Podcast appearances and mentions of alexa voice service

Damian Mehers shares the story of his app Voice in a Can from inception to shutdown. We talk customer stories and the future of voice assistants.GuestDamian Mehers' blog | Swift, SwiftUI and .NET from SwitzerlandDamian Mehers (@dmehers@fosstodon.org) - FosstodonDamian Mehers (@DamianMehers) / XDamian Mehers - YouTubeDamianMehers (Github)Damian Mehers | LinkedInAnnouncementsCome see me at Server-Side Swift Conference. 26th-27th September 2024. London, UKuse EMPOWERAPPS to get 15% offNeed help with your projects this year? BrightDigit has openings.Join Bushel BetaJoin our Brand New Patreon Page!LinksEnd of life for Voice in a CanAlexa Presentation LanguageZX81 - WikipediaRelated EpisodesPlinky with Joe FabisevichTriple Glazed Apple Development with Malin Sundberg and Kai DombrowskiPixelBlitz in Public with Martin LasekThe Making of Callsheet with Casey LissPosture Island with Jordi BruinRevisiting Third-Party APIs with Christian SeligSocial MediaEmailleo@brightdigit.comGitHub - @brightdigitTwitter BrightDigit - @brightdigitLeo - @leogdionLinkedInBrightDigitLeoPatreon - brightdigitCreditsMusic from https://filmmusic.io"Blippy Trance" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) (00:00) - What is Voice in a Can? (11:46) - Working with the Alexa Voice Service (16:25) - Customer Stories and Shutting Down (21:21) - Future of Voice Assistants Thanks to our monthly supporters Bertram Eber Edward Sanchez Satoshi Mitsumori Danielle Lewis Steven Lipton ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Xi Liu is the founder and CEO of Ferne Health, a women-focused healthcare insights platform that delivers at-home screenings and consultations for sexual health. Xi started Ferne Health to challenge the stigma around women's private health concerns in Asia.  Xi was a product manager at the Alexa Voice Service team of Amazon prior to starting Ferne. Working closely with the industry giants such as Lenovo and Facebook, her team was to design and deliver Alexa voice assistant's integration experience in third-party electronic products. They successfully launched the Lenovo Smart tab and Facebook Portal, both showcased in CES. Before Amazon, she worked in the Photoshop team at Adobe, building Photoshop Mobile experience and exploring integration with new hardware input modalities such as Apple touch bar or Microsoft dial. Xi graduated with a Master's degree in Integrated Innovative Products and Services (Miips) from Carnegie Mellon University, an interdisciplinary program hosted by the business, engineering, and design school to train the next generation of innovators and disruptors. She had her bachelor's degree in Game Design and Engineering from the Communication University of China. Show notes at: https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/xi-liu You can find the community discussion for this episode at: https://club.jeremyau.com/c/podcasts/xi-liu This episode is produced by Kyle Ong.

ST is launching its Alexa Voice Service for AWS IoT refrence design. It's also the first single-chip design of its kind for greater efficiency and accessibility. This is the audio version of a blog post. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/stmicroelectronics-blog/message

We share Mozilla's concerns over Contract for the Web, and try out Kali Linux's new tricks. Also, our thoughts on the new Alexa Voice service coming to low-end IoT devices, and much more.

We share Mozilla's concerns over Contract for the Web, and try out Kali Linux's new tricks. Also, our thoughts on the new Alexa Voice service coming to low-end IoT devices, and much more.

We share Mozilla's concerns over Contract for the Web, and try out Kali Linux's new tricks. Also, our thoughts on the new Alexa Voice service coming to low-end IoT devices, and much more.

Dave Isbitski, Chief Evangelist, Amazon Alexa, on the power of Alexa for marketing, part 1 of 2.Dave and Emily talked about why voice is a departure from previous technology (leaving Tap, Type, & Swipe - entering Voice First) and how you can harness Alexa to learn more about your customers. Plus: how you can use voice as the ultimate frictionless up-sell. Full show notes and web player hereWe also answered a top question among marketers: how do you overcome discoverability challenges with early voice to get your Alexa skill found? Friendly reminder: please mute your Alexa device before listening.1-Click listen in your favorite podcast appSHOW NOTES:2:05: Dave has worked in web and mobile for decades: what is different about voice?3:40- “Voice cuts across all industries. From finance to CPG…” You’ll see people talking about voice in finance, then doctors and healthcare professionals about what does voice mean for patient care? And you’ll see others ask what does it mean for shopping and pay? Brand ask what it means for them and customer?3:32 “Every technology I’ve ever talked about has always had training, we had to teach customers how to do this first before they can tell us what they want.” - DaveDave Isbitksi, Chief Evangelist, Alexa - Amazon4:00 There is no learning curve with voice: it’s natural for everyone to speak5:54 Inclusivity:It’s not about how well you can code, it’s about how well you can converse (Dave mentioned this in his keynote at VOICE Summit 2019)7:10 The marketer’s bottleneck with IT - this is less a problem with voice (Emily)7:50 Ruder Finn / PR Week event where Dave made a point about organizational education about voice - how it’s not really new but is easier:8:30 “There must be a doc somewhere in your organization that can help you with voice” - a group is still responsible for teaching new tech (like with cloud) but getting people up to speed now is much easier9:40 Alexa can learn easily - these are just restful web services passing JSON across SSL request - which we are already doing on mobile. It calls the same API. The magic is that Alexa is taking normal human language and figuring out which function to call, vs you hitting a button or tapping a screen to trigger that call.10:25 Alexa stands on the shoulders of all the tech waves that came before11:00 Let's have a discussion about your customer who engages not in a silo but on phones, tablets, social, and other on-ramps11:10 Alexa Skills Kit enables you to teach Alexa how to have a conversation about things. “Set up parameters of a conversation our customers have with us.”11:45 Alexa Voice Service is why you see Alexa in cars, radio services, Windows desktop, and other mobile devices12:30 Upsell- with voice, this is the moment where your customer essentially already has their money out (movie theatre popcorn and Coke analogy). They’re already logged in. Brands can use their own POS like Domino’s does, or Amazon Pay - so it’s just very simple and natural in the moment to get an additional sale13:00 The real difference with voice is being in the moment. We process sounds differently than other senses - it is in real time14:00 Carl Jung reference - the subconscious collects 11 million but we can only process about 40 things in our conscious despite thousands of inputs coming into our brains at all times16:00 Four years ago, Dave said "Get in early now to figure out what people are asking or saying"16:42 Discoverability: how can marketers get their Alexa skills found?17:00 When you first launched your brand's mobile app what did you do, just submit it to the App Store or Google Play? No! Let customers know it's there and why it's faster or better.17:20 Banking app example - when it went mobile customers would choose that bank for its ease of use17:50 MyFitnessPal Alexa skill - track calories by voice (Dave found out about it through another marketing message on the mobile app)18:40 Remember that customers are multimodal - silo launches don’t work19:00 If you already know the top three things your customers do on your mobile app (via analytics), those are your three functionalities to start with in voice20:00 Reviews - flywheel of customer feedback on Alexa skills for usability studiesListen anywhere: Subscribe free to this podcast See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

