Amazon’s Echo speaker can now read you movie times and live NFL scores

Another week, another remarkably useful Amazon Echo update. This time around, Amazon is giving its voice-powered Alexa assistant, which powers the Echo speaker, the ability to read off movie times and NFL scores. Alexa will even fetch updates to live games, so you’ll be able to ask it the status of Sunday’s conference championship match-ups, and offer up its own predictions if you ask it something like, “Alexa, who will win the Super Bowl?” For movies, you can use phrases like, “Alexa, when is Spotlight playing on Friday?” for schedules or, “Alexa, tell me about The Revenant,” for a film description.

Amazon has been on quite the roll with Echo updates of late, adding the ability to play Jeopardy with Alexa earlier this month and then pushing out a Kindle ebook dictation feature the week after. The company’s long-term play for Alexa and the Echo is turn the pair into a low-key voice-powered smart home hub that easily connects with other companies’ appliances. Of course, it’s most useful function — to Amazon at least — is helping you order more stuff from Amazon.com.