Amazon’s Alexa will keep you up to date with the UK election

It's general election week, and politicians have only four days left to curry favour before we fill those ballot boxes on June 8th. Between work and everything else, staying on top of the week's developments can be a tall order, so Amazon's tasked Alexa with keeping you informed while you're busy cooking dinner and cleaning up after the kids. You can now bark various commands at your Echo devices (or any other Alexa prison) to catch up on latest news, including "what's the latest with the election/the Conservatives/Theresa May?"

You can also surface other info with phrases such as "what is the polling like?" and "who is the leader of X party?" Alexa will tell you about upcoming debates and where to watch them, and keep you up to date as the results are announced in response to questions such as "how many seats do the Liberal Democrats have?" To be clear, this isn't a skill you need to add, so striking up a conversation with Alexa is all you need to do.

There are plenty of other ways to listen and join in with the discussion, too -- some of which you may have come across already. Facebook has a dedicated general election section you'll find in your explore tab, containing links to party pages and a policy comparison tool. Twitter power user software Tweetdeck has added a special general election column type for keeping up with relevant news and/or chatter about specific parties and politicians. And if you take a look at your Google Calendar, it'll prompt you to set a reminder to vote on June 8th, just in case you get too caught up in those TPS reports and almost forget to hit the nearest polling station.