gets smarter

Most retailers should be familiar with Alexa, Amazon's digital assistant that works through the company's Echo wireless speaker. Until recently Alexa could order product based upon a spoken command as long as it was something that you had previously ordered. While this was powerful Amazon has a larger goal in mind. This past week saw Amazon announce that Alexa now has more than 1,400 'skills', applications that Alexa is integrated to. For example, you can order an Uber simply by speaking to Alexa or organize a new playlist of songs from your music library.