For almost three years I've been making Data Driven Daily Tips, useful pieces of information for Small Business Owners and Small Marketing Teams to learn Web Design and Development, Digital Marketing, Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Blogging, Content Creation, Instagram Growth Strategies and more. There are almost 300 "DDD Tips" now, and they've taken many forms. Originally shot on Instagram Stories and saved down and uploaded to YouTube, and reposted in blog form on the website with written transcriptions, the "tip" has now evolved into a simulcast YouTube Video and Podcast with audio ripped down and published via Anchor.fm. The YouTube video now is post edited into IGTV format requirements to ensure omnipresence on all socials, including LinkedIn, Facebook and Medium.com This latest version of the "tip" is a first. It's our first with a guest. And this guest is an important one, so we took about 45 minutes together via Zoom Conference. Myself from my office in Valencia, Spain, and Dave Isbitski, Chief Evangelist for Alexa at Amazon and Alexa Marketing Employee #1, I assume from his office in Seattle. Here are the main highlights of our conversation: On helping brands figure out "what does this all mean?" - "Alexa is not a smart speaker revolution, it's about connecting with your customers." Talking about what it's like to help build a community of Alexa Developers via the Alexa Developers Console and the Alexa Skills Kit. Also, the Alexa Voice Service. - Alexa Voice Service is where you put Alexa into things. This can be done with Windows machines, Sonos speakers, Cars, Headphones, Homes, etc. So Alexa Voice Service basically extends the amount of Alexa-enabled devices that exist. Right now, I think of Echos and Echo Dots as Alexa-enabled devices. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/paulhickey/support

Mark Lippett joined XMOS in 2006 as VP of Engineering and was later promoted to COO and then CEO about three years ago. XMOS is a fabless semiconductor company with a particular emphasis on IP and products for far-field voice recognition. The company claims to be the first Alexa Voice Service certified solution for linear mic arrays and is used in devices ranging from smart speakers Orange Djingo and Deutsche Telekom Magenta to the Freebox Delta streaming media player. Before XMOS, Mark was CTO and co-founder of silicon IP and embedded software provider Ignios. Earlier in his career, he was a network systems engineer at Texas Instruments. Mark earned an MBA from Henley Management College and a Masters in Engineering for Electronic and Electrical Engineering at the University of Surrey. 

In this episode, Teri welcomes Jeff Adams, CEO of Cobalt Speech & Language, and often labelled “The Alexa Inventor”, to discuss how Amazon created the Alexa Voice Service.Welcome Jeff Adams!Jeff Adams has been involved with speech technology in one way or another for over 24 years. He got his start by working for a small speech-technology company in Boston, and through a series of acquisitions, ended up working at Nuance, the company behind the successful speech-recognition app Dragon. He left Nuance in 2009 to join a voice-message transcription start-up. That was a turning point. The start-up got Amazon’s attention when they found out the start-up’s technology could match the accuracy of human transcribers. Amazon acquired them and and put them to work on what would become Alexa.How do you feel about Jeff Adams being labeled Alexa’s creator?Amazon already had a vision for what they wanted.Jeff says he did not invent Alexa. When Amazon got him and his team to Seattle, they explained, behind closed doors and in quiet voices, the ideas behind what would become the Echo. Amazon already had a vision for what they wanted.Jeff’s first response was, “This is not possible”. According to him, the technology just wasn’t far along enough to allow it. At that time, the Echo’s speaker only worked if you were no more than 5 feet away from it. Amazon wanted it to work across a room. The main problem was that as we speak our voices are carried through different paths; it rarely follow a direct line. It bounces off walls and screens, and basically any surface reverberates and then reaches the other person, or in this case, the speaker. Jeff points out that, unlike machines, our brains are naturally good at picking up and merging all these signals into a coherent sound.Jeff and his team apologized to Amazon, letting them know that they had wasted their money acquiring the start-up. But Amazon persisted and wanted the team to continue trying. The team working on project Doppler, the Echo’s code-name, quickly grew to around 60 people with talent from all over the world. The project ended up taking three years instead of one.Jeff recounts how Amazon had a house set up to test it. They would invite people to try it out, while the Echo laid safely hidden behind a screen. There were no mentions of Amazon or the Echo, and people were not told what the recordings of their voices would be used for, adding to the secrecy, and excitement, of the future product.Why did you decide to leave Amazon?Jeff says it was nothing personal. He loved everyone in the Alexa team. It was a matter of logistics. It was a two-hour commute from where he lived, in and out of Boston. Jeff also says he was managing teams in Germany, California and England, so he was constantly on the road. He could not keep it up for that long. It was too much of a drain. He left one week after the Echo launched.With his new company, Jeff says, he hopes to help companies that do not have an astronomical budget but that still want to experiment with voice and speech technology. He started Cobalt in 2014 and they are now a team of more than 30 scientists and engineers helping deliver speech and voice solutions to up-and-coming companies.List of resources mentioned in this episode:Cobalt Speech’s websiteVoice in Canada: The Flash BriefingTeri Fisher on TwitterAlexa in Canada on TwitterAlexa in Canada Facebook PageAlexa in Canada Community Group on FacebookAlexa in Canada on InstagramPlease leave a review on iTunesShopping on Amazon.caThe Alexa Conference, presented by VoiceFirst.FMuse promo code ALEXAINCANADA for 20% off See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Ob Alexa oder Google, smart Speaker sind momentan hoch im Kurs. Apple steigt mit dem HomePod etwas verspätet ein und der Sonos One hat den Alexa Voice Service integriert. Wir gehen der Frage nach, welche Vor- und Nachteile intelligente Lautsprecher haben und für wen sie sich eignen.

