JSJ 274: Amazon Voice Services and Echo Skills with Terrance Smith
JavaScript Jabber15 Aug 2017

JSJ 274: Amazon Voice Services and Echo Skills with Terrance Smith

JSJ 274 Amazon Voice Services and Echo Skills with Terrance SmithOn today’s episode of JavaScript Jabber, we have panelists Joe Eames, Aimee Knight, Charles Max Wood, and we have special guest Terrance Smith. He’s here today to talk about the Amazon Alexa platform. So tune in and learn more about Amazon Voice Services![01:00] – Introduction to Terrance SmithTerrance is from Hacker Ferrer Software. They hack love into software.[01:30] – Amazon Voice ServiceWhat I’m working on is called My CareTaker named probably pending change. What it will do and what it is doing will be to help you be there as a caretaker’s aid for the person in your life. If you have to take care an older parent, My CareTaker will be there in your place if you have to work that day. It will be your liaison to that person. Your mom and dad can talk to My CareTaker and My CareTaker could signal you via SMS or email message or tweet, anything on your usage dashboard, and you would be able to respond. It’s there when you’re not.[04:35] – Capabilities Getting started with it, there are different layers. The first layer is the Skills Kit for generally getting into the Amazon IoT. It has a limited subset of the functionality. You can give commands. The device parses them, sends them to Amazon’s endpoint, Amazon sends a call back to your API endpoint, and you can do whatever you want. That is the first level. You can make it do things like turn on your light switch, start your car, change your thermostat, or make an API call to some website somewhere to do anything.[05:50] – Skills KitSkills Kit is different with AVS. Skills Kit, you can install it on any device. You’re spinning up a web service and register it on Amazon’s website. As long as you have an endpoint, you can register, say, the Amazon Web Services Lambda. Start that up and do something. The Skills Kit is literally the web endpoint response. Amazon Voice Services is a bit more in-depth.[07:00] – Steps for programmingWith the Skills Kit, you register what would be your utterance, your skill name, and you would give it a couple of sets of phrases to accept. Say, you have a skill that can start a car, your skill is “Car Starter.” “Alexa tell Car Starter to start the car.” At which point, your web service will be notified that that is the utterance. It literally has a case statement. You can have any number of individual conditional branches outside of that. The limitation for the Skills Kit is you have to have the “tell” or “ask” and the name of the skill to do whatever. It’s also going to be publicly accessible. For the most part, it’s literally a web service.[10:55] – Boilerplates for AWS LambdaBoilerplates can be used if you want to develop for production. If you publish a skill, you get free AVS instance time. You can host your skill for free for some amount of time. There are GUI tools to make it easier but if you’re a developer, you’re probably going to do the spin up a web service and deal it that way.[11:45] – Do you have to have an Amazon Echo?At one point, you have to have the Echo but now there is this called Echoism, which allows you to run it in your browser. In addition to that, you can potentially install it on a device like a Raspberry Pi and run Amazon Voice Services. The actual engine is on your PC, Mac, or Linux box. You have different options.[12:35] – Machine learningThere are certain things that Amazon Alexa understand now that it did last year or time before that like understanding utterances and phrases better. A lot of the machine learning is definitely under the covers. The other portion of it Alexa Voice Service, which is a whole engine that you have untethered access to other portions like how to handle responses. That’s where you can build a custom device and take it apart. So the API that we’re working with here is just using JSON and HTTP.[16:40] – Amazon Echo ShowYou have that full real-time back and forth communication ability but there is no video streaming or video processing ability yet. You can utilize the engine in such a way that Amazon Voice Services can work with your existing tool language. If you have a Raspberry Pi and you have a camera to it, you can potentially work within that. But again, the official API’s and docs for that are not available yet.[27:20] – ChallengesThere’s an appliance in this house that listens to everything I say. There’s that natural inclination to not trust it, especially with the older generations. Giving past that is getting people to use the device. Some of the programming sides of it are getting the communication to work, doing something that Alexa isn’t pre-programmed to do. There isn’t a lot of documentation out there, just a couple of examples. The original examples are written in Java and trying to convert it to Node or JavaScript would be some of the technical challenges. In addition, getting it installed and setup takes at least an hour at the beginning. There’s also a learning curve involved.[29:35] – Is your product layered in an Echo or is your product a separate device?Terrance’s product is a completely separate device. One of the functionality of his program is medicine reminders. It can only respond to whatever the API calls from Amazon tells you to respond to but it can’t do anything like send something back. It can do an immediate audio response with a picture or turn on and off a light switch. But it can’t send a message back in like two hours from now. You do want your Alexa device to have (verbally) a list of notifications like on your phone. TLDR, Terrance can go a little further with just the Skills Kit.[32:00] – Could you set it up through a web server?Yes. There are examples out there. There’s Alexa in the browser. You can open up a browser and communicate with that. There are examples of it being installed like an app. You can deploy it to your existing iPhone app or Android app and have it interact that way. Or you can have it interact independently on a completely different device like a Raspberry Pi. But not a lot of folks are using it that way.[33:10] – MonetizationAmazon isn’t changing anything in terms of monetization. They make discovery a lot easier though. If you knew the name of the app, you could just say, “Alexa, [tell the name of the app].” It will do a lazy load of the actual skill and it will add it to your available skill’s list.However, there is something called the Alexa Fund, which is kind of a startup fund that they have, which you can apply for. If you’re doing something interesting, there is a number of things you have to do. Ideally, you can get funding for whatever your product is. It is an available avenue for you.[36:25] – More information, documentation, walkthroughsThe number one place to go to as far as getting started is the Amazon websites. They have the Conexant 4-Mic Far-Field Dev Kit. It has 4 mics and it has already a lot of what you need. You have to boot it up and/or SSH into it or plug it up and code it. They have a couple of these kits for $300 to $400. It’s one of the safe and simpler options.There are also directions for the AVS sites which is under Alexa Voice Services, where you can go to the Github from there. There will give you directions using the Raspberry Pi. If not that, there’s also the Slack chatroom. It is alexaslack.com. Travis Teague is the guy in charge in there.PicksJoe EamesAimee KnightCharles Max WoodTerrance SmithSpecial Guest: Terrance Smith.

Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/javascript-jabber/donations

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/javascript-jabber--6102064/support.

Episoder(735)

175 JSJ Elm with Evan Czaplicki and Richard Feldman

175 JSJ Elm with Evan Czaplicki and Richard Feldman

02:27 - Evan Czaplicki IntroductionTwitter GitHubPrezi 02:32 - Richard Feldman IntroductionTwitter GitHubNoRedInk02:38 - Elm @elmlang04:06 - Academic Ideas05:10 - Functional Programming, Functional Reactive Programming & Immutability16:11 - ConstraintsFaruk AteşModernizrThe Beauty of ConstraintsTypes / Typescript24:24 - Compilation27:05 - Signals start-app36:34 - Shared Concepts & Guarantees at the Language Level43:00 - Elm vs React 47:24 - IntegrationPortslunr.js52:23 - Upcoming Features54:15 - TestingElm-Test elm-check56:38 - Websites/Apps Build in ElmCircuitHub58:37 - Getting Started with ElmThe Elm Architecture Tutorial Elm Examples59:41 - Canonical Uses?01:01:26 - The Elm Community & ContributionsThe Elm Discuss Mailing ListElm user group SFStack Overflow ?The Sublime Text PluginWebStorm Support for Elm?Codagrunt-elm gulp-elmExtras & ResourcesEvan Czaplicki: Let's be mainstream! User focused design in Elm @ Curry On 2015 Evan Czaplicki: Blazing Fast HTML: Virtual DOM in ElmPicks The Pragmatic Studio: What is Elm? Q&A (Aimee) Elm (Joe) Student Bodies (Joe) Mike Clark: Getting Started With Elm (Joe) Angular Remote Conf (Chuck) Stripe (Chuck) Alcatraz versus the Evil Librarians (Alcatraz, No. 1) by Brandon Sanderson (Chuck) Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud (Evan) The Glass Bead Game: (Magister Ludi) A Novel by Hermann Hesse (Evan) The Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition by Don Norman (Richard) Rich Hickey: Simple Made Easy (Richard) NoRedInk Tech Blog (Richard)Special Guests: Evan Czaplicki and Richard Feldman. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/javascript-jabber/donationsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacyBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/javascript-jabber--6102064/support.

