Gadgetory

amazon has a new way for Alexa to play with your kids the smart assistant now has a kid-friendly mode there's also new kid content and Amazon's even selling a special kid version of the echo dot so there are a few layers to what Amazon is doing here but to put it simply if you already have an echo speaker you can have it be more kid-friendly for free by adding a feature called free time there are parenting controls to lock it off when it's time to stop playing all done for now we can play again later it also has tighter data privacy protections and Alexa is designed to talk to kids differently for example if it hears the word please it will respond with thanks for asking so nicely or it'll wake you up with cutesy talk about how it's time to eat something that's yummy in your tummy it also is packed with more cheesy dad jokes Alexa tell me a dinosaur Jo let's have plain weird but true let's play you can take it a step further by adding extra kids content to the echo it's gonna cost an extra three dollars a month for Prime members it has access to children's audio books custom radio stations and playlists and special skills for interactive Disney stories and Nickelodeon games and kids can also set wake up alarms featuring voices from their favorite Disney or Nickelodeon characters but if you want it all in a nice little package there is a new echo dot peas edition and that's gonna cost eighty dollars it's about thirty bucks more than the normal echo dot because this comes with a colorful rubber protective bumper and two year warranty so if your kid throws it down the stairs well no questions asked it will be replaced and this is similar to what Amazon does for its kid version of the tablet it also comes with a year of access to all that extra kid's content and games that I talked about kids already talked to their family echoes so what do you think of Amazon's new features focused on kids sound off in the comments I'm Bridget Carey and you can find more details on the echo dot kids edition at cnet.com