NEWS
Alexa Skills Challenge Offers $250,000 in Prizes for the Best Life Hack Skills
Amazon has announced the next contest for Alexa devs, and it's loaded with potential payouts. Everyone wins something in this Challenge. Let's go!
Amazon is hiring more developers for Alexa than Google is for all its businesses | Gadgets Now
The number of open positions at Amazon, related to Alexa, is stunning. Would you interpret that as commitment, the logical pursuit of opportunity by them? They are a well-managed outfit, this is not random.
INSIGHT
The Voice Musings #1: Designing For Voice When Alexa Doesn’t Understand
Need to find a perspective on VUI design that can help you move ahead? This article could help. 8 min read.
CODE
Python skill template from the Alexa team | GitHub
The Alexa team added sample skills in C# and Python recently. Both are languages supported by Lambda. Will they ship Go next? See all the repos at https://github.com/alexa
Alexa Skill showing how to build a Flash Briefing Skill using Node.js | GitHub
Here is a repo with step-by-step instructions for building a Flash Briefing Skill. If you've never shipped a Flash Briefing - this will help you tick that box.
TOOLS
Storyline - the easiest way to create an Amazon Alexa skill without coding
Tools for the non-developer developer.
Jovo: Build Alexa Skills and Google Actions
Build for Alexa and Google Home with one framework. This might be a timesaver for some. If you use it, I'd love to know what you think of it. Drop me a note: marktc+alexa@gmail.com.
CONTROL THIS
Alexa, How Are My Cloud Providers Doing Today? | InfoWorld
I suspect there are far more internal-only skills used by corporations for this sort of casual dashboarding than we know. How would we know after all? Regardless, it's a logical, if not simple, use of Alexa.
ONE MORE THING...
Developer Avra Jain will list impeccably-designed Venetian Islands home for $8.95M - Curbed Miami
$8.9M luxury home hits the market and a selling point is that it's Alexa ready. It better be!
COMMENT
Welcome to ASK Dev Weekly Issue #56. I'm thrilled to restart the publication for you. I hope it brings you tips and insights that are useful. That's the intention! It would be super to hear from you when you find something you think would be worth sharing. You can reach me with tips or to chat about Alexa topics here: marktc+alexa@gmail.com.
Mark Carpenter