Episode 53 - What's coming soon? Alexa Live Review
29 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
At "Alexa Live" last week, Amazon bombarded us with a pile of new features that developers will soon...
Episode 52 - The Anniversary Show!
22 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Mark and Allen, with a little help from our friends, celebrate one year of Two Voice Devs by looking...
Episode 51 - Deprecation Station
15 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Things change, sure, but what happens when the platform you've developed for deprecates and removes ...
Episode 50 - "Hey Google, Talk to Two Voice Devs"
08 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Our 50th episode! Amazing! Thank you everyone who has been part of this along the way. We figured th...
Episode 49 - Ready for Release
02 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
You've designed the conversations, you've written the code, everything is tested. You can release yo...
Episode 48 - To Bixby and Beyond!
24 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This week, Roger Kibbe guest hosts, along with Mark, to discuss what he does as a Developer Evangeli...
Episode 47 - Lessons Learned the Hard Way
17 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Experience helps you to not make mistakes. But how do you get experience? By making mistakes. And be...
Episode 46 - Hey Google, Show Me The Money
10 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Eventually you're going to want to monetize your Google action and one way to do that is through in-...
Episode 45 - Alexa, Show Me the Money
03 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Eventually you're going to want to monetize your Alexa skill, and one way to do that is through In S...
Episode 44 - Promises, Promises
27 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Now that Google I/O has been completed, Allen and Mark discuss what new features have been delivered...
Episode 43 - "Live" From Mountain View, California
20 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This week is Google I/O, where Google regularly takes the opportunity to release what's new and comi...
Episode 42 - All Onboard!
13 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In episode 38, we talked about the general process about handling users when they start our skill or...
Episode 41 - Bug Hunting
06 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Do your skills or actions work on the first try? Of course they don't! That's why we have to find go...
Episode 40 - Be... Your... Best!
29 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In a lot of ways, #VoiceFirst development is like any other programming. But not quite. There are al...
Episode 39 - Voice Wants You!
23 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We've gotten a number of questions about developers from other fields getting started in voice. What...
Episode 38 - Hello, Greetings, and/or Salutations
15 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Make sure you get your conversation off to a good start with a good welcome message. While you'll re...
Episode 37 - Count on It!
08 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Keeping count of things, how often a user has asked for help or visited your skill/action, can be a ...
Episode 36 - Pete and Repeat
02 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Implementing "repeat" is one of the Intents that the review teams from both Amazon Alexa and the Goo...
Episode 35 - Gaming the System
25 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Did you notice that Mark was nominated for a Project Voice award for game development? To celebrate,...
Episode 34 - Voice your HTML
18 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We complete (for now!) our review of display technologies for voice. Mark dove into a project using ...
Episode 33 - Presenting: APL!
11 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Allen has some questions about the Alexa Presentation Language (APL), so who better to ask than one ...
Episode 32 - Intents? Events? Don't be tense!
04 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What kind of built-in Intents do Alexa and the Google Assistant provide to developers directly? How ...
Episode 31 - Speedy Service with a Smile
26 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Five to seven seconds. That's how long you have for your Alexa Skill or Google Assistant Action to r...
Episode 30 - What CAN you do?
18 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We received a question from Rebecca Evanhoe asking if there was a way to determine the features of o...
Episode 29 - Analytics Buffet with a side of Performance
11 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Following on from our previous episode about debugging, Allen and Mark discuss the related topics of...
Episode 28 - Bug Busters!
04 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Debugging is the bane of most developers, but it can be particularly tricky when it comes to voice -...
Episode 27 - Guests, Games, and Gap Years
28 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
For our first guest host, we're thrilled to welcome Ilarna Nche! She chats with Allen about how she ...
Episode 26 - Canvasing Smart Displays
21 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Allen thinks that the Interactive Canvas feature on the Google Assistant is one of the best technolo...
Episode 25 - What's New With You Two?
14 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Breaks are good times to get some coding done, so what have Allen and Mark been up to recently? Turn...
Episode 24 - Looking Forward: 2021
07 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Happy New Year! At least we hope it is. Mark and Allen take a glimpse at the year ahead and discuss ...
Episode 23 - Looking Back: 2020
31 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
With 2020 finally coming to a close, Allen and Mark look back at the past year - both personally and...
Episode 22 - All I Want For Christmas is a New Release
24 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, everyone! Mark was busy working on his new game, Snatch Words, a...
Episode 21 - Getting the Game On
17 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Have you played Snatch Word or Cross Talk yet? Mark and Allen chat about what it's taken to get thei...
Episode 20 - Dialogflow and DynamoDB
10 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Mark is getting ready to release his new game, Snatch Word, but there are a couple of details to wor...
Episode 19 - Oh Say Can You CMS
03 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We often talk about skills and actions being "all about the content", but how do we manage that cont...
Episode 18 - Thank YOU!
26 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In the US, today is Thanksgiving. Allen and Mark would like to thank all of you for watching and lis...
Episode 17 - Byte by Byte Putting it Together
19 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Building for voice is more than writing a simple program and you're done. A good voice skill or acti...
Episode 16 - One Little Spark of Inspiration
12 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Even before you start with a blank editor, you're faced with coming up with the idea. When it comes ...
Episode 15 - The Times They Are A-Changin'
05 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
With all the confusion about Daylight Saving Time transitions finally behind us, Mark and Allen disc...
Episode 14 - The Past is Prolog
29 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Where we are now has been shaped by our past. In light of this, Allen and Mark discuss how we got to...
Episode 13 - The Right Tool For the Job
22 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Mark and Allen discuss the tools they use to build Skills and Actions, and some of the tricks to mak...
Episode 12 - One new feature list just going up, and one even longer going down
15 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What happens when new features are released? Why, Mark and Allen break into song! And discuss the la...
Episode 11 - Where to Read the Friendly Manual
08 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Google Assistant Console: https://console.actions.google.com/ Main docs page: https://de...
Episode 10 - Top 10 Torments
01 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
For our milestone episode we wanted to change it up a little. So we present our Top Ten issues that ...
Episode 10 Teaser
29 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We have something special planned for our 10th episode! Curious what it might be?
Episode 9 - The Missing Account Linking
24 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Authentication and Authorization are some of the more difficult concepts that most developers end up...
Episode 8 - Permit Me, Please
17 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
As developers, the more information we can get about people talking with our skills or actions, the ...
Episode 7 - A different Type of show
10 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We never know where our conversations go, sometimes. This time, Mark and Allen chat about Intents, S...
Episode 6 - Do you see what I hear?
03 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Just because our skills and actions are Voice First doesn't mean they are voice Only. Alexa and the ...
Episode 5 - Outages and contexts and storage, oh my!
27 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Did you notice some Actions were having problems last week? Allen and Mark certainly did! So this we...
Episode 4 - Tracking the Wily Audio
20 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In an audio-first environment, you want to sound like a movie or TV soundtrack... but with interacti...
Episode 3 - Open Source Projects
13 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We both have open source projects that we contribute to in the voice community. We talk about our tw...
Episode 2 - Conversations
06 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Mark and Allen chat about tools we use to build conversations for Alexa and the Google Assistant. Ra...
Episode 1 - Action Links and Quick Links
01 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Learn about Action Links for Google Assistant and Quick Links for Amazon Alexa. A comparison of the ...