Alexa In Canada: Amazon Alexa And Echo Skills, Tips, And Tricks For Canadians

Vancouver Amazon Alexa Meetup See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In this episode, Teri welcomes Rachel Batish, co-founder and Chief Revenue Officer of Conversation.one. Teri and Rachel talk about the financial side of voice, voicebots and Rachel’s upcoming book.Welcome Rachel Batish!Back in Israel, her native country, Rachel studied Political Science and International Relations, in hopes of becoming a public servant. However, her love for words and interest in design and user experience had something else in store for her. Now in the US for the past three years, she is the co-founder and chief revenue officer of Conversation.one, a data management company for voice applications.What is Conversation.one?When Rachel started Conversation.one, she knew she wanted to create an impact in the financial sector. She knew that voice could bring something new to the table and that it could help financial organizations have better conversations with their clients. Rachel points out that, when you are using voice, you are screen-less and this forces you to create a real conversation. D

In this episode, Teri welcomes Chris Brogan, president of Chris Brogan Media. Teri and Chris talk about marketing, short-form audio, and flash briefings.Welcome Chris Brogan!With 9 books and the coveted title of New York Times’ Best Selling Author under his belt, there’s no denying Chris really knows his stuff. He has used his marketing prowess to help massive companies like Disney, Coca-Cola, GM, Google, Microsoft and many more. He is a keynote speaker, and has appeared on the Dr. Phil Show. Chris started blogging in 1998, and podcasting in 2005, and has always been on the leading edge of marketing, looking for ways to use technology to drive better human interactions.What’s your take on audio or voice as a form of content?Chris believes there are many times when audio can be a really useful form of content, like when commuting or going to the gym. According to Chris, all these are opportunities to capture peoples’ attention. Chris cites the US Bureau of Labour Statistics’ report, a report that states h

In this episode, Teri welcomes Ben Smith, of Voice Entrepreneur and the managing partner at Chancebending Ventures, a digital consulting agency. Ben is also the SVP of Business Development at Vobile. Teri and Ben talk about entrepreneurship, how to get a head start in the voice space and how voice is different from other technologies.Welcome Ben Smith!Ben’s career has taken him down a variety of paths with a variety of interesting experiences: first an early Google employee; then founder of a company in Singapore; then helping Google set up a video streaming service that you might have heard of – it goes by the name of YouTube(!); to now running his own consultancy company. What at first may seem like a digressive course makes perfect sense once you learn of his two life-long passions: entrepreneurship and technology. It’s his passion for both that has led Ben to where he is today. That, and his jump-first-build-a-plane-on-your-way-down mantra!Tell us a bit more about Voice Entrepreneur. What that is and what

Live from Voice Summit 2018 - An Interview with Teri Fisher See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

VoiceFirst Event Highlights, Stats, Achievements, and More! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In this episode, Teri talks about the amazing experience he had at Voice Summit 2018. With more than 3000 attendants and talks that covered every aspect of voice-first technology, from smart homes to voice gaming, it’s safe to say it was a smashing success. With so many amazing people around, it was impossible to sit down and have a comprehensive talk with everyone, so Teri asked some of the top influencers to share their thoughts in the form of a clip. So, here they are, from Canada to Germany to Israel, listen to what they have to say about voice technology’s future.1. Bradley MetrockCEO of Score PublishingRuns The Alexa Conference and is also the brains behind Voicefirst.fmBradley was a guest on the Alexa in Canada Podcast. Listen to his interview here.“There is a lot of excitement about voice. A lot of startups and established companies trying to learn how to do voice.”2. Florian HollandtGame Developer at JovoOne of the key authority figures in voice-first gamesVisit his blog

Alexa Ambient Sound and Noise Skills See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Prime Day 2018 is Here!Prime Day is here and there are incredible deals on a bunch of Amazon Echo and Alexa products, including some of the lowest prices we have ever seen! This page has a complete list of all the Alexa products that are on sale for 36 hours, starting July 16, 2018 at 12pm PST/3pm EST.Subscribe to PrimeAs you may know, Prime Day sales are only available for Prime members, so if you are not already a member, sign up here for a 30 day free trial and then get shopping! Don’t forget – there are tons of other benefits to having a prime membership as well: Amazon Music, free shipping, free photo storage, and much more.Echo Device Bundles.Not sure which device to get?Join the community and get instant access to our Echo Device Cheat Sheet!JOIN NOW!1. Echo Spot + Ring Video Doorbell Pro BundleRegular price: $469.98    Over 35% Off! Sale Price: ~$305.49The Echo Spot and Ring Video Doorbell Pro Bundle is an awesome deal! In fact, you save about $165 bucks with th

