In watching the rapid growth - and associated growing pains - of the Alexa Skills Kit over the last six or seven months, there's been a recurring theme that we've noticed lurking in the shadows behind a lot of the issues faced by the development community:  Many of the problems we run into could be greatly mitigated by good testing, but good testing is nigh impossible at the moment. Alas, it doesn't have to be this way - the path out lies after the break.

Amazon has rolled out a new UI for the Alexa website. The new design has merged similar links together. As a result the entire page feels slimmed down and less cluttered.

Read on to see what's changed...

We would like to introduce you to a dev tool we've been using internally for many months. This tool has saved us countless hours, and we hope it can save you time as well. Announcing... The Alexa Skills Kit Responder.

Super quick post today, just calling out a change that a lot of people had been asking for on Reddit and on the developer forums.  We finally have the ability to click a check box in the companion app to show only the skills you currently have enabled.  Screenshots after the break.

We at DERP Group have had plenty to say about the problems with Amazon's current system of reviews for Alexa Skills, the effect this has for developers, and some of the shady practices surrounding skill reviews currently.  In this post we're specifically concerned with the way the Average Rating sort option in the Alexa companion apps (and alexa.amazon.com) does not effectively bubble the best skills to the top.  For a change of pace, though, instead of just calling out the problem, we figured we'd try proposing a solution as well.  Click through to read more...