Alexa Skill Blueprints makes smart speakers more personal
It’s been two weeks since Amazon introduced its new tool for its smart speakers. The Alexa Skill Blueprints provides some basic templates for users to create a personalised experience. These include making it answer to specific questions, or skills for particular users, such as houseguests.
“You don’t need experience-building skills or coding to get started,” said Steve Rabuchin, vice president for Amazon Alexa.”My family created our own jokes skill in a matter of minutes, and it’s been a blast to interact with it in a totally new and personal way,” he added.
How to build your own skills
To customise it’s response, users will have to visit the website blueprints.amazon.com and select a template. At launch, there were over 20 templates across categories like Fun & Games, At Home, Storyteller, and Learning & Knowledge.
The templates are designed for a lay man and no technical knowledge is required. You have to fill in your own content, name it and publish it. This makes the skill or response available to all Alexa-enabled devices associated with your own Amazon account.
Currently Alexa Skill Blueprints is available for customers in the United States only.
This strengthens Amazon’s Leadership in the Smart Speaker Market
The Smart Speaker Market basically consists of Alexa, Google Home and Apple’s HomePod. All three are competing to be the voice assistant people use in their home, but Alexa so far is the market leader with having around 70 percent of the smart speaker market share.
Apple’s HomePod is designed mostly for music lovers. One major drawback with Apple is that it doesn’t support third-party apps.
Google Home has not been as popular as Alexa, may be due to lack of promotions as compared. Also Goolgle Home doesn’t offer such detailed customization.
Be safe and smart while handling these technologies
There always exists the risk of misuse of personal information which is shared with these technologies. People might share too much with it or other virtual assistants. One should be smarter than these smart speakers.
