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> I briefly tried some of the "skills" but they're awkward as hell. You have to say something along the lines of "Tell <app name> to <command>". Yikes. That's
by darrenf 9y ago
> I briefly tried some of the "skills" but they're awkward as hell. You have to say something along the lines of "Tell <app name> to <command>". Yikes.
That's a little like saying "some websites are rubbish" though. IME skills don't have to have cumbersome conversational UI - I use mine (in conjunction with a Logitech Harmony Hub) as a sometime replacement for a universal remote: say "Alexa, turn on Sky/Netflix/xbox" and on come three devices, all switched to the right inputs. And in the case of Netflix, it launches my TV's Netflix app too. The phrase feels natural to me.
- marcosscriven 9y agoThat’s a special case as far as I’m aware. Alexa supports ‘Turn on <noun>’ inherently, the hub must be exposing endpoints in the right way for that to just work. 3rd party skills have to follow the more awkward syntax however.
- darrenf 9y agoAh, I didn't know that. I thought the third party Yonomi skill had just somehow registered "turn on" as an invocation, but upon further reading it seems that's merely an implementation of the PowerController API†. Thanks for enlightening me. † https://developer.amazon.com/docs/device-apis/alexa-powercontroller.html https://developer.amazon.com/docs/device-apis/alexa-powercon...
- wiredfool 9y agoThat sounds a lot like AppleScript. Which was not a Good Language.