2 Sep 20151h 9min

174 JSJ npm 3 with Rebecca Turner and Forrest Norvell

174 JSJ npm 3 with Rebecca Turner and Forrest Norvell

Don’t miss out! Sign up for Angular Remote Conf! 02:28 - Forrest Norvell IntroductionTwitter GitHub02:37 - Rebecca Turner IntroductionTwitter GitHub Blog03:05 - Why npm 3 Exists and Changes in npm 2 => 3DebuggingLife Cycle OrderingDeduplication08:36 - Housekeeping09:47 - Peer Dependency ChangesThe Singleton Pattern15:38 - The Rewrite Process and How That Enabled Some of the Changes Coming OutCJ Silverio: Npm registry deep dive @ Oneshot Oslo 22:50 - shrinkwrapping 27:00 - Other Breaking Changes?Permissions30:40 - Tiny Jewels33:24 - Why Rewrite?36:00 - npm’s Focus on the Front EndBower npm Roadmap 42:04 - Transitioning to npm 342:54 - Installing npm 344:11 - Packaging with io.js and Node.js 45:16 - Being in BetaPicks Slack List (Aimee) Perceived Performance Fluent Conf Talks (Aimee) Paul Irish: How Users Perceive the Speed of The Web Keynote @ Fluent 2015 (Aimee) Subsistence Farming (AJ) Developer On Fire Episode 017 - Charles Max Wood - Get Involved and Try New Things (Chuck) Elevator Saga (Chuck) BrazilJS (Forrest) NodeConf Brazil (Forrest) For quick testing: `npm init -y`, configure init (Forrest) Where Can I Put Your Cheese? (Or What to Expect From npm@3) @ Boston Ember, May 2015 (Rebecca) Open Source & Feelings Conference (Rebecca) bugs [npm Documentation] (Rebecca) docs [npm Documentation] (Rebecca) repo [npm Documentation] (Rebecca)Special Guests: Forrest Norvell and Rebecca Turner. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/javascript-jabber/donationsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacyBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/javascript-jabber--6102064/support.

26 Aug 201556min

173 JSJ Online Learning with Gregg Pollack

173 JSJ Online Learning with Gregg Pollack

Check out Angular Remote Conf! 02:55 - Gregg Pollack IntroductionTwitter GitHubEnvy Labs@envylabsCode School@codeschool  Starter Studio05:19 - Code SchoolRails for ZombiesTry Ruby 06:49 - Course ContentCode School Angular.js CoursesBreaking the Ice with Regular ExpressionsThe Fundamentals of Design09:42 - Plots & Storylines11:40 - Code School vs Pluralsight 14:09 - Structuring CoursesFrontend vs BackendBuilding Blocks of Express.jsReal-Time Web with Node.js  Security & SandboxingabecedaryMocha18:21 - JavaScript.com Try jQuery Contributing to JavaScript.comLet Us KnowTry JavaScriptResources22:47 - Designing Exercises & ChallengesabecedaryChai30:31 - The Future of Online LearningThinkfulBloc.ioAirPairHackHands Smarterer34:01 - Teaching Best PracticesPicks Mr. Robot (Gregg) #ILookLikeAnEngineer (Aimee) Why we Need WebAssembly An Interview with Brendan Eich (Aimee) Raspberry Pi 2 Model B (AJ) Periscope (Chuck)Special Guest: Gregg Pollack. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/javascript-jabber/donationsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacyBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/javascript-jabber--6102064/support.

19 Aug 201533min

172 JSJ NodeSchool with Jason Rhodes

172 JSJ NodeSchool with Jason Rhodes

Check out Angular Remote Conf! 02:22 - Jason Rhodes IntroductionTwitter GitHub BlogSparkPostNodeSchool@nodeschool GitHub: NodeSchoolcharmCityJS@charmcityjs 03:46 - NodeSchoolJason Rhodes: A Story About NodeSchool and Community Building at CascadiaJS 2014Jason Rhodes: NodeSchool Trying Node AND Contributing @ Empire Node 201406:05 - “Workshopper(s)”07:13 - How Meetups Run (Format), Target Audience11:09 - Pair Programming and Peer Learning14:34 - Starting a NodeSchool Chapter15:53 - Implementing Diversity18:07 - Mentoring and Mentorship20:49 - Time Commitment and Effort24:02 - Appealing to All Experience Levels of Attendees26:48 - The NodeSchool Community30:45 - Being a Member of an Open Source CommunityPicks Better Off Ted (Joe) Cat Exercise Wheel (Aimee) That Conference (Joe) primitive.io (Joe) React Rally (Aimee) Falcor YouTube Playlist (Aimee) javascriptjabber.com/15minutes (Chuck) Entreprogrammers Retreat 2015  (Chuck) Love Letter (Jason) charmCityJS (Jason) Mad Max: Fury Road (Jason)Special Guest: Jason Rhodes. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/javascript-jabber/donationsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacyBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/javascript-jabber--6102064/support.