Calling, Messages, Drop-in, and an IFTTT Hack See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Two weeks ago, I did a countdown of the top flash briefings in Canada. Today we are going to tackle the top ten Amazon Alexa skills in Canada, based on average customer ratings, of course! Before we proceed, one small caveat: I selected the skills based on the categorical meaning of the word. These are interactive skills and not just sound effects. I decided to sort the skills this way so you can see Alexa at her best. With that in mind, time to countdown the top ten!Ready? Here we go! The Top Ten Amazon Alexa Skills in Canada!#10 AnyPod, by Harrison Digital Media.Love podcasts? This podcast-player skill has thousands of them! So, what’s cool about it? There are no buttons to fiddle with: your voice is the remote. To get started, you can ask Alexa to open AnyPod. After the greeting, you can dive right into your favourite podcast by asking Alexa to play it. You can also pause, fast forward, or rewind. This is the perfect skill to podcast away those 30 minutes you have free.#9 Word of the Day Quiz, by Volley In

In this episode, Teri welcomes Pete Erickson, founder and CEO of Modev.com, and creator of events and communities including Voicehacks.com, Security by Design, Code Writers Workshop, Machinery.io, DevOpsNirvana and DevelopingIoT. Pete and his team are putting on Voice Summit in July, one of the year’s largest voice tech conferences.Welcome Pete Erickson!How did you get your start in voice technology?Pete got into the technology space by way of community building. Flash-back to ten years ago: Pete had just exited his third start-up and was looking for his next opportunity. On seeing the iPhone and the App Store gain traction and noticing that there was no community around this amazing technology, he decided to start Modev, a meet-up community. Fast-forward to today: Modev, now with 40 people, does community-building at all levels and has been working with Amazon for the past seven years. Modev now has a close relationship with the Alexa team.Why is the community building important for technology?Mode

With all the awesome guests I’ve had over the past few weeks, I had not had the chance to do a solo show in a while. Today, I want to focus on what I think is the prime real state of audio technology. I’m talking, of course, about flash briefings! And what better way to dive into them than by going over the best ones. Here is a list of the current top ten flash briefings in Canada, based on average customer ratings! Time to countdown the top ten!Ready? Here we go! The Top 10 Flash Briefings in Canada!#10 Easter Egg Daily, by LME Skills.The first of the flash briefings on our list is all about Easter eggs, and these Easter eggs are fun little nuggets of entertainment. When enabled, this flash briefing provides you with short statements or questions (in Alexa’s voice) on what you can say to Alexa, like “Why are there so many rainbows?” for example. There are lots of other fun tidbits that you can learn about through the flash briefing. The Easter eggs are curated from the Things to Ask Alexa archive, on th

In this episode, Teri welcomes Kesha Williams. Kesha is a software engineer, mentor, professor, speaker, tech blogger, and S.T.E.M. advocate. She is the Founder of Colors of STEM & the Inventor of SAM (a predictive policing machine inspired by Minority Report that predicts the likelihood of crime) & Live Plan Eat (an Amazon Alexa skill that takes the stress out of meal planning).Welcome Kesha Williams!Kesha’s love for technology started a long time ago. In fact, as a child, she referred to coding as “playing on the computer.” And play she did. Starting in middle school, and all the way through high school, she spent hours coding so that when it came to choosing her major, she chose Computer Science without a second thought.What are you doing now?Kesha has been an Engineer Manager at Chick-fil-A for thirteen years. She currently leads a team that builds custom software applications for both corporate and customers. Her team researches cool and emerging technology, and that’s how they came to know Alexa

In this episode, Teri welcomes Dave Isbitski, Chief Evangelist of Alexa and Echo at Amazon, and voice-technology and natural language understanding educator.Welcome Dave Isbitski!As a child who grew up with a healthy serving of 1980’s sci-fi films in his entertainment diet, Dave Isbitski naturally believed that technology was the way forward. This started him off on a winding path that led to where he is today. In the 1990’s, he offered consulting services to corporate companies. He then worked as a technical evangelist for Microsoft, in the Pharmaceutical sector. In 2008, he was asked to start a community to teach people new software. He was the liaison between engineers and developers and the marketing team. His goal was to demystify and explain software to the average “lay person.” In 2013, Amazon entered the picture. Amazon showed Dave the Kindle Fire tablets and asked him to work his magic like he had done for Microsoft. He built a community around Android apps, the Amazon TV and the Fire phone

