One of the of the first signs that your software ecosystem is starting to take off is that people begin trying to game the system.  Well, folks, Alexa has crossed that threshold.

After a couple months of experimenting, infrastructure building, implementing, submitting for certification, and re-implementing (and re-implementing... and re-implementing!), we're unbelievably pumped to announce that our first two skills have finally been published!  With no further ado, please meet...

As a result of all of the huffing and puffing described in the previous article, as well as our repeated certification failures, we were invited to do a conference call with a few people on Amazon's side.  There were a few takeaways that I'd like to share.

So, yesterday I put out what was essentially a plea for help on the Alexa front.  Our skills were rejected by the certification team again, despite making exactly the changes that they told us to make the first time.  I was hoping the conversation with some of the other developers would spur Amazon to take action...

Flash to this afternoon, and I started getting messages telling me my rant had been featured in a blog post that went to the top of HackerNews (see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10876409).  Surprising, but exactly what we needed!  Amazon's certification process is broken, and if the constant griping from their developers wasn't enough to get the ball moving, maybe a bit of internet shaming would be.