12 Aug 201541min

171 JSJ Babel with Sebastian McKenzie

171 JSJ Babel with Sebastian McKenzie

02:28 - Sebastian McKenzie IntroductionTwitter GitHub Blog02:53 - Babel (Pronunciation Clarification)05:56 - HistoryLearn ES2015 - Babel09:14 - The State of Babel09:59 - Babel and the TC39 Process11:54 - Features That Can’t Be TranspiledWeak Maps and Proxies    13:45 - Readability and Performance OutputTraceur18:12 - Plugin Architecture19:58 - ES6/2015 Feature ImplementationBlockscopingLabelsExceptionsDestructuring25:49 - The Birth of Babel26:45 - Babel vs Traceur28:08 - Future Babel FeaturesCode OptimizationMinificationLinting30:15 - The Status of ES2015 and ES201631:01 - Browser Support35:03 - Marketing 35:59 - TypeScript 37:24 - Babel Development and LaborPicks Primitive.io (Joe) Armada: The Novel by Ernest Cline (Joe) How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie (AJ) Web Security Warriors Podcast (AJ) Nodevember (Aimee) The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (Dave) Yellowstone National Park (Dave) React Rally (Dave) Iterativ: AngularJS Kurs (Chuck) Hire Thom Parkin! (Chuck) The Martian by Andy Weir (Sebastian) Five Guys Burgers and Fries (Sebastian)Special Guest: Sebastian McKenzie . Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/javascript-jabber/donationsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacyBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/javascript-jabber--6102064/support.

5 Aug 201547min

170 JSJ RabbitMQ with Derick Bailey

170 JSJ RabbitMQ with Derick Bailey

Check out RailsClips!   02:38 - Derick Bailey Introduction Twitter GitHub BlogEntreprogrammers RabbitMQ: Patterns for Applications by Derick Bailey 03:36 - RabbitMQrequest-response Messaging Pattern 05:22 - Synchronous/Asynchronous; Chronological/Non-Chronological 10:33 - Why Do JS Devs Care About RabbitMQ? 12:10 - RabbitMQ and Complexity 14:04 - RabbitMQ’s Model Pub/Sub - RedisEnterprise Integration Patterns: Designing, Building, and Deploying Messaging Solutions by Gregor Hohpe Exchanges, Queues, and Bindings 22:15 - Event Emitters, Organizing Your Code Documentation 31:18 - Service Busses & Monitoring Systems NServiceBus 32:58 - How do you decide you need a messaging system? 36:40 - When Applications Crash… 39:24 - Event Sourcing Kafka 44:05 - Fault Tolerance/Failure Cases “Just let it fail” 50:21 - Putting RabbitMQ in Place SchedulingLong Wait vs Short Wait 58:28 - Formatting Your Messages RabbitMQ: Patterns for Applications by Derick Bailey 01:04:13 - “Saga” (Workflow) 01:05:10 - RabbitMQ For DevelopersUse code JSJABBER for 20% off the bundle! Picks W3Schools (AJ)1984 by George Orwell (AJ) The edit button on the MDN page (AJ)[YouTube] W3Schools is just... Better (AJ)The Go Programming Language (AJ)[YouTube] Go Programming: Learn the Go Programming Language in One Video (AJ)hackthe.computer (AJ)Maze Algorithm (AJ)A* Algorithm (AJ)React Rally (Jamison)Web Design: The First 100 Years (Jamison)Evan Czaplicki: Let's be mainstream! User focused design in Elm @ Curry On Prague 2015 (Jamison)Paracord (Chuck)Soto Pocket Torch (Chuck)Exploring ES6: Upgrade to the next version of JavaScript by Dr. Axel Rauschmayer (Derick)Small World (Derick)Star Wars Darth Bane Trilogy (Derick)LEGO Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back Slave I Set #75060 (Derick)Special Guest: Derick Bailey. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/javascript-jabber/donationsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacyBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/javascript-jabber--6102064/support.

