Read how easy it was for SpamPhobia to join Subscribe with Amazon, a self-service subscription marketplace, to streamline its payment and billing process.

With finals coming to an end and graduations happening for some, being a college student these past few weeks was no easy task. Nevertheless, students around the world brought their innovations to life by participating in our Hack-Your-World with Amazon Alexa contest. Check out the winners. 

Today we’re excited to share that this feature now includes usage information about your smart home skills and flash briefings.

For eMeals, joining Subscribe with Amazon, a self-service subscription marketplace, was a “no-brainer.” “It was a clear opportunity because getting up and running is frictionless,” said Doug McLaulin, head of growth marketing for eMeals. 

Alexa and ecobee are at the forefront of voice user interface (VUI) design. We spoke with Tarun Tuli, director of embedded systems at ecobee, to learn how he and his team are approaching product development with voice control as the primary user interface.

Check out what you missed last week on the Amazon Appstore Developer blog.

We're excited to announce that Microsemi has released a 2-mic hands-free audio front end solution as part of the expanding Development Kits for AVS offering. The Microsemi AcuEdge™ dev kit enables you to design high-quality voice recognition interfaces while reducing engineering time and cost.

Do you have an Android app or game? If so, you may be able to publish it on the Amazon Appstore without needing to make any changes. Eighty-five percent of Android apps are already compatible with the Appstore platform and don’t require any additional development work.

We are very happy to announce tunable lighting control, a feature in the Smart Home Skill API, is now available in the UK.

Simplicity is at the core of all Hive devices, which made integration with Alexa a natural next step, says Elvin Nagamootoo, Hive product lead. Using the Alexa Skills Kit (ASK), the Hive team built a smart home skill and a custom skill.