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Original Source: https://www.sitepoint.com/amazon-alexa-skill/?utm_source=rss

Out of the box, Alexa supports a number of built-in skills, such as adding items to your shopping list or requesting a song. However, developers can build new custom skills by using the Alexa Skill Kit (ASK).

The ASK, a collection of APIs and tools, handles the hard work related to voice interfaces, including speech recognition, text-to-speech encoding, and natural language processing. ASK helps developers build skills quickly and easily.

In short, the sole reason that Alexa can understand a user’s voice commands is that it has skills defined. Every Alexa skill is a piece of software designed to understand voice commands. Also, each Alexa skill has its own logic defined that creates an appropriate response for the voice command. To give you an idea of some existing Alexa skills, they include:

ordering pizza at Domino’s Pizza
calling for an Uber
telling you your horoscope

So as said, we can develop our own custom skills fitted to our need with the Alexa Skill Kit, a collection of APIs and tools designed for this purpose. The ASK includes tools like speech recognition, text-to-speech encoding, and natural language processing. The kit should get any developer started quickly with developing their own custom skill.

In this article, you’ll learn how to create a basic “get a fact” Alexa skill. In short, we can ask Alexa to present us with a random cat fact. The complete code for completing our task can be found on GitHub. Before we get started, let’s make sure we understand the Alexa skill terminology.

Mastering Alexa Skill Terminology

First, let’s learn how a user can interact with a custom skill. This will be important for understanding the different concepts related to skills.

In order to activate a particular skill, the user has to call Alexa and ask to open a skill. For example: “Alexa, open cat fact”. By doing this, we’re calling the invocation name of the skill. Basically, the invocation name can be seem as the name of the application.

Now that we’ve started the right skill, we have access to the voice intents/commands the skill understands. As we want to keep things simple, we define a “Get Cat Fact” intent. However, we need to provide sample sentences to trigger the intent. An intent can be triggered by many example sentences, also called utterances. For example, a user might say “Give a fact”. Therefore, we define the following example sentences:

“Tell a fact”
“Give a cat fact”
“Give a fact”

It’s even possible to combine the invocation name with an intent like this: “Alexa, ask Cat Fact to give a fact”.

Now that we know the difference between an invocation name and intent, let’s move on to creating your first Alexa skill.

Creating an Amazon Developer Account

To get started, we need an Amazon Developer Account. If you have one, you can skip this section.

Signing up for an Amazon Developer account is a three-step process. Amazon requires some personal information, accepting the terms of service, and providing a payment method. The advantage of signing up for an Amazon Developer account is that you get access to a plethora of other Amazon services. Once the signup has been successfully completed, you’ll see the Amazon Developer dashboard.

Log yourself in to the dashboard and click on the Developer Console button in the top-right corner.

Next up, we want to open the Alexa Skills Kit.

If you were unable to open the Alexa Skills Kit, use this link.

In the following section, we’ll create our actual skill.

Creating Our First Custom Alexa Skill

Okay, we’re set to create our first custom Alexa skill. Click the blue button Create Skill to open up the menu for creating a new skill.

Firstly, it will prompt us for the name of our skill. As you already know, we want random cat facts and therefore call the skill custom cat fact (we can’t use cat fact as that’s a built-in skill for Alexa devices). Next, it prompts us to pick a model for your skill. We can choose between some predefined models or go for a custom model that gives us full flexibility. As we don’t want to be dealing with code we don’t need, we go for the Custom option.

Note: If you choose a predefined skill, you get a list of interaction models and example sentences (utterances). However, even the custom skill is equipped with the most basic intents like Cancel, Help, NavigateHome, and Stop.

Next, we need to pick a way to host our skill. Again, we don’t want to overcomplicate things and pick the Alexa-Hosted (Node.js) option. This means we don’t have to run a back end ourselves that requires some effort to make it “Alexa compliant”. It means you have to format the response according to the Amazon Alexa standards for a device to understand this. The Alexa-hosted option will:

host skills in your account up to the AWS Free Tier limits and get you started with a Node.js template. You will gain access to an AWS Lambda endpoint, 5 GB of media storage with 15 GB of monthly data transfer, and a table for session persistence.

Okay, now that all settings are in place, you can click the Create Skill button in the top-right corner of the screen. This button will generate the actual skill in our Amazon Developer account.

Modifying Your First Alexa Skill

Now if you navigate to the Alexa Developer Console, you’ll find your skill listed there. Click the edit button to start modifying the skill.

Next, Amazon will display the build tab for the Cat Fact skill. On the left-hand side, you’ll find a list of intents that are defined for the skill. As said before, by default the Alexa Skills Kit generates a Cancel, Stop, Help, and NavigateHome intent. The first three are helpful for a user that wants to quit the skill or doesn’t know how to use it. The last one, NavigateHome, is only used for complex skills that involve multiple steps.

