Amazon Offering Developers Alexa's Voice Powers

Imagine if you could easily add voice recognition to your app or service even if you have no experience with voice-based sevices. Amazon hopes you'll do just that with the new Alexa Skills Kit, a collection of self-service APIs, tools, and code samples that make it a snap to add skills to Alexa. Alexa is the voice service that powers Amazon's Echo device. The Echo is a small, internet-connected speaker that responds to voice requests and can do things like manage calendar appointments and shopping lists. The Echo had been available in limited fashion to Amazon Prime subscribers until this week, when the online retailer made Echo available to anyone for 179.