The rise of the conversational interface shows no signs of slowing down; chatbots are the new apps, Siri is getting old already, and although it’s still awkward to say “Ok Google” at your watch or “hey cortana” to your phone, somehow we’re happy to ask “Alexa” for the news, weather, or to play something by Bruno Mars.
The Amazon Echo looks like the first generation of a socially acceptable, almost natural, voice controlled conversational interface.
It’s that first step towards the Star Trek computer; you can’t quite say “Alexa, locate Commander Data” (although you can ask her to beam you up, and for earl grey tea, hot) but you can get a decent answer to “Alexa, where is my phone?” (assuming you’ve installed the relevant app).
All of the tutorials out there for developing your own Alexa Skill require a lot of digging around on Amazon Web Services, learning some nodejs*, and getting knee deep in lambdas (Amazon’s Functions as a Service/Server less architecture solution).
In this article I’ll show you how to easily understand how to develop your own Alexa Skill with just your laptop and a json file