How Do I: create Alexa Skills

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Earlier, I talked about how I use Amazon Alexa in my home.

This month, I launched my third Alexa Skill. You can add these to your [daily] “flash briefing” if interested.

An Alexa Skill is what Amazon calls a voice-enabled app to provide verbal content on demand.

Alexa Skills take little to no coding to create.

As a consumer or user of Amazon Alexa, an Alexa Skill can be found and enabled on alex.amazon.com as a part of Flash Briefing (think of it as a series such as a news feeds you customize to receive in audio form) or as a single on-demand app that informs you by hearing what says. News, sports scores, tips and weather updates are common content supplied as an Alexa Skill, but there are many more Skills available.

As an Alexa Skill creator/designer, anyone can go to developer.amazon.com/alexa to create and test an Alex Skill with little to no coding involved. There is a step by step instructions to:

You get to add what the user would request and receive.

If you want an even easier way to create an Alexa Skill that is less nerdy, take a look at getstoryline.com

Criteria and approval of an Alexa Skill is pretty easy within a day or so.

Here are the first three Alexa Skills I created which are available if you have an Alexa Device:

Another DAM Podcast

Blockchain Billions

User Adoption

These Alexa Skills are three of my most popular podcasts and if you enable them as part of your Flash Briefing, you will not miss any future episodes of these podcasts.

For more on marketing Alexa skills, take a look at alexabusinessmarketing.com

Start building a first voice app today.

 

 

How Do I: use Amazon Alexa

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Amazon Alexa is one of the most popular home assistant services that come with an Amazon Echo device.

Devices

Have two of the Echo Dot in my house. One in my kitchen and one in my master bathroom.

A friend of mine has at least 5 of these devices throughout his house

What do use it for?

I listen to:

my daily flash briefing of news stories that I care about and podcasts by asking “Alexa, flash briefing” [all pre-set selection of “skills” I have picked on http://alexa.amazon.com%5D

it as our stereo during dinner parties by asking “Alexa, play jazz”

I ask for:

Weather by asking “Alexa, weather”

Time by asking “Alexa, time” rather than having clocks in every room or glancing at my phone since I rarely wear a watch in sunny Bluffton, South Carolina

Timer in the kitchen is helpful “Alexa, timer 15 minutes”

When trying to figure out what to do with bacon grease, I asked “Alexa, how do I dispose of grease” for an answer from Wikihow.

If that news story has little or no value to me, I say “Alex, Next” to skip forward.

When it acts up or I am done I ask “Alexa, stop”

When do I use it?

When I am preparing a meal or preparing myself for the day in the bathroom (yes, I have one in the master bathroom instead of a radio), I often listen to Alexa. Most often in the morning, but sometimes around dinner time.

More commands

Here is a great list of Alexa commands here, thanks to Ben Smith.

 

 

 

How do I: Check wifi

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We all use wifi. Some countries believe access to it is actually a civil right.

Ever wonder how to find a wifi hotspot in any area?

Try http://google.com/maps and search for “free wifi near me”

How do you check the strength of the wifi signal?

You can run a free test to measure the strength of any internet connection including wifi by visiting http://speedtest.net

Speedtest  has an app too.

How do I: find out a personality profile

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Ever wonder if there is a way to classify different personalities? What is your personality prifile? What is the personality profile of the person you are interacting with?

There are few simple assessments for this. According to the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), there are 16 personality profiles.

Over 10 years ago, I took this very insightful personality assessment along with all of my fellow co-workers at the sam time.

This month, I took this personality testing again, and my profile has not changed to this day.

What is your personality profile?

Find out your MBTI  profile for free at https://www.16personalities.com

Find out your DISC assessment for free at https://www.crystalknows.com/disc-personality-test

There is no right nor wrong answer. Your personality is yours. It is extremely hard to change it beyond the mask you wear have at work.

You will be surprised by the concrete, accurate description of who you are and why you do things the way you do. You can ask others to find out their profile for free as well.

I am a Dc on DISC and ESTJ on MBTI.

What is your personality profile?

Best books consumed in the past few years

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Writers get better by writing more and reading more. Some writers will purposely read outside from their genre to learn something else.

Here are a few of the best books I have read in the past three years:
Principles: Life and Work by Ray Dalio

Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity
by Kim Scott 

A Beautiful Constraint: How to Transform Your Limitations Into Advantages, and Why It’s Everyone’s Business 

by Adam Morgan, Mark Barden

Before taking the altMBA, this was one of the books we were mailed and asked to read prior to the month-long course. Found the reframing of constraints from limitations to advantages very helpful with their models and real-world examples.

Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days 
by Jake Knapp

Went to the book launch for this book, read this book, suggested a number of startups use this model to help them, led a 5-day workshop to use this Sprint process and it was very fruitful use of our time to resolve big challenges for those startups.

What are your favorite recent non-fiction books?