In this session, we'll teach you how to use the Alexa Voice Service (AVS) and its suite of development tools to bring your first Alexa-enabled product to market. You'll learn how commercial device manufacturers are getting to market faster using the new AVS Device SDK. To ensure your customers have the best voice experience, we'll teach you how to choose an Audio Front End and client-side hardware from a range of commercial-grade Development Kits. You'll walk out of this session with the knowledge required to design products with optimized Alexa-enabled voice experiences around your unique design requirements.

In this advanced session, learn how to build Alexa-enabled devices that combine voice and visual responses in a meaningful way for consumers. The session covers the design methods and the hardware and software development resources for interactive multi-modal design. We also present some examples of products that are leading with such implementations.

Anything But Fruit is a Technology News Podcast. Jack & Luke are big fans of a large, fruit-based company - but they’ve challenged themselves to explore the wider technology world.    In Anything But Fruit, Jack & Luke talk through the week’s news.   Join Jack & Luke as they talk new products from Sonos & Ultimate Ears and discuss the omni-presence of Amazon’s Alexa Voice Service on these products. (13.16)   They also explore Fitbit’s foray into smart watch technology - their first product since purchasing the original innovators - Pebble. (35.58)   And finally, on “You Should Try This”, Jack reintroduces Luke to a beloved app... They talk task management, and Luke gets a little bit too excited... (52.16)   Thanks so much for listening! We’d love to hear from you @JackCully & @LukeWilson_95 on Twitter.    Want to hear from us every week? Hit that big ol’ subscribe button. And if you have more than a spare moment, we’d really appreciate it if you rate, below.  

