If your Amazon Echo Alexa skill is not working, this may be why Alexa is not working for you, for example your Alexa news briefing not working. And especially if the symptom is Alexa responding “unable to play”. Using the NPR news briefing skill as an example, if you say “Alexa play NPR” (or “Alexa news” if you have the NPR skill set up that way), your Echo Alexa responds “unable to play NPR” instead of playing it as it has always done for years. If that is the issue you are having (whether with the NPR skill or any other skill) read on.

Usually we are writing about how to add or enable new skills and party tricks for Alexa to show off with your Amazon Echo. However, it may be that you want to remove skills from your Alexa’s list of skills, and don’t want to have to go through the agonizing 4-step process required through the Alexa app in order to disable each and every skill.

Amazon has just announced that Alexa can now use custom created skills – meaning skills created by you. Not only that, the Amazon Echo team has made it super easy for you to create those Alexa skills by launching Alexa Skill Blueprints (‘Alexa Blueprints’ for short). Alexa Blueprints are fill-in-the-blank templates that you edit online, in your Amazon account, which, once saved, you access through your Echo. It all sounds so peachy keen. But there’s a gotcha.

It has been exactly a year since we first unboxed and reviewed the Amazon Echo, and Siri’s cousin, Alexa. In that year, Alexa has learned many new tricks (mostly through having acquired new “skills”), as well as having a baby (Amazon Dot) and a low-energy clone (Amazon Tap). Here are some of the new tricks that Alexa has learned in the past year.