Intro
Doubling Down On Voice
There's such a stready drum beat of good news in the voice space, but perhaps this statement from Jeff Bezos is reason to feel most bullish:
"Our 2017 projections for Alexa were very optimistic," the Amazon CEO said in the company's fourth-quarter earnings release on Thursday. "We don't see surprises of this magnitude very often -- expect us to double down."
Coming from the fellow (and company) that practically invented cloud computing, that is saying something.
News
Google and Nest reunite in push to add AI to every gadget
Another indication of Google's commitment to the voice space. Voice and Home Automation are so tightly linked, it only makes sense to have the team building the Nest product-line to be working shoulder-to-shoulder with the Google Home/Assistant folks.
The Nest Hello looks pretty cool too.
Analysis
Patent US9548053 - Audible command filtering - Google Patents
Interesting background for those of you enjoying the Superbowl advertisements, but wondering why your home devices were not being triggered.
Tutorials & Reference
Building Engaging Alexa Skills: Why Testing and Automation Matter : Alexa Blogs
Why testing and automation are critical to Alexa skills and voice apps, brought to you by one-half of the editorial team here ;-) Hope you enjoy.
Contests and Events
Meetups and Dev Days
Boston Alexa Developers - Feb 15
Voice First and Social Isolation DC Metro - Feb 15
St. Louis Alexa Meetup - Feb 21
Alexa Dev Days San Jose and New York City - See all
The Alexa and Arduino Smart Home Challenge from Hackster.io - Now until Feb 24
Conferences
Bottish Digital Conference (free!) - Feb 22
Voice and Beyond Conference - Spring 2018
Outro
Once Bitten, Twice Shy - Ian Hunter - YouTube
That this song was originally recorded by Ian Hunter of Mott the Hoople may be a detail only important to the editors. Regardless, enjoy.