How to chat with Amazon's virtual assistant Alexa -- even without an Echo (AMZN)

Amazon You don’t have to buy the hardware to appreciate the software — not when it comes to Amazon’s Alexa. The popular virtual assistant is one of the major selling points of the Amazon Echo and its growing smart home ecosystem, but now, you can enjoy Alexa a la carte as well. Or rather, in your browser. It’s all thanks to a new web app you can access at echosim.io, and it lets you talk to Alexa directly from your Chrome, Firefox, or browser of choice. As Amazon tells it, the web app be...