JSJ 274 Amazon Voice Services and Echo Skills with Terrance Smith On today’s episode of JavaScript Jabber, we have panelists Joe Eames, Aimee Knight, Charles Max Wood, and we have special guest Terrance Smith. He’s here today to talk about the Amazon Alexa platform. So tune in and learn more about Amazon Voice Services! [01:00] – Introduction to Terrance Smith Terrance is from Hacker Ferrer Software. They hack love into software. [01:30] – Amazon Voice Service What I’m working on is called My CareTaker named probably pending change. What it will do and what it is doing will be to help you be there as a caretaker’s aid for the person in your life. If you have to take care an older parent, My CareTaker will be there in your place if you have to work that day. It will be your liaison to that person. Your mom and dad can talk to My CareTaker and My CareTaker could signal you via SMS or email message or tweet, anything on your usage dashboard, and you would be able to respond. It’s there when you’re not. [04:35] – Capabilities Getting started with it, there are different layers. The first layer is the Skills Kit for generally getting into the Amazon IoT. It has a limited subset of the functionality. You can give commands. The device parses them, sends them to Amazon’s endpoint, Amazon sends a call back to your API endpoint, and you can do whatever you want. That is the first level. You can make it do things like turn on your light switch, start your car, change your thermostat, or make an API call to some website somewhere to do anything. [05:50] – Skills Kit Skills Kit is different with AVS. Skills Kit, you can install it on any device. You’re spinning up a web service and register it on Amazon’s website. As long as you have an endpoint, you can register, say, the Amazon Web Services Lambda. Start that up and do something. The Skills Kit is literally the web endpoint response. Amazon Voice Services is a bit more in-depth. [07:00] – Steps for programming With the Skills Kit, you register what would be your utterance, your skill name, and you would give it a couple of sets of phrases to accept. Say, you have a skill that can start a car, your skill is “Car Starter.” “Alexa tell Car Starter to start the car.” At which point, your web service will be notified that that is the utterance. It literally has a case statement. You can have any number of individual conditional branches outside of that. The limitation for the Skills Kit is you have to have the “tell” or “ask” and the name of the skill to do whatever. It’s also going to be publicly accessible. For the most part, it’s literally a web service. [10:55] – Boilerplates for AWS Lambda Boilerplates can be used if you want to develop for production. If you publish a skill, you get free AVS instance time. You can host your skill for free for some amount of time. There are GUI tools to make it easier but if you’re a developer, you’re probably going to do the spin up a web service and deal it that way. [11:45] – Do you have to have an Amazon Echo? At one point, you have to have the Echo but now there is this called Echoism, which allows you to run it in your browser. In addition to that, you can potentially install it on a device like a Raspberry Pi and run Amazon Voice Services. The actual engine is on your PC, Mac, or Linux box. You have different options. [12:35] – Machine learning There are certain things that Amazon Alexa understand now that it did last year or time before that like understanding utterances and phrases better. A lot of the machine learning is definitely under the covers. The other portion of it Alexa Voice Service, which is a whole engine that you have untethered access to other portions like how to handle responses. That’s where you can build a custom device and take it apart. So the API that we’re working with here is just using JSON and HTTP. [16:40] – Amazon Echo Show You have that full real-time back and forth communication ability but there is no video streaming or video processing ability yet. You can utilize the engine in such a way that Amazon Voice Services can work with your existing tool language. If you have a Raspberry Pi and you have a camera to it, you can potentially work within that. But again, the official API’s and docs for that are not available yet. [27:20] – Challenges There’s an appliance in this house that listens to everything I say. There’s that natural inclination to not trust it, especially with the older generations. Giving past that is getting people to use the device. Some of the programming sides of it are getting the communication to work, doing something that Alexa isn’t pre-programmed to do. There isn’t a lot of documentation out there, just a couple of examples. The original examples are written in Java and trying to convert it to Node or JavaScript would be some of the technical challenges. In addition, getting it installed and setup takes at least an hour at the beginning. There’s also a learning curve involved. [29:35] – Is your product layered in an Echo or is your product a separate device? Terrance’s product is a completely separate device. One of the functionality of his program is medicine reminders. It can only respond to whatever the API calls from Amazon tells you to respond to but it can’t do anything like send something back. It can do an immediate audio response with a picture or turn on and off a light switch. But it can’t send a message back in like two hours from now. You do want your Alexa device to have (verbally) a list of notifications like on your phone. TLDR, Terrance can go a little further with just the Skills Kit. [32:00] – Could you set it up through a web server? Yes. There are examples out there. There’s Alexa in the browser. You can open up a browser and communicate with that. There are examples of it being installed like an app. You can deploy it to your existing iPhone app or Android app and have it interact that way. Or you can have it interact independently on a completely different device like a Raspberry Pi. But not a lot of folks are using it that way. [33:10] – Monetization Amazon isn’t changing anything in terms of monetization. They make discovery a lot easier though. If you knew the name of the app, you could just say, “Alexa, [tell the name of the app].” It will do a lazy load of the actual skill and it will add it to your available skill’s list. However, there is something called the Alexa Fund, which is kind of a startup fund that they have, which you can apply for. If you’re doing something interesting, there is a number of things you have to do. Ideally, you can get funding for whatever your product is. It is an available avenue for you. [36:25] – More information, documentation, walkthroughs The number one place to go to as far as getting started is the Amazon websites. They have the Conexant 4-Mic Far-Field Dev Kit. It has 4 mics and it has already a lot of what you need. You have to boot it up and/or SSH into it or plug it up and code it. They have a couple of these kits for $300 to $400. It’s one of the safe and simpler options. There are also directions for the AVS sites which is under Alexa Voice Services, where you can go to the Github from there. There will give you directions using the Raspberry Pi.  If not that, there’s also the Slack chatroom. It is alexaslack.com. Travis Teague is the guy in charge in there. Picks Joe Eames Cosmic Engineers by Clifford D. Simak Aimee Knight Conference: React Rally Pancakes Charles Max Wood Conference: Angular Dev Summit Conference: React Dev Summit JavaScript Jabber Slack Terrance Smith Language: Elm Youtube channel: The School of Life Game: Night in the Woods Hacker Ferret Software Hackerferret.com

