Here’s what you missed last week on the Amazon Developer Blog:
Evangelists and Where to Find Them: April 2017
We love our Amazon Developer Evangelists! Unfortunately, we hardly get to see them because they are traversing the globe, and after a brief hiatus they’re ready to get back on the road! Read more to see where to find them in April.
ICYMI: Make Money with Promotions That Work Webinar
Amazon Appstore recently hosted a webinar on Making Money with Promotions That Work. Amazon Developer Evangelist Mike Hines shared tips on how to build effective promotions that can increase your conversion rate, including how to run a social good campaign with Seeds, a company that provides microfinance loans for women in Africa. If you couldn’t attend, read more for answers to the top questions we received.
Build More Engaging Skills with Device Address API and Gain Insights with the New Metrics Dashboard
Alexa is excited to announce two new features that will help you build engaging skills – the incorporation of location information into your interactions using the new Device Address API, and a new metrics dashboard that will allow you to gain deeper insights into your skills’ usage.
Leverage the New Metrics Dashboard to Deepen Skill Engagement, Drive Retention
You can now find the answers to data-driven questions using Alexa’s new skill metrics dashboard. This dashboard features many new data points and visualizations on customers, sessions, utterances, and intents. We’ve also improved data freshness and included data support for all devices. With this new feature, you can better understand how customers use your skill so you can deepen engagement and drive retention.
Learn How to Build Your First Alexa Skill with Treehouse
We believe voice is the next major disruption in computing. That’s why we enable anyone to design and build voice experiences for Alexa, the voice service that powers devices like the Amazon Echo, with the Alexa Skills Kit. To that end, we’re excited to announce a new beginner course by Treehouse. The “Build an Alexa Skill” course will help guide both developers and non-developers alike through the skill-building process.
Calling All University Students to Hack Your World with Amazon Alexa
Alexa is happy to announce the Hack Your World with Amazon Alexa contest for university students. This is our second collaboration with MindSumo, a company that focuses on offering students everywhere first-hand experience with industry projects.
Meet the Teen Dev Who Taught Alexa to Drive a Model Car, Co-Pilot a Video Game
Sixteen-year-old Austin Wilson loves building things. He enjoys figuring out how things are put together then finding ways to improve on them. After building several small skills using templates, Austin was ready to build a skill for the Alexa Skills Competition. Read more to see how he taught Alexa how to drive a model car and co-pilot a video game.
Look Under the Hood with Echosim’s New Developer Console
Echosim.io is releasing a new developer console to make skill testing even easier. The console exposes the incoming and outgoing JSON messages between Echosim.io and the Alexa Voice Service (AVS). In this console, you can get an overview of AVS’s background processes and spot issues in your skill’s responses in real-time.
Daylight or Incandescent? Announcing Tunable Lighting Control for Smart Home Skills
Alexa is happy to announce tunable lighting control, a new feature in the Smart Home Skill API now available in the US with support for the UK and Germany coming soon. This is great news for those of you targeting color-changing lights or tunable white lights. Now you can enable customers to issue a voice command such as, “Alexa, change the living room light to blue” or “Alexa, set office light to daylight.” This feature is supported today with lights from Hue, LIFX, TP-Link, and lights controlled by SmartThings Hub.
The All-New Fire TV Stick to Begin Shipping in the UK and Japan
The all-new Fire TV Stick will begin shipping to customers in the UK and Japan. Up to 30 percent faster than the previous best-selling version, the new Fire TV Stick will soon be available in Germany too.
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Source: Alexa