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Amazon was encouraged by Alexa’s success to create two new developments, Tap and Dot.
Amazon Alexa is a personal assistant that is capable of making to-do lists, setting alarms, playing music and audiobooks, and providing real-time information on weather, traffic, and other topics. The device is a 9-inch tall cylinder with a speaker and a microphone. Alexa has now more than 1,000 skills.
The device is also known as Echo, and it was made available to the general public on June 2015. Since then, Amazon created two other small assistants, named Tap and Dot.
The devices raised the interest of developers, who created add-ins that help users call an Uber or order pizza.
Amazon also opened Alexa’s options to more connectivity, such as Fire TV and other third-party hardware companies. This raise in the capacity to control other devices is impressive. In just five months, it went from 130 apps to today’s 1,000.
The director of the program said that the number of developers interested in Alexa reaches tens of thousands. Even if not all of them release apps, they still want to test its extraordinary capacities.
Amazon has established a platform dedicated to developers, which allows them to use the Alexa Skills Kit to create apps of their own. Afterwards, the platform resolves the requests and maps it to the developer’s endpoint.
The company has added improvements to the device ever since it was created. In March, the voice services were upgraded. And this week, Alexa released four built-in intents that will help third-party apps to navigate the skills.
Even so, Amazon seems to have forgotten to update the skills section in Alexa that helps users to choose add-ins. No proper search, no top charts, and categories make apps difficult to be found and may be a major setback as what marketing is concerned.
Alexa is a cloud-based service activated by voice that includes skills connected to Capital One, Fitbit, PGA Tour, Uber, Domino’s, SmartThings, and Nutritionix.
For example, Capital One is giving confidential and secure voice access to their clients who want to manage their money. Account owners can ask how much money they have in their accounts; they can make payments and receive information on the account’s recent activity.
Another exciting development is that of Domino’s, who offers their clients the option to order and track the location of their pizza. The company’s officials said that Amazon provided them with an intuitive and efficient method for developing their app.
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Brian Galloway
Brian’s philosophy is pretty straightforward: easy living, wishful thinking, heavy criticizing. Despite the fact that he wouldn’t go as far as describe himself a conspirationist, Brian does take everything with a grain of sand. He loves following every lead when covering a story and mostly enjoys to cover politics and US news.