JSJ 274 Amazon Voice Services and Echo Skills with Terrance Smith On today’s episode of JavaScript Jabber, we have panelists Joe Eames, Aimee Knight, Charles Max Wood, and we have special guest Terrance Smith. He’s here today to talk about the Amazon Alexa platform. So tune in and learn more about Amazon Voice Services! [01:00] – Introduction to Terrance Smith Terrance is from Hacker Ferrer Software. They hack love into software. [01:30] – Amazon Voice Service What I’m working on is called My CareTaker named probably pending change. What it will do and what it is doing will be to help you be there as a caretaker’s aid for the person in your life. If you have to take care an older parent, My CareTaker will be there in your place if you have to work that day. It will be your liaison to that person. Your mom and dad can talk to My CareTaker and My CareTaker could signal you via SMS or email message or tweet, anything on your usage dashboard, and you would be able to respond. It’s there when you’re not. [04:35] – Capabilities Getting started with it, there are different layers. The first layer is the Skills Kit for generally getting into the Amazon IoT. It has a limited subset of the functionality. You can give commands. The device parses them, sends them to Amazon’s endpoint, Amazon sends a call back to your API endpoint, and you can do whatever you want. That is the first level. You can make it do things like turn on your light switch, start your car, change your thermostat, or make an API call to some website somewhere to do anything. [05:50] – Skills Kit Skills Kit is different with AVS. Skills Kit, you can install it on any device. You’re spinning up a web service and register it on Amazon’s website. As long as you have an endpoint, you can register, say, the Amazon Web Services Lambda. Start that up and do something. The Skills Kit is literally the web endpoint response. Amazon Voice Services is a bit more in-depth. [07:00] – Steps for programming With the Skills Kit, you register what would be your utterance, your skill name, and you would give it a couple of sets of phrases to accept. Say, you have a skill that can start a car, your skill is “Car Starter.” “Alexa tell Car Starter to start the car.” At which point, your web service will be notified that that is the utterance. It literally has a case statement. You can have any number of individual conditional branches outside of that. The limitation for the Skills Kit is you have to have the “tell” or “ask” and the name of the skill to do whatever. It’s also going to be publicly accessible. For the most part, it’s literally a web service. [10:55] – Boilerplates for AWS Lambda Boilerplates can be used if you want to develop for production. If you publish a skill, you get free AVS instance time. You can host your skill for free for some amount of time. There are GUI tools to make it easier but if you’re a developer, you’re probably going to do the spin up a web service and deal it that way. [11:45] – Do you have to have an Amazon Echo? At one point, you have to have the Echo but now there is this called Echoism, which allows you to run it in your browser. In addition to that, you can potentially install it on a device like a Raspberry Pi and run Amazon Voice Services. The actual engine is on your PC, Mac, or Linux box. You have different options. [12:35] – Machine learning There are certain things that Amazon Alexa understand now that it did last year or time before that like understanding utterances and phrases better. A lot of the machine learning is definitely under the covers. The other portion of it Alexa Voice Service, which is a whole engine that you have untethered access to other portions like how to handle responses. That’s where you can build a custom device and take it apart. So the API that we’re working with here is just using JSON and HTTP. [16:40] – Amazon Echo Show You have that full real-time back and forth communication ability but there is no video streaming or video processing ability yet. You can utilize the engine in such a way that Amazon Voice Services can work with your existing tool language. If you have a Raspberry Pi and you have a camera to it, you can potentially work within that. But again, the official API’s and docs for that are not available yet. [27:20] – Challenges There’s an appliance in this house that listens to everything I say. There’s that natural inclination to not trust it, especially with the older generations. Giving past that is getting people to use the device. Some of the programming sides of it are getting the communication to work, doing something that Alexa isn’t pre-programmed to do. There isn’t a lot of documentation out there, just a couple of examples. The original examples are written in Java and trying to convert it to Node or JavaScript would be some of the technical challenges. In addition, getting it installed and setup takes at least an hour at the beginning. There’s also a learning curve involved. [29:35] – Is your product layered in an Echo or is your product a separate device? Terrance’s product is a completely separate device. One of the functionality of his program is medicine reminders. It can only respond to whatever the API calls from Amazon tells you to respond to but it can’t do anything like send something back. It can do an immediate audio response with a picture or turn on and off a light switch. But it can’t send a message back in like two hours from now. You do want your Alexa device to have (verbally) a list of notifications like on your phone. TLDR, Terrance can go a little further with just the Skills Kit. [32:00] – Could you set it up through a web server? Yes. There are examples out there. There’s Alexa in the browser. You can open up a browser and communicate with that. There are examples of it being installed like an app. You can deploy it to your existing iPhone app or Android app and have it interact that way. Or you can have it interact independently on a completely different device like a Raspberry Pi. But not a lot of folks are using it that way. [33:10] – Monetization Amazon isn’t changing anything in terms of monetization. They make discovery a lot easier though. If you knew the name of the app, you could just say, “Alexa, [tell the name of the app].” It will do a lazy load of the actual skill and it will add it to your available skill’s list. However, there is something called the Alexa Fund, which is kind of a startup fund that they have, which you can apply for. If you’re doing something interesting, there is a number of things you have to do. Ideally, you can get funding for whatever your product is. It is an available avenue for you. [36:25] – More information, documentation, walkthroughs The number one place to go to as far as getting started is the Amazon websites. They have the Conexant 4-Mic Far-Field Dev Kit. It has 4 mics and it has already a lot of what you need. You have to boot it up and/or SSH into it or plug it up and code it. They have a couple of these kits for $300 to $400. It’s one of the safe and simpler options. There are also directions for the AVS sites which is under Alexa Voice Services, where you can go to the Github from there. There will give you directions using the Raspberry Pi.  If not that, there’s also the Slack chatroom. It is alexaslack.com. Travis Teague is the guy in charge in there. Picks Joe Eames Cosmic Engineers by Clifford D. Simak Aimee Knight Conference: React Rally Pancakes Charles Max Wood Conference: Angular Dev Summit Conference: React Dev Summit JavaScript Jabber Slack Terrance Smith Language: Elm Youtube channel: The School of Life Game: Night in the Woods Hacker Ferret Software Hackerferret.com

