Devs Light Up for Alexa
Amazon last week announced the availability of more than 1,000 different skills for its Alexa voice assistant technology. Third-party developers have created the vast array of new capabilities for the highly popular line of consumer products that use Alexa, which includes the Amazon Echo, Echo Dot, Amazon Tap and Amazon Fire. The announcement comes less than a year after Amazon released the Alexa Skills Kit, which allows outside developers to create new services to work with the voice-activation technology. Developers have ramped up the creation of new skills for the Alexa ecosystem -- only 135 were available in January. "Today we have a vibrant community of tens of thousands of developers who are learning about the service, bringing useful and innovative skills to every aspect of Alexa customers' lives," said Rob Pulciani, director of Amazon Alexa. Developers can use the Smart Home API to enable smart home capabilities, such as controlling lights, door locks o...