How To Create Alexa Skills?
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In an effort to make its voice assistant even more personal, Amazon now lets users create their own Alexa skills, While not as expansive as the 30,000-plus skills available for all Alexa owners, Amazon Skill Blueprints allows you to make a few types of skills, such as quizzes, jokes, and even information for visiting houseguests and babysitters. 
2. Select the type of skill you’d like to make. Categories from which you can choose are: Fun & Games, Learning & Knowledge, At Home, and Storyteller.3. Choose a template. Within each category are a few skill templates; you must choose one of these templates to create a skill. For this how-to, we’re going to choose the Quiz skill in the Learning & Knowledge category. 
4. Press the Make Your Own button to start. If you’re not sure if this is the skill you want to create, you can listen to a sample of what the skill will sound like. In the Quiz Skill template, you will see a number of pre-populated questions and answers. You can edit these questions and add your own. 
5. Press the Add Q&A button to add a new question.6. Press the Next: Experience button in the upper right when you are finished adding questions. In the screen that appears, you can customize the name of your quiz, the greetings that Alexa will use for each player, and the responses and sound effects used following a right (or wrong) answer.7.
Edit the Quiz intro. Type in the text box to change what Alexa will say when the quiz skill is launched. Below the text box is a drop-down menu with the name of the sound effect Alexa will play when the skill is launched. By default, Airplane Takeoff is selected; to change it, click on the drop-down menu and select from one of the hundreds of sound effects.8.
Edit player greetings, You can either edit or add player greetings, which Alexa will choose at random.9. Edit quiz responses. Change the sound effect and what Alexa says when a player answers correctly or incorrectly. 
10. Edit winner responses. Change the sound effect and what Alexa will say when a player wins the game.11. Change the background image. If you’re playing the quiz on an Echo Show, this is the background image that will be displayed. 12. Press the Next: Name button in the upper right when you are finished customizing your quiz. 
13. Change the name of the quiz to one you prefer.14. Press the Next: Create Skill button in the upper right. At this point, if you haven’t done so already, Amazon will prompt you to create a developer account, which is required to make or publish a skill. Click on the Update Account button. 
Amazon will then create your skill, which takes a few minutes. You should see this screen as it’s being created. 
15. When the quiz is ready, you should see a green bar at the top of the skill page. You can now play the skill on any Alexa device registered to you. On your skill page, you should also see buttons that will let you edit and delete the skill you just created.16. 18. A warning will appear, asking if the skill is intended for children under the age of 13. Select the appropriate response. 
19. Select the method by which you’d like to share the skill : You can share your skill with email, text, WhatsApp or social media platforms such as Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter. 
- Who (or What) Is Alexa? We Explain Amazon’s Digital Assistant
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Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips. Michael A. Prospero is the U.S. Editor-in-Chief for Tom’s Guide. He oversees all evergreen content and oversees the Homes, Smart Home, and Fitness/Wearables categories for the site.
- In his spare time, he also tests out the latest drones, electric scooters, and smart home gadgets, such as video doorbells.
- Before his tenure at Tom’s Guide, he was the Reviews Editor for Laptop Magazine, a reporter at Fast Company, the Times of Trenton, and, many eons back, an intern at George magazine.
He received his undergraduate degree from Boston College, where he worked on the campus newspaper The Heights, and then attended the Columbia University school of Journalism. When he’s not testing out the latest running watch, electric scooter, or skiing or training for a marathon, he’s probably using the latest sous vide machine, smoker, or pizza oven, to the delight — or chagrin — of his family.
Is creating Alexa skills free?
What are Alexa Skills, and how can I enable Alexa Skills? – Amazon Alexa is a digital assistant, but it’s also a platform like iOS or Android. Like those more full-fledged systems, Alexa has apps that can extend its usefulness–Amazon calls those apps Skills.