29 Jul 20151h 21min

169 JSJ Property-based Testing (QuickCheck) with Zach Kessin

169 JSJ Property-based Testing (QuickCheck) with Zach Kessin

02:20 - Zach Kessin IntroductionTwitter GitHub Zach's BooksParrotJavaScript Jabber: Episode #057: Functional Programming with Zach KessinTesting Erlang With Quickcheck Book04:00 - Mostly Erlang Podcast 05:27 - Property-based Testing (QuickCheck)07:22 - Property-based Testing and Functional Programmingjsverify 09:48 - Pure FunctionsShrinking18:09 - Boundary Cases20:00 - Generating the Data23:23 - Trending Concepts in JavaScript32:33 - How Property-based Testing Fits in with Other Kind of Testing35:57 - Test FailuresPanel Nolan Lawson: Taming the asynchronous beast with ES7 (Aimee) Nodevember (Aimee) Hipster Sound (Jamison) Om Next by David Nolen (Jamison) Gallant - Weight In Gold (Jamison) React Rally (Jamison) Better Off Ted (Joe) Armada: A Novel by Ernest Cline (Joe) Testing Erlang With Quickcheck Book (Zach) Parrot Universal Notification Interface (Zach) The Famine of Men by Richard H. Kessin (Zach)Special Guest: Zach Kessin. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/javascript-jabber/donationsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacyBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/javascript-jabber--6102064/support.

22 Jul 201545min

168 JSJ The Future of JavaScript with Jafar Husain

168 JSJ The Future of JavaScript with Jafar Husain

03:04 - Jafar Husain IntroductionTwitter GitHubNetflixTC3903:29 - The Great Name Debate (ES6, ES7 = ES2015, ES2016!!)05:35 - The Release CycleWhat This Means for Browsers08:37 - Babel and ECMAScript 09:50 - WebAssembly 13:01 - Google’s NACL 13:23 - Performance > Features?ES6 Feature Performance (JavaScript Weekly Article) Features Implemented as Polyfills (Why Bother?)20:12 - TC39 24:22 - New FeaturesDecoratorsPerformance Benefit?28:53 -Transpilers34:48 - Object.observe() 37:51 - Immutable Types 45:32 - Structural Types47:11 - Symbols48:58 - Observables52:31 - Async Functionsasyncawait57:31 - Rapid Fire Round - When New Feature Will Be Released in ES2015 or ES2016let - 15for...of - 15modules - 15destructuring - 15promises - 15default function argument expressions - 15asyncawait - 16Picks ES6 and ES7 on The Web Platform Podcast (AJ) Binding to the Cloud with Falcor Jafar Husain (AJ) Asynchronous JavaScript at Netflix by Jafar Husain @ MountainWest Ruby 2014 (AJ) Let's Encrypt on Raspberry Pi (AJ) adventures in haproxy: tcp, tls, https, ssh, openvpn (AJ) Let's Encrypt through HAProxy (AJ) Mandy's Fiancé's Video Game Fund (AJ) The Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect (Dave) The Majority Illusion (Dave) [Egghead.io] Asynchronous Programming: The End of The Loop (Aimee) Study: You Really Can 'Work Smarter, Not Harder' (Aimee) Elm (Jamison) The Katering Show (Jamison) Sharding Tweet (Jamison) The U.S. Women's National Soccer Team (Joe) mdn.io (Joe) Aftershokz AS500 Bluez 2 Open Ear Wireless Stereo Headphones (Chuck) Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose: The Science of What Motivates Us, Animated (Jafar) Netflix (Jafar) quiescent (Jafar) Clojurescript (Jafar)Special Guest: Jafar Husain. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/javascript-jabber/donationsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacyBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/javascript-jabber--6102064/support.

15 Jul 20151h 17min

Populært innen Business og økonomi

stopp-verden
dine-penger-pengeradet
e24-podden
rss-penger-polser-og-politikk
lydartikler-fra-aftenposten
rss-borsmorgen-okonominyhetene
utbytte
tid-er-penger-en-podcast-med-peter-warren
finansredaksjonen
pengepodden-2
lederpodden
morgenkaffen-med-finansavisen
okonomiamatorene
pengesnakk
stormkast-med-valebrokk-stordalen
rss-markedspuls-2
rss-finansforum-2
livet-pa-veien-med-jan-erik-larssen
rss-investering-gjort-enkelt
rss-impressions-2