We’re rather excited to have started looking at developing Alexa skills. An Alexa skill is a program that sits on Amazons servers and can be added (by a user) to their Amazon Alexa device. If you have a device and haven’t already checked them out then go to your Alexa app and take a look through the marketplace of additional skills.
Many (or most) of these current skills are basically fun such as the ability to make Alexa fart on command, tell you a random dad joke or as I found yesterday the amazing ability to translate Geordie sayings. Others are semi-useful commands such as “Alexa, what’s the time in Beijing?” or “Alexa, give me a recipe involving chicken”.
We however believe there can be some amazing uses for these clever devices. How about a website owner being able say “Alexa, turn on the latest special offer” and having their website change to start promoting a particular product. Maybe “Alexa drop all prices on the shop by 10%” or “Alexa change the closing hours for tomorrow to 6pm”.
The possibilities are virtually endless and it’s use for Disabilities and web accessibility are very exciting. How about the ability to tell Alexa to fill a form in for you? or a Q&A specific to your company that customers can add to their devices. “Alexa what’s the latest offer in Dave’s shop?”….”Dave says he has beans at 3 for a pound this week”.
We’re very excited by this, are you? can you think of any uses? Drop us a comment below and we can discuss before saying “Alexa do a loud wet fart”