The Alexa Fund announced that it has chosen nine companies for this year’s Alexa Accelerator. The Accelerator, a program designed to support early-stage startups using voice to deliver transformative customer and business experiences, will be hosted in Seattle this summer. The finale of Accelerator will be Demo...
When a consumer talks to a voice assistant, odds are very good that Alexa‘s is the digital voice they will hear. According to eMarketer data, about 66 percent of voice speaker enthusiasts favor the Echo device, while about 30 percent favor Google Home (the remaining...
Alexa may be on the move. A California-based chipmaker, DSP Group, is working on a small, standardized chip that device manufacturers can use to embed Alexa into their gadgets – thus freeing her from the constraints of the power outlet. Alexa is powerful, and not...
As of the last official count offered by Amazon in March, Alexa had 30,000 skills. That number is almost certainly quite a bit higher today, the reality is most of those skills are likely going unused. According to recent The New York Times reporting, Echo users —...
Amazon has announced that developers can start building voice experiences for customers in Italy and Spain using the Alexa Skills Kit (ASK). ASK is a collection of self-service APIs and tools that make it fast and easy for developers to create new voice-driven capabilities for...
Eight teams are working to build chatbots using Amazon’s resources and win the Alexa Skills $1.5 million prize (with $2 million in other grants and prizes). In February, Amazon announced the eight finalists for the competition: Alana, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, Scotland; Alquist, Czech Technical University,...
Amazon will now allow users who create their own personalized skill through Alexa Skill Blueprints to share it with others. Amazon launched Alexa Blueprints in April, providing a new way for users to create their own skills for the virtual assistant. Customers can use a...
New third-party software will allow users to turn off Siri on an Apple Watch and use Alexa instead. According to Cult of Mac, the app, Voice in a Can, was developed by Atadore. It is available on iTunes for $1.99. The app will also work...
Amazon announced that kid skills published in the U.K. and Germany are now eligible to earn Alexa Developer Rewards. Last year Alexa began supporting kid skills in these locations, allowing developers to create educational experiences for kids under the age of 16, using the Alexa...
