Possibly the coolest thing about the Echo is developing your own skill. If you're comfortable with JavaScript (or, I believe, python or Java) you can really qu

Possibly the coolest thing about the Echo is developing your own skill. If you're comfortable with JavaScript (or, I believe, python or Java) you can really quickly put together a skill, which in development mode only you can use. Their example templates are really clear. So a lot of this would be easy to set up, if you're willing to do a bit of below-IFTTT type programming. And, since it uses AWS Lambda, your usage is almost certainly going to stay in the free usage zone (you get a comparative ton of compute time for free each month with Lambda). I'm sure Google has, or will soon have, such a development environment for their device as well.