JSJ 274 Amazon Voice Services and Echo Skills with Terrance Smith On today’s episode of JavaScript Jabber, we have panelists Joe Eames, Aimee Knight, Charles Max Wood, and we have special guest Terrance Smith. He’s here today to talk about the Amazon Alexa platform. So tune in and learn more about Amazon Voice Services! [01:00] – Introduction to Terrance Smith Terrance is from Hacker Ferrer Software. They hack love into software. [01:30] – Amazon Voice Service What I’m working on is called My CareTaker named probably pending change. What it will do and what it is doing will be to help you be there as a caretaker’s aid for the person in your life. If you have to take care an older parent, My CareTaker will be there in your place if you have to work that day. It will be your liaison to that person. Your mom and dad can talk to My CareTaker and My CareTaker could signal you via SMS or email message or tweet, anything on your usage dashboard, and you would be able to respond. It’s there when you’re not. [04:35] – Capabilities Getting started with it, there are different layers. The first layer is the Skills Kit for generally getting into the Amazon IoT. It has a limited subset of the functionality. You can give commands. The device parses them, sends them to Amazon’s endpoint, Amazon sends a call back to your API endpoint, and you can do whatever you want. That is the first level. You can make it do things like turn on your light switch, start your car, change your thermostat, or make an API call to some website somewhere to do anything. [05:50] – Skills Kit Skills Kit is different with AVS. Skills Kit, you can install it on any device. You’re spinning up a web service and register it on Amazon’s website. As long as you have an endpoint, you can register, say, the Amazon Web Services Lambda. Start that up and do something. The Skills Kit is literally the web endpoint response. Amazon Voice Services is a bit more in-depth. [07:00] – Steps for programming With the Skills Kit, you register what would be your utterance, your skill name, and you would give it a couple of sets of phrases to accept. Say, you have a skill that can start a car, your skill is “Car Starter.” “Alexa tell Car Starter to start the car.” At which point, your web service will be notified that that is the utterance. It literally has a case statement. You can have any number of individual conditional branches outside of that. The limitation for the Skills Kit is you have to have the “tell” or “ask” and the name of the skill to do whatever. It’s also going to be publicly accessible. For the most part, it’s literally a web service. [10:55] – Boilerplates for AWS Lambda Boilerplates can be used if you want to develop for production. If you publish a skill, you get free AVS instance time. You can host your skill for free for some amount of time. There are GUI tools to make it easier but if you’re a developer, you’re probably going to do the spin up a web service and deal it that way. [11:45] – Do you have to have an Amazon Echo? At one point, you have to have the Echo but now there is this called Echoism, which allows you to run it in your browser. In addition to that, you can potentially install it on a device like a Raspberry Pi and run Amazon Voice Services. The actual engine is on your PC, Mac, or Linux box. You have different options. [12:35] – Machine learning There are certain things that Amazon Alexa understand now that it did last year or time before that like understanding utterances and phrases better. A lot of the machine learning is definitely under the covers. The other portion of it Alexa Voice Service, which is a whole engine that you have untethered access to other portions like how to handle responses. That’s where you can build a custom device and take it apart. So the API that we’re working with here is just using JSON and HTTP. [16:40] – Amazon Echo Show You have that full real-time back and forth communication ability but there is no video streaming or video processing ability yet. You can utilize the engine in such a way that Amazon Voice Services can work with your existing tool language. If you have a Raspberry Pi and you have a camera to it, you can potentially work within that. But again, the official API’s and docs for that are not available yet. [27:20] – Challenges There’s an appliance in this house that listens to everything I say. There’s that natural inclination to not trust it, especially with the older generations. Giving past that is getting people to use the device. Some of the programming sides of it are getting the communication to work, doing something that Alexa isn’t pre-programmed to do. There isn’t a lot of documentation out there, just a couple of examples. The original examples are written in Java and trying to convert it to Node or JavaScript would be some of the technical challenges. In addition, getting it installed and setup takes at least an hour at the beginning. There’s also a learning curve involved. [29:35] – Is your product layered in an Echo or is your product a separate device? Terrance’s product is a completely separate device. One of the functionality of his program is medicine reminders. It can only respond to whatever the API calls from Amazon tells you to respond to but it can’t do anything like send something back. It can do an immediate audio response with a picture or turn on and off a light switch. But it can’t send a message back in like two hours from now. You do want your Alexa device to have (verbally) a list of notifications like on your phone. TLDR, Terrance can go a little further with just the Skills Kit. [32:00] – Could you set it up through a web server? Yes. There are examples out there. There’s Alexa in the browser. You can open up a browser and communicate with that. There are examples of it being installed like an app. You can deploy it to your existing iPhone app or Android app and have it interact that way. Or you can have it interact independently on a completely different device like a Raspberry Pi. But not a lot of folks are using it that way. [33:10] – Monetization Amazon isn’t changing anything in terms of monetization. They make discovery a lot easier though. If you knew the name of the app, you could just say, “Alexa, [tell the name of the app].” It will do a lazy load of the actual skill and it will add it to your available skill’s list. However, there is something called the Alexa Fund, which is kind of a startup fund that they have, which you can apply for. If you’re doing something interesting, there is a number of things you have to do. Ideally, you can get funding for whatever your product is. It is an available avenue for you. [36:25] – More information, documentation, walkthroughs The number one place to go to as far as getting started is the Amazon websites. They have the Conexant 4-Mic Far-Field Dev Kit. It has 4 mics and it has already a lot of what you need. You have to boot it up and/or SSH into it or plug it up and code it. They have a couple of these kits for $300 to $400. It’s one of the safe and simpler options. There are also directions for the AVS sites which is under Alexa Voice Services, where you can go to the Github from there. There will give you directions using the Raspberry Pi.  If not that, there’s also the Slack chatroom. It is alexaslack.com. Travis Teague is the guy in charge in there. Picks Joe Eames Cosmic Engineers by Clifford D. Simak Aimee Knight Conference: React Rally Pancakes Charles Max Wood Conference: Angular Dev Summit Conference: React Dev Summit JavaScript Jabber Slack Terrance Smith Language: Elm Youtube channel: The School of Life Game: Night in the Woods Hacker Ferret Software Hackerferret.com

