Did you recently buy a Google Home or Amazon Echo device? Or maybe someone gifted one to you recently. Besides the fun that comes with having a digital assistant reading the weather and news while you sip your first coffee of the day, there are lots of great apps that can expand the way Alexa and Google Assistant work in your home.

Alexa has a number of built in abilities. The digital assistant can control smart home devices including smart lights and connected locks, can run basic activities such as find movies and set an alarm, and can also link to your Amazon account to add to shopping lists, and play music through Amazon accounts.

Alexa also has a way to expand its features through Alexa Skills, which are mini-programs that are downloaded to your Alexa account and can help you find up a cocktail recipe, pull up WebMD or even play math games. (You can even build your own.)

Google Assistant works similarly to Alexa in that there are a number of things the voice assistant can do —including tapping into Google's search engine. But you can also add small programs, apps and routines to the Google Assistant account to help it create a bedtime routine, order pizza or look up songs.

We're going to run through some of these Skills and routines on our next Facebook Live, as well as show you how to download them yourself, linking them to your Alexa or Google account.

So join us Tuesday, November 27 at 2 pm ET on GearBrain's Facebook page for our live demo of Alexa and Google Assistant. Plug your smart speaker in and you can download some of these during our demo, and ask us questions at the same time.

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