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jjaquinta asked Jul 13, '15

My Echo development book just posted!

Thanks to everyone for posting interesting question to make me think. I've collected my thoughts and examples and put them together into a book. It covers equally Design, Development and Testing and is meant to complement, not replace, the Amazon docs. Since this is an evolving field, I expect I'll be doing updates to it every couple of weeks. http://www.amazon.com/How-Program-Amazon-Echo-Development-ebook/dp/B011J6AP26 If you like it, please add a review or rating!

alexa skills kit showcase

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James Chivers answered Jul 14, '15

Congratulations Jo! Bought a copy, and will review of course :)

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jjaquinta answered Jul 14, '15

Yay! $.35 in the bank! :-) Working up to being able to afford a coffee from Starbucks.

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James L Guinn answered Jul 15, '15

Great book and the TsaTsaTzu Echo Simulator looks very promising. Launches right up--not far enough along to use it just yet. My thing is I still need to learn web services programming. Still working on Hello World examples in Lambda, but I do have all of the Node.js examples responding properly. In any event, I did post a review, and hope it helps. Thanks again for a great book. I'm sure I'll read it a couple more times and review the code samples and other resources in more detail. Regards, Jim

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jjaquinta answered Jul 15, '15

Thanks for the review! It is much appreciated! There are some new features that I've checked into EchoSim that I'll be writing up today sometime. They make it a lot easier to test Lambda functions. I also added in regular expression matching for scripts and the ability to group scripts together into test-suites. I'll update some of the doc in the project and roll up a release today. I'll put step-by-step details into the next update to the book in a week or two.

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James L Guinn answered Jul 16, '15

So are you a millionaire, yet? :-)... Your book is listed as a #1 Best Seller. I'm just curious because I just bought some other book also listed as a #1 best seller with the name "Echo" in the name ("Amazon Echo - Master Your Amazon Echo, User Guide and Manual."). Unfortunately, that one reads like a middle-school book report, and I feel a bit duped for paying $10 for it. Is there some glitch in Amazon's sales listings giving any book containing "Echo" a #1 Best Seller rating, or have you suddenly earned a lot of (well deserved) sales? Just curious!

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jjaquinta answered Jul 16, '15

Well, lets just say my earnings are enough for a cup of coffee at Starbucks. One of the large ones! :-) I think the key to being a #1 best seller is to pick an obscure category. I'm #1 in "Speech & Audio Processing". #2 is some $56 textbook. I think there are only eight books in that category. So, go me! Well, maybe not. On the plus side, it's sold vastly more than the fiction I've been writing for years. So that's something. I can't promise it won't read like a "middle-school book report". My wife is doing an editing pass and all I can see over her shoulder is red ink. :-} But I hope to do new editions every couple of weeks. So it will get better. It's also only $0.99. (The lowest price Amazon would let me list it for!)

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James L Guinn answered Jul 17, '15

Your book reads great and has excellent content relevant to programming Echo. I appreciate owning it for the price I paid. The book that reads like a middle school book report claims to master the Echo, costs $10 and has a lot of positive reviews written in the same middle school style. Oh well! Back to AWS tuts for me!

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justin answered Jul 30, '15

Great stuff so far, J! I'm right around the halfway mark, but I can say I definitely appreciate you helping guide structure and process, rather than focusing too much on technical execution -- not an easy feat for emerging technology markets :) I have been highlighting little typos or quirks as find them, let me know if you'd like an email. Thanks again!

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micheal answered Jul 31, '15

Hey J I skimmed the book but from what I saw it looked good. Im sure they are a few typos and other things but hopefully this will help me on my way to becoming a alexa master

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jjaquinta answered Jul 31, '15

I'm glad you are finding it useful. You are welcome to send typos and suggestions to me at jo@111george.com. The book is going through editing right now. It's taking a little time (my editor isn't technical), but the revision should be out next week. After that, I'll start working on a Business Development section, some additional sections in programming about Lambda functions, and some additional sections in Testing on the test suite harness that's been added to EchoSim.

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