We just want to take a moment to thank members of the #VoiceFirst community, those who make developing for Alexa and the Google Assistant better, and especially you, our listeners, for being here during the past year.

The concept of an Intent in the #VoiceFirst world seems straightforward - it is what a user is trying to express. But how Amazon Alexa has implemented the concept is slightly different than how the Google Assistant and Dialogflow have. Allen and Mark explore some of these differences as Allen works to prepare multivocal, a development library, for use with Alexa.

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It is difficult to believe that the Google Home launched just over 5 years ago, and Alexa just celebrated its 7th birthday. Allen reminisces about his first steps writing for the Google Assistant with info about how he created a #VoiceFirst presentation, where his voice changed the slides, and how things have evolved since.  

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Ever have an idea that you just can't shake? Mark had an idea for an APL processor based on the PostCSS processor, but it wasn't quite working out the way he expected it to, so he and Allen chat about it a bit. But in between when they first discuss it, and when they return to record another episode - he's resolved the problems and released it. Get some insight into both phases of this process.

More about PostAPL: https://github.com/postapl

#VoiceFirst

Sometimes you get into a funk, and you need a little bit of self-care to just deal with a week. Maybe you like talking to a friend when you're in that kind of mood. For Mark and Allen, a chat is just the sort of thing to lift their spirits. Even more so when they're talking about coding and how to tackle a design problem for one of the #VoiceFirst open source projects they work on - Speech Markdown. Let's peek in on their conversation to see how they explore and resolve the issues about adding a new feature.

Learn more about Speech Markdown: speechmarkdown.org

Mark and Allen continue talking about the most recent hardware announced from Amazon and how this may mark a change, for both Alexa and the Google Assistant, towards a more widget-focused environment. What do you think this means in a #VoiceFirst world?

Mark is joined by fellow Alexa Champion Darian Johnson to talk about Darian's various hardware projects, from a smart mirror to an Enterprise computer, and the latest hardware announcements from Amazon and Alexa, including the Echo Show 15 and their robot Astro.  

For more about Darian and his projects:

Amazon has been going all-in with Alexa Presentation Language recently, and Mark has been taking a deeper dive into it and working on some custom components. Allen and Mark discuss some of the basics of APL.

Sites mentioned: apl.ninja

That's "Phonemes And More", as in the SSML Phoneme tag, and some other tags that are now available for the Google Assistant. Allen and Mark discuss how these tags are useful for developers when trying to create great responses that sound "just right". 

Websites mentioned: ssml.guru

Mark has updated his Picture Guesser skill with some new features, and he and Allen discuss what went into these new features. What developer components do you use to "plus up" your skills and actions?