Alexa Skills come in a variety of categories, including business & finance, productivity, news, and weather, all of which can be found on Amazon’s Alexa Skills page, All Alexa Skills are free, though some require a subscription service to unlock their full functionality. Unlike Google Home, which has a limited number of skills that are enabled on all units by default, Alexa Skills don’t come preinstalled.
In order to gain access to a particular Skill, like CNET News, you have to ask Alexa to enable the particular skill, or click Enable on Amazon.com or in the Alexa mobile app. You can ask Alexa about particular categories of skills to have it list applicable popular ones, which is a good option if you’re exploring what’s available.
- SEE: Smart office technology: What’s working, what’s failing, and what users want out of it (TechRepublic Premium) Alexa Skills can also be used in a completely different way–as part of Alexa for Business,
- Designed to integrate Alexa-controlled Amazon Echo units into offices, Alexa for Business comes with the tools needed for businesses to build custom skills to suit the needs of their environment.
Alexa Skills can be built to control meeting rooms, adjust smart thermostats, turn on lights–essentially any smart device that can be connected to Alexa can have a custom skill built for it. Additional resources
Voice in the enterprise: 3 current use cases (TechRepublic) Alexa wishlist: Six features we’d like to see added to Alexa’s core capabilities (ZDNet) Amazon Echo: Your Alexa skills just got a whole lot smarter (ZDNet) Top 5: Ways Alexa can help you get work done (TechRepublic) Amazon Alexa adds ability to send SMS messages by voice (ZDNet) Hey, Cortana: What do you think of Alexa for Business? (ZDNet) How we learned to talk to computers, and how they learned to answer back (cover story PDF) (TechRepublic)
Can you make money making Alexa skills?
You can earn money with an Alexa custom skill by using in-skill purchasing (ISP), paid skills, or Amazon Pay for Alexa Skills,
Does Alexa sell your conversations?
The answer to all these questions is no. Privacy is built in to Alexa and all of our Echo devices, from wake word technology to microphone controls to the ability to review and delete the voice recordings associated with your account.
Does Alexa pay gas?
FAQs about using Alexa to pay for gas – What things can I ask Alexa at Exxon and Mobil stations? You can say, “Alexa, pay for gas” using your car’s Alexa-enabled device or the Alexa app at over 12,000 Exxon and Mobil stations in the U.S. Where can I use Alexa to pay for gas? “Alexa, pay for gas” is currently available at Exxon and Mobil stations in the U.S.
Can I earn Exxon Mobil Rewards+™ points when I use “Alexa, pay for gas”? Not at this time, but we’ll continue to listen to your feedback to improve the “Alexa, pay for gas” experience. Is it safe to use Alexa to pay for gas?
Yes. Transactions are processed using Amazon Pay, which uses the same payment information stored in your Amazon account. Amazon, Alexa and all related logos are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates. : Using Alexa To Pay for Gas | Exxon and Mobil
Does Amazon pay for Alexa music?
For $4.99/month, listen to Amazon Music Unlimited on a single Echo, Echo Dot, Echo Show, Echo Look, Amazon Tap, or Fire TV. Amazon Music Unlimited has a catalog of 100 million songs, so now you can ask Alexa to play just about any song or artist.
How many skills does Alexa have?
21. Alexa shines in the skills department whereas Google Home does a better job of understanding the different ways you may ask a question. – (Source: Forbes) Alexa is powerful, especially when used with Amazon’s online store and other related services.
But then again, her catalog of over 100,000 skills means that she can do more than just help you with online shopping or read audiobooks. Home assistant Alexa can, in fact, check the weather, order a pizza, and answer questions, among others. And while we’re on the subject of answering questions, Google Assistant does it way better than Alexa according to reports.
This virtual assistant can understand the different ways you can say things, plus it can answer more types of questions than Alexa by getting information across the web.
Can you code Alexa with Python?
The Alexa Skills Kit SDK for Python simplifies the development of the back-end cloud service for your Alexa skill. A part of the Alexa Skills Kit, the SDK reduces the amount of code you need to write to process Alexa requests and responses and to handle other common skill tasks.