Step 1: Verify Invocation Name

First of all, let’s verify if the invocation name for the skill is correct. The name should say “custom cat fact”.

In case you change the name, make sure to hit the Save Model button on top of the page.

The post How to Build Your First Amazon Alexa Skill appeared first on SitePoint.

Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Designrfix/~3/46q9EHrMTQk/bad-graphic-design

Nothing stands out more than a glaring design fail. A company’s success can rise and fall on the visual branding done by its hired graphic designers. In a fast-paced business world, one mistake can make an entire campaign implode.  Companies want to have faith their graphic designers know how to prevent a crisis. If you want […]

The post 8 Bad Graphic Design Mistakes You DON’T Want To Make appeared first on designrfix.com.

Original Source: https://www.hongkiat.com/blog/instagram-tools-mobile-apps/

With 1 billion monthly active users and 50% daily active users, Instagram is more than a popular social media platform: it’s a powerful marketing platform for every brand worldwide — big…

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Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/1stwebdesigner/~3/2O6PzBMEYFE/

If you’re coding with JavaScript, jQuery should be one of the first things you install. The lightweight JavaScript library optimizes and simplifies core features like Ajax handling, animation, event handling, and HTML document transversal – in other words, it makes working with JavaScript a lot easier.

Many developers have released plugins built on the jQuery framework for free. These can add key features and effects to your website, including autocomplete, file upload, or image zooming.

Ready to install cool effects and awesome jQuery plugins? Here are some of the best libraries you’re sure to love.

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fancybox

This lightbox plugin can display various types of media in a beautiful darkened popup. Besides images and videos, it also accepts custom content like Google Maps and can resize to fit them. Plus, it’s easily extensible with a little CSS and JavaScript knowledge. It’s free to use in open source projects, or commercially with a license.

jQuery File Upload

If you need to add file upload functionality to your site, this little widget has everything. You can upload any type of file with unlimited file size, and even drop them right into the browser.

fullPage.js

Looking for a quick and easy way to create a one-page, scrolling, full-screen website? All the tutorials are here to help you get this library set up and working, with in-depth explanations for every option. Open source projects can use it for free.

Tiny Slider

This library may be called Tiny Slider, but it includes dozens of demos, each with its own unique functionality. Fixed widget, vertical, even lazy loading sliders; test out each demo until you find the one you want.

Select2

Is the default HTML select box not doing it for you? Select2 implements an easily customizable, extremely extensible dropdown select box including pages and pages of helpful documentation.

Ajax AutoComplete for jQuery

If you need to add an autocompleting text box to your website, this lightweight file is the way to go. It takes up practically no space, yet provides advanced autocomplete functionality.

Flotcharts

This is more than just a simple chart plugin. While it’s easy to use thanks to the API documentation, it also comes with advanced functionality like real-time plotting and beautiful aesthetics.

pickadate.js

Responsive and customizable, pickadate.js makes creating a date or time selection box as easy as installing this lightweight plugin. Check out the API documentation to customize it even further.

jQuery Zoom

Image zooming is no longer a hassle with this jQuery plugin. Install the files and assign it to an image, then hover or click to zoom in. It’s easy as that.

SortableJS

Sortable lists made easy. Drag and drop to reorder lists you define, with features like cloning, multi-list, or image grids included. For a simple concept, this is a pretty complex library.

jQuery Knob

Compatible with mouse, keyboard, and mobile controls, these draggable dials will work on almost any platform. There are all kinds of dials built in that turn and count in various ways.

iCheck

Light, accessible, and supported on most devices and browsers, iCheck is perfect if you need to implement checkboxes or radio buttons. It comes with 6 beautiful skins built in which you can easily customize with CSS.

DataTables

Tables are never easy to deal with, but DataTables makes it a total breeze. Just load it up and put in a single function, and you’ll instantly generate a table on your site. Then you can add pages, search, sorting, and more. Plus, it supports both themes and extensions.

Save Time with jQuery Plugins

With web development, there’s no reason to reinvent the wheel. These jQuery plugins and effects have already done all the work for you. All you need to do is paste some code in, and you’ll be able to enhance your site with shiny new features.

Most of these plugins are totally free to use. Implement them into your sites and extend them for your own designs, and shave off what could have been days of programming work.

Original Source: https://www.hongkiat.com/blog/macbook-portable-battery/

If you love working in a cafe or library — like me — or a co-working space with fewer power outlets, you require extra juice for your MacBook. Why? Although MacBook Pro promises “10…

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