Spreaker Live Show #109 for April 19th, 2017Our Topics This Week: - New Edison Podcast Research Released- Tip of the Week: Smart Speaker Ownership Trends- Your Feedback and Comments Show Duration: 61 minutesHost: Rob Greenlee, Head of Content, Spreaker @robgreenlee - rob(at)spreaker(dotcom)Co-Host: Alex Exum, Host of “The Exum Experience Podcast” on Spreaker-NAB Show (National Association of Broadcasters) in Las Vegas - April 23-27th-3 Panel sessions at the event about PodcastingIf attending go here: http://nab17.mapyourshow.com/7_0/sessions/speaker-details.cfm?speakerid=11328&CFID=10905211&CFTOKEN=6354487e9be405e6-798EBB82-C583-AC36-DF7F5F1088B66184No SLS Show next Weds- At PodSummit.com in Calgary, Canada on May 6th, 2017- New Edison Podcast Consumer Research 2017 Released this week:Edison Research announced its Podcast Consumer 2017 study recently, revealing survey information from Edison’s two large, long-running studies of American listening, The Infinite Dial and Share of Ear. Edison VP Podcast listener attributes were revealed today, including income, education, and employment data. Podcast listeners over-index in all three of those categories:31% of podcast listeners earn $100k or more, compared to 22% of non-listeners.Podcast listeners under-index for respondents without a college degree, and rank above the U.S. 18+ population for college degrees and some grad school or advanced degree.63% of podcast listeners are employed full-time, compared to 495 of the general population.On the income disparity between podcast users and non-users, the gap is narrowing as more and more mainstream Americans discover the medium.”Respondents who have listened to a podcast in the past week reached 15%, an estimated 42 million. Among those weekly listeners, average time spent listening to podcasts was between 1 and 3 hours for 36%. For 22%, the average time was between 3 and 5 hours. Those weekly listeners were keeping up with an average of five podcasts in the past seven days. The average time spent with the format for weekly podcast listeners is 5 hours, 7 minutes. That crunches out to about an hour per show.Discovery in podcasting is difficult? Discovery is a ‘pull’ to get people to listen to a podcast. Let’s not forget the ‘push.’ When you look at the success of public radio in podcasting, the cross-promotion [from terrestrial radio marketing] is important. The only way to make it big in podcasting, is not just to rely on Pull, but to use an outside agency to become known.”One of the most intriguing slides tracked how long different types of listeners have been tuning in to podcasts. Across all types, between 1 and 3 years was the most common response. But for podcast subscribers, a quarter have been listening for 5 or more years, and 21% have been listening for 3 to 5 years. That shows a surprisingly stalwart contingent of listeners who have been involved from before the current wave of podcast popularity and growth.Concerning program content, “Content is not king. The audience is king”. There are huge underserved audiences for spoken-word media.”The share of Ear study measures time spent with different audio sources, presented in percentage terms. the most recent research that includes breaking out podcast listeners shows how listening to podcasts can displace radio listening:Source: http://rainnews.com/edison-research-unleashes-the-podcast-consumer-2017-survey-data/- Tip of the Week: Smart Speaker Ownership Trends - Siri vs. Alexa vs. Google Home: No Contest?Alexa has literally become the voice of this technology, and in many ways, it has pulled an Apple by making the development of “skills” (another term for smartphone apps) an open-source ecosystem that allows third-party developers room to create a wide variety of ways to deliver entertainment and information via voice. This can be done through the Echo device – as well as potentially any gadget that wishes to integrate it using the Alexa Voice Service.Source: http://jacobsmedia.com/siri-vs-alexa-no-contest/See Blog.Spreaker.com for our most recent article:- How to Save Time and Money With the Right Home for Your Podcast Podcasting has been around for longer than you think (over 10 years now!), but the ways it has enticed people to tell their stories, as well as connect with others in a very intimate way, has never felt fresher. Yet, while there are lots of potential podcasters out there ready to try it out for themselves, many get lost along the way. It’s easy to see why – the onslaught of “necessary” gear, like microphones, filters, and mixers and the time commitment involved, are intimidating distractions.However, you don’t have to sweat it – not that much, anyway. With even the most basic tools, getting into podcasting is simpler than you think. This article shares how Spreaker makes Podcasting easy and inexpensive.http://blog.spreaker.com/2017/04/18/how-to-save-time-and-money-with-the-right-home-for-your-podcast/Listener Feedback from Episode 107: About Doing Great InterviewsTamara @ Shelf Addiction I know all about the interview woes. It's indeed a lot of work when doing a lot of interviews. It's definitely not fun all the time, especially when interviewing people that are technically challenged.Tamara @ Shelf AddictionRob, I've updated my podcast art work and used some of your suggestions, what do you think?Linda IrwinI have made some wonderful friends through Spreaker I would not have met otherwise.Spreaker Links:http://Adore.fmhttp://blog.spreaker.comhttp://SpreakerLiveShow.comhttps://Spreaker.comrob at spreaker.comSend Questions and Comments to:Twitter: http://twitter.com/spreaker using #SpreakerLiveTwitter: http://twitter.com/robgreenleeTwitter: http://twitter.com/alexeum Tech Support: support at spreaker.com

