BotCube

Hello everybody! Do you remember, two weeks ago WhatsApp released a new Business API? Here is a funny story from India. Indian railwaymen complain about poems and good morning wishes in official WhatsApp support channels😅 Official Whatsapp contact was created in order to receive messages like: "toilet is not working", "the station is not clean enough," but in addition to complaints, they began to receive pictures, wishes and even Hindi poems! About receiving such forwards, a senior Railways official said: “We have asked the staff to delete these messages, which we receive daily. The most repeated messages include ‘sending a particular forward message to 15 people to ensure good luck in one’s life’. These messages are a nuisance and waste of our time.” Apart from the helpline, the Railways is also active on Twitter. We hope that they won't have such problems there😊 https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/mumbai/railways-whatsapp-helpline-numbers-forwards-friendship-day-wishes-exceed-number-of-complaints-5294833

Amazon is rolling out a new feature "Answer Update" The new feature in Amazon Alexa will notify users when the voice assistant learns the answer to questions it didn't previously know. The idea is to allow people to better take advantage of Alexa’s quickly improving Knowledge Graph. Usually, when Alexa doesn't know the answer to a question, it replies with statements such as "I don't know, but I am always learning". However, with the new Answer Update feature, Alexa will be able to answer those questions when it finally figures them out. In order to activate the service, you need to say "Alexa, enable Answer Updates". Saying "Alexa, turn off Answer Updates" disable it. https://voicebot.ai/2018/08/06/amazon-alexa-testing-answer-updates-feature-that-will-notify-users-when-it-learns-a-new-answer/

Check out the most exciting skills built on Storyline in June ⭐️ https://medium.com/storyline-blog/skills-of-the-month-june-2018-4ec88ac12222

We've just posted an interview with Brannon Veal - the creator of Eco Hacks Alexa skill. Brannon dropped some knowledge bombs on how he's managed to create an Alexa skill that got to the finals of the Alexa Skills Challenge: Life Hacks and won $5,000 from Amazon :) Check it out! 🙌 https://medium.com/storyline-blog/creating-alexa-skills-brannon-veal-alexa-life-hacks-challenge-finalist-df8d2c05b344

Just released a new blog post celebrating 1,500 skills published to the store through Storyline! 🎉 https://medium.com/storyline-blog/skills-of-the-month-may-2018-410b0cdf4d61

We're so excited to share that Eco Hacks Alexa skill built on Storyline has got to the finals of Amazon Alexa Skills Challenge: Life Hacks! 🎉 Congrats, Brannon Veal, you rock! :) You get a brand new Storyline t-shirt, $5,000 USD, and promotion of your skill in the Alexa Skill Store 🙌 Thanks for proving that everything is possible. P.S. we really like the video Brannon made about the skill - it's just awesome. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjuxA8U8Myo

A new video tutorial is out! 🔥 Have you ever thought of creating an Alexa skill and making $1,000 a month? One of your users did that in 15 minutes. Here's how. Most people underestimate the market of skills with facts. They think those skills are annoying and don't deliver anything new. And they're right in 99% of the cases. However, there are skills with facts that work well. Two things make them outperform their competition: - A unique and compelling use case that people think about every day (e.g., motivation, affirmations, bible verses, ego boosts, business quotes); - Fresh content every day; - Smart use of SSML and audio. In this tutorial, I show how to use our Google Spreadsheet integration to create an Alexa skill that grabs a random piece of content from a spreadsheet and reads it to the user. It's really simple. Watch the video below and best of luck! 🙌 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxeVJXDGGm8

Meet Engagement tools in Storyline! 🚀 There are two most significant problems with Alexa skills right now: getting new users and retaining existing ones. With Engagement tools, our goal is to help you solve those issues. Here's how it works: If you activate Engagement tools, Storyline will ask your skill users for their phone numbers in different ways, store the phone numbers in your account, and allow you to broadcast text messages to bring them back. Sounds simple, uh? It really is. Read more on how to use Engagement tools in our blog post: https://medium.com/storyline-blog/meet-engagement-tools-in-storyline-4610a79fa677

Check out best Alexa skills built on Storyline in March 🚀 https://medium.com/storyline-blog/skills-of-the-month-march-2018-890591340fd1

Hey BotCube community, Easter is coming tomorrow, and we've prepared something inspiring for you today. ​ Here's an interview with Yancey Grantham, who's been our customer from day one. We talked to him through the challenges he faced creating multiple Alexa skills that are now getting thousands of users. He also shared some insights on how to build skills people love, where he gets ideas, and how he implements them in Storyline. P.S. there's also an interactive preview of his latest skill, My African Adventure, so you can see how to build a skill like this in Storyline. Enjoy and Happy Easter! :) https://medium.com/storyline-blog/creating-alexa-skills-yancey-grantham-my-african-safari-f5816946bd55

Today Telegram stopped working in Europe and Middle East countries for three hours. The last major malfunction in the Telegram was recorded in February. There is what Pavel Durov posted in Twitter:

There's finally a board game powered by Amazon Alexa Game manufacturer Sensible Objects has released When in Rome, the first board game to incorporate Alexa. Through your Amazon Echo device, Alexa teaches you the rules, keeps track of the score, and guides you through the game. The game is pretty simple. Players sit around a world map, and each places their marker on a "home city" to start. Players then travel around the map to various major cities. As your marker enters each city, Alexa asks you questions about that city's weather, customs, food, culture, and more. The questions range from easy ("Is San Francisco foggy?") to difficult ("Which of these is not a real pub?"). Sensible Objects recommends it for ages "5 to 99." It's possible for young kids to play, but since it's a game about world trivia, older kids and adults will likely be the biggest fans. https://mashable.com/2018/02/18/amazon-alexa-board-game/#OmH4F9DT2mqS