Joseph Jaquinta, CTO, TsaTsaTzu
Continuing to work through the backlog. To use any of these skills, go to the “skills” tab of your companion app.
Translator for Alexa Philosophical Creations
Use Translate to translate English words and phrases into over 50 languages. Alexa will tell you the translation of words and short phrases in languages she can speak. Translations of longer phrases, or into languages that use a non-Latin alphabet, will appear on a card in the Alexa App.
Translation is near and dear to me heart. I spent several years working with machine translation, and one of my better patents is in the field.
Ease of Use: 2 out of 5. Any skill that involves free format text input is going to be difficult. This is no exception. It took me about eight tries to get it to translate my first phrase. It got hung up because it didn’t speak Irish (one of the few languages I know several phrases in). But it also refused to recognize Telugu, which it does speak.
Although it was good at paging through the languages it could speak. But only doing 3 at a time was very tedious. There did not appear to be a simple look up such as “Do you speak Irish”. They also did not appear on the card.
Usefulness: 2 out of 5. It’s a nifty lookup, but I couldn’t think of somewhere I’d actually use it. Usually I want to go from another language to English, and this doesn’t do that.
The pronunciation was much better than expected. It was still terrible, but at least the effort was made to render it phonetically. I couldn’t get it to translate into a language I knew, so I can’t properly judge if it is useful. The app does give the text rendering as well as the phonetic rendering. It’s tucked away in the title. Somehow I missed that the first time around! Even when it says “I don’t know how to speak Japanese, but see the companion app for a translation” it doesn’t actually put the translation there.
After it translates it immediately hangs up. There is no reprompt. No way to get it to repeat what it just said.
Novelty: 4 out of 5. No one has tried this before. I thought about it, but rejected it. So it is good to see someone stepping up to the plate. But it has a lot to overcome before it is genuinely useful.
Overall: 2 out of 5. This is a very poor use case for deploying to Alexa. It uses free format text and non-English text. Both of these are outside the target for what Alexa is good at. It is a brave attempt, and is mostly done well technically. But product wise it just doesn’t fly.
Banana Game Alex Rosen
Say any name, and Alexa will play the banana-fana game with it. For example, you can say “Alexa, open The Name Game and use Amber,” and Alexa will respond with “Amber amber bo-bamber, banana-fana fo-famber, fee fi mo-mamber, Amber!” Try it with your name!
Another Amazonian cranking out a skill.
Ease of Use: 3 out of 5. In the past I’ve given full marks to trivial interfaces. I’m changing my mind now. There isn’t really anything to this interface, therefore there wasn’t actually any design in it. So from this skill forward I’m only giving trivial interfaces neutral marks.
Ironically, this will pull this skill up.
Usefulness: 1 out of 5. This does exactly what it says. It takes a name, and mangles it in some child’s rhyme. The problem is that the pacing is off, much like when it reads Knock-Knock jokes (which is why my skill breaks it up!) The most fun I had with this was trying to tick Alexa into saying dirty words.
Novelty: 2 out of 5. OK, so no one has done a word mangling skill before. I’m not really sure this is a bad thing. Maybe translating into pig latin is next.
Overall: 1 out of 5. This looks and plays like something someone thought of and wrote during an Amazon Developer Day. It took almost no effort to do, and really doesn’t achieve much.
Mirror Mirror Alex Rosen
Do you remember the Queen in Snow White and her awesome magic mirror? Now you can have your own magic mirror!
Just say “Alexa, ask Mirror Mirror On The Wall who is the fairest of them all?” and like magic Alexa will say something interesting. It could be something reassuring, something wise, something inspirational, something fun, or something even just a little bit strange.
If you ever feel like you need a little pick me up then you need your own magic mirror.
An uplifting fortune cookie skill.
Ease of Use: 2 out of 5. It’s just a fortune cookie, no real design here. The quote doesn’t even come up on the card. This would have been helpful for the ones that went by too quickly.
Usefulness: 3 out of 5. If you are looking for inspiration, sure, go for it. This one is more “out there”. I don’t know where the text comes from, but it doesn’t seem as much thought went into it as, say, Focus Word.
Novelty: 2 out of 5. Nothing really new here. I do like the “Oh my queen” prefix. It gives it a bit more personality.
Overall: 2 out of 5. Another trivially developed fortune cookie skill. A few giggles, but not something I’ll leave enabled.
