Alexa, WTF just happened?

@staringispolite That's right! Big ups to @sandimac (whom I've never met in person, but feel like I've known for years from using Quibb!) for connecting us! 🤗

@matt_kiser @staringispolite Can I use the actual words or do I have to stick to the letters?

@alwaysunday @staringispolite Hey Andy, unfortunately no. Amazon has some, uh, sensitivities to the F-bomb. We also discovered that "What" is a reserved invocation utterance for Alexa (at least that's our suspicion).

@alwaysunday It's W.T.F. the letters :) In theory, Amazon's terms allow for having people say the actual words, but in practice we couldn't get it approved that way, no matter how much we censored the app/collateral/etc.

@matt_kiser @staringispolite Matt you are KILLING it. Love that WTFJHT has taken off like crazy (despite your already crazy life). Will be installing on my echo ASAP

@dnuzum @staringispolite Thanks Derek! And thanks for supporting WTFJHT! It's been an amazing experience. 🙌

@kunalslab I'd love to do that! @staringispolite has first dibs on that, if he wants to/has time to (we haven't discussed)

@kunalslab Haha I love the hashtag. Typical Android ;) @matt_kiser I'm game! Does WTFJHT want to sponsor a Google Home for me? :D

@staringispolite YEP!

@matt_kiser @staringispolite the hashtag is key. Glad I could inspire you. 😂 Been using API.AI to create personal bots, and you can deploy to Google Home pretty easily from there. I currently don't have a Google Home, but I'll get one to use WTFJHT when you launch!

@kunalslab lol. you requested it, but don't even have one??

@staringispolite Good question! The WTFJHT project started on a whim and became popular very quickly. I can't say I had a plan or was prepared – it's not like I had some policy or process in place for working with folks. A lot of people reached out about contributing code, copy, and other skills, which was amazing and inspiring. It was also a little overwhelming! I've been juggling a full time job, running the site (which has become it's own type of full time job), and, you know, trying to also maintain a normal social life. What's amazing, though, is that everybody has volunteered their time. The WTFJHT community is so cool! From you proactively reaching out wanting to build this, to several devs teaching me how to setup continuous integration, SSL, a CDN, migrate to S3, to a few guys testing out a podcast (we eventually killed this but will probably bring it back), and more. There's an entire group of copyeditors that make pull requests to fix typos for me! Amazing. These are all things I couldn't have done myself and this strength in numbers community is what makes WTFJHT so special. :)

@matt_kiser I didn't know about the copywriters and all the tech help! That's awesome.

@staringispolite right!? It's kind of amazing what happens when you open source not just the code, but the copy as well. Pull request all the things!

@matt_kiser @staringispolite Very cool! I often want to help in some small way.

@dredurr From a technical standpoint, it's so easy once you get your head around AWS Lambda. What worked for me was just following one of the "random fact skill" tutorials and subbing out my own code. Got the prototype for WTFJHT done in one night

@fabienb oh maybe? I'll check and let you know

@matt_kiser @fabienb That's strange. I just double checked the country setting, and on our end, we have "In all countries and regions where Amazon distributes skills" selected.

@staringispolite @matt_kiser This is what I tried: 1. clicked on the Get It button above, that took me to amazon.com (US), 2. I copied the name of the skill and clicked on the link in the Amazon page that said "it seems you are registered in UK, click here to go to the skills page in UK" (or something like that) 3. In the UK skills home, I pasted the skill name in the search bar 4. This was the result: Your search "WTF Just Happened Today" did not match any products. Even if I try to simply search for WTF, Amazon say: We didn't find results for "wtf" in Alexa Skills. Could it be that the keyword is banned? Has anyone else in UK been able to enable this skill? Cheers!

@fabienb @matt_kiser Closing the loop on this - Amazon's developer console has a place to choose where the skill should be available: "In all countries and regions where Amazon distributes skills" or "selected countries or regions". We have "all countries and regions" selected, but that's essentially a lie. It looks like, even though the speech is already defined in English, we would have had to create an English "translation" for each additional English-speaking country we wanted it to be published for. Chalk this up to a still-maturing app store, I suppose. But it sounds like they're fixing it - I got an automated email saying the skill should go live in the UK automatically on May 23rd.

@staringispolite Thank you!!! +@matt_kiser