In this episode, Teri welcomes Bret Kinsella, the editor and publisher of Voicebot.ai, the top news and commentary site on all things voice and A.I.Welcome Bret Kinsella!As someone who’s been working in technology since the mid 90’s, Bret has seen how the biggest technologies today, web, mobile and social, evolved. He founded Voicebot.ai in September 2016, after seeing the potential of voice-first technology in interactive voice ads.When he’s not speaking at one of the numerous conferences he’s invited to, Bret is hosting the Voicebot.ai podcast.Below you will find a summary of the important points that we discussed. Enjoy!What is Voicebot.ai?Voicebot.ai is a hub for all things to do with voice technology. They have built a large community around their website; On it, you can find voice technology-related research and news. They also have a popular podcast, where they interview people who are changing the industry. Unlike other tech blogs, Voicebot takes a more scientific approach to data and research.What tr

isolation.Welcome Heidi Culbertson!Heidi has a tremendous amount of experience in emerging technologies. Her current focus is on voice technology and it’s application for the aging population. Heidi joins me to discuss the growing use of voice-first technologies among this most important group of people. Heidi in a well-renowned speaker, having appeared at numerous conferences and events, and she truly is a wealth of knowledge in this field.Below you will find a summary of the important points that we dicussed. Enjoy!Aging and Voice-First TechnologyHeidi discusses with us her experience with her mother (Marvee) who developed macular degeneration, and how using an Amazon Echo helped to give Marvee back her independence.There are currently 55,000,000 people in the US over the age of 65, making this area of voice-technology extremely relevant today.Voice-first technology provides “micro-moments of better quality of life.”The emergence of the Amazon Echo reminds Heidi of when the iPhone first came out – we will s

In this episode, Teri welcomes Armel Beaudry Dembe, the founder of Trebble.FM, to talk about his new all-Canadian platform that makes it super-easy to create your own newscasts for Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant for free.Welcome Armel Beaudry Kembe!Armel is a software engineer and has extensive experience in audio technology and communications. It was a pleasure to have him on the podcast to talk about his new platform, Trebble.FM, and how you can use it to create your own “capsules” of audio for your audience to consume.Armel is originally from Camaroon. In 2015, he moved to Ontario and studied software engineering at the University of Ottawa. He then worked for a few communications software companies, before eventually starting Trebble.What is Trebble.FM?Trebble.FM is a free service that allows users with no technical experience to record byte-size “shortcast” voice messages (aka “capsules”) on Trebble.fm using your smartphone or internet browser. Then, anyone in the world with a voice-activated spe

In this episode, Teri describes the milestones and accomplishments at the six-month anniversary of the launch of Alexa in Canada. We cover the highlights of Amazon Alexa news, as well as the Alexa in Canada website, podcast, flash briefing and community.Happy Six-Month Anniversary!Today marks the six-month anniversary of the launch of Alexa in Canada blog and so much has happened! Today I cover the milestones and accomplishments of Amazon as well as an update in the Alexa in Canada community, from a consumer perspective.Amazon Accomplishments!A post by Voicebot.AI reports that 7% of people in the US had access to smart speakers after 3 months on the market; compare that with today, 8% of Canadians have access to a smart speaker in less than one year. There is tremendous growth and adoption of this technology.Amazon launched 3 Echo Devices in Canada in December 2017: Echo, Echo Dot, Echo Plus.Amazon launched the Echo Spot in Canada in April 2018.Amazon is constantly obtaining more market share i

In this episode, Teri welcomes Dr. Matt Cybulsky, behavioural economist, and founder and chief consultant of Ionia Behavioral Insights, to talk about behavioural changes and voice first technology, voice first privacy issues, Alexa applications within the Canadian health care system, and the power of motivating human behaviours with emotions routed in voice first technology.Welcome Dr. Matt Cybulsky!Matt Cybulsky is a psychologist and behavioural economist, and he has studied persuasion and influence extensively. He now offers his expertise to organizations to help guide behavioural changes through technology and innovation, particularly in the government and healthcare delivery sectors. While blending psychology, decision economics, and social influence to understand human decision-making, he designs choices that impact key decisions in the marketplace. Matt is a sought-after speaker regarding behavioural changes, insights, and healthcare.It was a pleasure having Dr. Cybulsky on the podcast and we covered a