Amazon Alexa for Residential will let the voice assistant power apartment complexes

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon on Thursday announced Alexa for Residential, a new program designed to make it easier for landlords and property managers to add Alexa devices to rental units to create smart apartments (smarpartments? smartments?). The company is billing it as a service “that makes having an Alexa-enabled home accessible for anyone, regardless of whether they rent or own their home.” Property managers can provide “custom voice experiences for their residents,” and no account or device setup is required. You don’t even need an Amazon account. But if you do have one, you can “easily link it to access the full range of Alexa features, including the ability to call friends and family” and link to your music playlists. “It will all just work,” the... Continue reading…