We are delighted to announce that kid skills published in the UK and Germany are now eligible to earn Alexa Developer Rewards. Earlier this month, we announced that Alexa supports kid skills in the UK and Germany.

As previously announced to US and UK developers, we are very happy to announce that tunable lighting control is now available in Germany and fully supports German.

„Als Alexa 2016 in Deutschland eingeführt wurde, wusste das Team von mytaxi, dass Sprachassistenten („Voice first“) ein neues Interaktionsniveau mit Geräten und Dienstleistungen ermöglichen würden.“

Today, we are excited to announce that developers in the UK and Germany can now use speechcons to build more creative voice experiences with UK English and German words and phrases.

Today, we are happy to announce Alexa developers can now add skills to the Flash Briefing on Alexa in UK English and German using the Flash Briefing Skill API, a new addition to the Alexa Skills Kit.

With the Flash Briefing Skill API, you no longer need to build a voice interaction model to handle customer requests for the news. When you configure your compatible RSS feed and build skills that connect directly to Flash Briefing, customers will be able to easily access your content via the Alexa Flash Briefing, which delivers pre-recorded audio clips and text-to-speech (TTS) updates.

The availability of Flash Briefing skills in local languages means that you can now deliver truly localized content to customers via voice. Here are a few ideas to get started with Flash Briefing skills:

• Create a skill with news from any provider that authorizes you to use their content, and provides a public API.
• If you’re a blogger you can configure your RSS feed to build a skill for your readers.
• Podcast host? Simply host the audio for your podcast and provide a JSON feed to allow your listeners to hear your latest episode as they get ready for the day.

In 2012, brothers Maurice and Marcel Eisterhues built a smartphone app for their father. TorAlarm—German for GoalAlert—had a simple purpose: to help dad keep up with the scores for his favorite football teams. (That’s soccer for readers in the USA.)

What started as a fun project turned into a true opportunity for the two German entrepreneurs. TorAlarm’s popularity grew steadily, until in 2014, the brothers and their father founded a company with the same name. Today, TorAlarm is among Germany’s most popular apps for tracking the scores and schedules of football matches across the country,with over a million users in Germany alone.

Maurice and Marcel knew instantly voice would be the next step in TorAlarm’s evolution when they saw the upcoming launch of Amazon Echo in Germany.

“We were both totally amazed when we first saw the Amazon Echo,” says Maurice. “We’re always interested in new technology, so we decided very quickly we wanted to be part of this launch.”

In September of last year, we announced that Amazon Echo and Alexa were coming to the UK and Germany. Since the announcement, German customers and developers in the exclusive invite only program have been receiving their devices and German developers have brought hundreds of new skills to Alexa using the Alexa Skills Kit (ASK).

Now that Amazon Echo and Echo Dot devices are available for purchase in Germany,  developers can reach even more customers with their Alexa skills.  

As a developer, you can teach Alexa new German skills using the Alexa Skills Kit (ASK). ASK is a collection of self-service APIs, tools, documentation and code samples that make it easy to create voice experiences and enable you to get started quickly. 

If you would like to create something from scratch, our templates are a great place to start. Or if you already have an English (US) or English (UK) skill, you can add German to it. Check out this post to learn how to create multi-language skills.

Get a free Alexa Developer Hoodie

Developers who publish a German Alexa skill in March can get a free Alexa hoodie.  Learn more about how to get your hoodie.