Amazon apart from its retail website is a lot big company.It powers most of the internet today that we see. It also has a space company whose aim is to ship people to mars.. just like SpaceX.
Alexa
Alexa is a virtual assistant developed by Amazon, first used in the Amazon Echo and the Amazon Echo Dot smart speakers developed by Amazon. It’s capable of voice interaction, music playback, making to-do lists, setting alarms, streaming podcasts, playing audiobooks, and providing weather, traffic, sports, and other real-time information, such as news. The Alexa smart devices can also control several smart devices using itself as a home automation system. Users have tools and options to extend the Alexa capabilities by installing “skills” (additional functionality developed by third-party vendors, in other settings more commonly called apps such as weather programs and audio features. In short these are just apps which can be installed and used by your Alexa device).
What is Alexa Skill ? : Detailed
As cited on the site edfenergy ,Alexa skills are like the apps you use on your iOS or Android device . You can enable and disable skills, using the Alexa app or a web browser, in the same way that you install and uninstall apps on your smart phone or tablet. Skills are voice-driven Alexa capabilities. You can add Alexa skills to your Echo to bring products and services to life. You can view available skills and enable or disable them using your Alexa app.
Some skills are free while other skills are paid.You can create a flash briefing skill to provide Alexa customers with news headlines and other short content. Typically a flash briefing becomes a part of a customer’s daily routine.
As cited on Amazon Alexa’s official documentation ,A flash briefing provides a quick overview of news and other content such as comedy, interviews, and lists. A flash briefing skillprovides content for a customer’s flash briefing. The flash briefing skill API defines the format of content and enables you to create flash briefing skills.
Customers discover and enable flash briefing skills in the flash briefing section under settings in the Alexa app, or by searching for “flash briefing” in the skills section of the app. Customers can also enable their favorite provider through voice, the first time they listen to flash briefing.
When you create a flash briefing skill, you have a chance for your original content to reach customers daily. Update your content at least daily, and you can make changes as often as every 15 minutes. Alexa caches your content to ensure optimal performance and minimal latency for customers.
You can enable and disable any skill on Alexa with your Alexa App or from Alexa’s official website through any web browser
To give you a preview of what skills can do here is a video from Mike wat
What is Alexa Skill Kit?
Amazon allows developers to build and publish skills for Alexa using the Alexa Skills Kit known as Alexa Skills. These are third-party developed skills, once published, are available across Alexa-enabled devices. Users can enable these skills using the Alexa app. Skills are like the mini apps that can be integrated in your Alexa devices such as Dot, Echo etc.
A “Smart Home Skill API” is available, meant to be used by hardware manufacturers to allow users to control smart home devices.
Most skills run code almost entirely in the cloud, using Amazon’s AWS Lambda service.
Amazon has further expanded the capability of Blueprints by allowing customers to publish skills they’ve built with the templates to its Alexa Skill Store in the US for use by anyone with an Alexa-enabled device. This move has increased the interaction of developers and has seen quite a spike in number of new incoming Alexa skills.
Why Alexa Skills a big deal?
While voice search grows, improves, and refines, the best way to get in front of potential customers on these devices is through the Alexa Skills base. Google is also shifting towards the voice search through its devices like Google Home.An Alexa Skill is the smart home device equivalent of an app for your phone on the Amazon Echo series of devices. You can enable the Skills manually or by speaking a command to Alexa. Google Home has its own skills base as well, but Amazon holds more then 70 percent of market share, so yes its a pretty much big deal.
How you can enable and disable these skills?
We all know that Amazon is now at full swing to make your homes smarter with its new Alexa powered devices and Amazon Echo being the center spot of the attraction, We would teach you how to enable and disable Alexa skills in this tutorial.
How to Enable a New Alexa Skill in 5 steps
- Open Alexa App on your smartphone. If you have not installed it in your smartphone you can do it from here.
- Swipe from the left side of the screen to open the App menu.
- Tap on Skills & Games from the menu.
- Select the skill you want to activate or enable on your Amazon device.
- Tap on Enable to use.
Steps to Disable an Alexa skill
- Go to your Amazon Alexa App on your smartphone.
- Swipe from the left side of the screen to open the App menu.
- Tap on Skills & Games from the menu.
- Tap on Your Skills.
- Tap on the Skill that you desire to disable.
- Click on Disable button to disable it.
You might be interested in : – Best laptops under range of 30,000 INR!
Final words
Guys at Amazon are doing a lot of hard work and trying to automate nearly any thing which is possible in home. In India, there are few real estate people who are giving away flats with Alexa already built-in the home through which they can control lights fans etc in the home , thus making the upcoming homes much more smarter.
