We are happy to announce that lock control and query capabilities are now also available to developers building skills for the UK.

In just weeks, Brookfield Residential built a fully-functional, Alexa-powered model home in its newest subdivision.

When designing your skill to work on Echo Show, choose one of the available templates based on the interaction pattern you plan to use. Each template maps to a pattern or scenario for an optimal customer experience.

Today we are excited to introduce entertainment capabilities as part of the Smart Home Skill API. Now customers can easily control cloud-connected TVs, AV Receivers, IR Hubs and even connected speakers without invoking a specific skill.

Today we announced that we now enable companies to control entertainment devices with the Smart Home Skill API in the Alexa Skills Kit. Here is an overview of how to connect your TVs, AV Receivers, IR Hubs, and even connected speakers to Alexa.

We designed Echo Show so that the screen augments and enhances what skills offer to customers. You can complement your skill interactions with imagery, blocks of text, video, list navigation and selection, touch input, and more.

With the arrival of Echo Show, the Allrecipes team leveraged the new built-in display templates in the Alexa Skills Kit to offer visual content including streaming video. The result: Allrecipes’ tried-and-true skill for Alexa enriched with beautiful visual aids on the Echo Show screen.

Today, we’re excited to announce Alexa’s participation again at AWS re:Invent 2017, the largest gathering of the global Amazon developer community.

Last year, we introduced the Flash Briefing Skill API in October 2016 to enable you to add content feeds to flash briefing on Alexa in the form of pre-recorded audio and text-to-speech (TTS). Since then, we have seen a steady increase in the number of flash briefing skill submissions. To help you...

A visual user interface can be a great complement to a voice-first user experience. In this blog post, we’ll walk you through how to build an Alexa skill using the core developer capabilities of Echo Show.

Echo Show, Amazon’s new device that brings you everything you love about Alexa, is now shipping to customers in the US. While your skills will work out of the box, we know that many of you want to augment existing skills by creating unique visual experiences for Echo Show.

Today, we are happy to announce that you can enable customers to view live video feeds from their smart home cameras on Echo Show with the Smart Home Skill API.

“Most of the time, our customers want to know what is happening right then at a certain location,” says Naveen Chhangani, Senior Director of Product Management at Arlo. “With Echo Show, there is no dependency on the phone or the app; the results are immediate.”

Ring, which makes outdoor home security products, built a skill for Alexa using the new camera capability in the Smart Home Skill API. This skill enables Ring customer to say, “Alexa, show me the front door,” then be able to see and listen to the visitor at the front door on Echo Show.

Today, we are incredibly excited to announce a new feature for Alexa developers to take advantage of: entity resolution. This enables you to define synonyms for the Alexa Service to resolve rather than having to figure this out in your code.