Spreaker Live Show #109 for April 19th, 2017Our Topics This Week: - New Edison Podcast Research Released- Tip of the Week: Smart Speaker Ownership Trends- Your Feedback and Comments Show Duration: 61 minutesHost: Rob Greenlee, Head of Content, Spreaker @robgreenlee - rob(at)spreaker(dotcom)Co-Host: Alex Exum, Host of “The Exum Experience Podcast” on Spreaker-NAB Show (National Association of Broadcasters) in Las Vegas - April 23-27th-3 Panel sessions at the event about PodcastingIf attending go here: http://nab17.mapyourshow.com/7_0/sessions/speaker-details.cfm?speakerid=11328&CFID=10905211&CFTOKEN=6354487e9be405e6-798EBB82-C583-AC36-DF7F5F1088B66184No SLS Show next Weds- At PodSummit.com in Calgary, Canada on May 6th, 2017- New Edison Podcast Consumer Research 2017 Released this week:Edison Research announced its Podcast Consumer 2017 study recently, revealing survey information from Edison’s two large, long-running studies of American listening, The Infinite Dial and Share of Ear. Edison VP Podcast listener attributes were revealed today, including income, education, and employment data. Podcast listeners over-index in all three of those categories:31% of podcast listeners earn $100k or more, compared to 22% of non-listeners.Podcast listeners under-index for respondents without a college degree, and rank above the U.S. 18+ population for college degrees and some grad school or advanced degree.63% of podcast listeners are employed full-time, compared to 495 of the general population.On the income disparity between podcast users and non-users, the gap is narrowing as more and more mainstream Americans discover the medium.”Respondents who have listened to a podcast in the past week reached 15%, an estimated 42 million. Among those weekly listeners, average time spent listening to podcasts was between 1 and 3 hours for 36%. For 22%, the average time was between 3 and 5 hours. Those weekly listeners were keeping up with an average of five podcasts in the past seven days. The average time spent with the format for weekly podcast listeners is 5 hours, 7 minutes. That crunches out to about an hour per show.Discovery in podcasting is difficult? Discovery is a ‘pull’ to get people to listen to a podcast. Let’s not forget the ‘push.’ When you look at the success of public radio in podcasting, the cross-promotion [from terrestrial radio marketing] is important. The only way to make it big in podcasting, is not just to rely on Pull, but to use an outside agency to become known.”One of the most intriguing slides tracked how long different types of listeners have been tuning in to podcasts. Across all types, between 1 and 3 years was the most common response. But for podcast subscribers, a quarter have been listening for 5 or more years, and 21% have been listening for 3 to 5 years. That shows a surprisingly stalwart contingent of listeners who have been involved from before the current wave of podcast popularity and growth.Concerning program content, “Content is not king. The audience is king”. There are huge underserved audiences for spoken-word media.”The share of Ear study measures time spent with different audio sources, presented in percentage terms. the most recent research that includes breaking out podcast listeners shows how listening to podcasts can displace radio listening:Source: http://rainnews.com/edison-research-unleashes-the-podcast-consumer-2017-survey-data/- Tip of the Week: Smart Speaker Ownership Trends - Siri vs. Alexa vs. Google Home: No Contest?Alexa has literally become the voice of this technology, and in many ways, it has pulled an Apple by making the development of “skills” (another term for smartphone apps) an open-source ecosystem that allows third-party developers room to create a wide variety of ways to deliver entertainment and information via voice. This can be done through the Echo device – as well as potentially any gadget that wishes to integrate it using the Alexa Voice Service.Source: http://jacobsmedia.com/siri-vs-alexa-no-contest/See Blog.Spreaker.com for our most recent article:- How to Save Time and Money With the Right Home for Your Podcast Podcasting has been around for longer than you think (over 10 years now!), but the ways it has enticed people to tell their stories, as well as connect with others in a very intimate way, has never felt fresher. Yet, while there are lots of potential podcasters out there ready to try it out for themselves, many get lost along the way. It’s easy to see why – the onslaught of “necessary” gear, like microphones, filters, and mixers and the time commitment involved, are intimidating distractions.However, you don’t have to sweat it – not that much, anyway. With even the most basic tools, getting into podcasting is simpler than you think. This article shares how Spreaker makes Podcasting easy and inexpensive.http://blog.spreaker.com/2017/04/18/how-to-save-time-and-money-with-the-right-home-for-your-podcast/Listener Feedback from Episode 107: About Doing Great InterviewsTamara @ Shelf Addiction I know all about the interview woes. It's indeed a lot of work when doing a lot of interviews. It's definitely not fun all the time, especially when interviewing people that are technically challenged.Tamara @ Shelf AddictionRob, I've updated my podcast art work and used some of your suggestions, what do you think?Linda IrwinI have made some wonderful friends through Spreaker I would not have met otherwise.Spreaker Links:http://Adore.fmhttp://blog.spreaker.comhttp://SpreakerLiveShow.comhttps://Spreaker.comrob at spreaker.comSend Questions and Comments to:Twitter: http://twitter.com/spreaker using #SpreakerLiveTwitter: http://twitter.com/robgreenleeTwitter: http://twitter.com/alexeum Tech Support: support at spreaker.com

Dass man mit Computern einfach so sprechen kann ist eine wiederkehrende Fantasie in vielen Filmen und Serien. Mit dem Alexa Voice Service kommt Amazon diesem Traum ein Stück entgegen und ich habe mir die beiden Lautsprecher Echo und Echo Dot näher angeschaut. Sie werden fast ausschließlich mit der Stimme gesteuert und sind stets mit dem Internet verbunden. Diese Episode ist eher ein Tagebuch und skizziert die ersten drei Tage mit Alexa.

Recently, prosecutors involved in a 2015 Arkansas murder case have included Amazon’s Echo as technology-based evidence.The Echo is a hands-free speaker you control with your voice, connecting to the Alexa Voice Service to play music, provide information, news, sports scores, weather, and more. In this investigation, law enforcement discovered that the Amazon Echo could host important recordings and clues that are relevant to the murder case. On Lawyer 2 Lawyer, hosts J. Craig Williams and Bob Ambrogi join Andrew Rossow, cyberspace and technology attorney, and Craig Ball, a trial attorney and expert in digital forensics, as they take a look at the legalities surrounding Amazon’s Echo, technology-based evidence, and the impact on future cases. Drew Rossow is a cyberspace and technology attorney in Dayton, Ohio. He recently wrote an article titled, “Amazon Echo May Be Sending Its Sound Waves into the Court Room as our First ‘Smart Witness.’” Craig Ball is a board certified trial attorney in Texas and an adjunct professor at the University of Texas School of Law teaching electronic evidence and digital discovery. For nine years, he wrote the award winning column on computer forensics and e-discovery for American Lawyer Media called "Ball in your Court," and still pens a popular blog of the same name at ballinyourcourt.com. Special thanks to our sponsors, Clio and Litéra.