Skip to main content

Can I make an Alexa Skill That Searches Bing Via My Personal Account?

 

 


 Can I make an Alexa Skill That Searches Bing? 

 I use Bing as my search engine, and would love it if I could ask Alexa and have that trail of searches attached to my account to look back upon.

 Fun fact: When you ask Alexa a question, it's already using Bing. But it's not using my account. So let's see if I can walk through the idea.

 Questions:

 Alexa searches the internet when you ask it a query. What specifically does it search? It's own database of information? Is it like ChatGPT where the system is not directly connected to the internet but has all of the internet up until a certain point in the past?

 Can I make an Alexa Skill that attaches to a dataset of information I host on AWS? The preliminary search reveals Knowledge Skills, which seems to be "give us information and when people ask about it, we can just tell them within the scope of our knowledge."

Would I need AWS to make an Alexa Skill at all?

Most likely;

When you create a custom skill, you create either an AWS Lambda function or a web service that can handle requests from Alexa. The code you write for this service needs to [ have a request and response].

From here

Can I use an AWS Lambda Function to Search Bing?

 Lambdas run a single function. Theoretically it is possible to simply have it run a search query. We need to attach it to a runtime (Programming language).

 How could that single function look like?

if TriggerWord = "Hey Bing"

    run search.Bing([spoken query])

Turns out there's an entire language to coding a skill. This video outlines it well. 

If I wanted to activate a skill, say, "Alexa, ask Bing, for local movie times.", it would be outlined as such;

The wake word is Alexa

The launch word is ask

The Invocation Name is Bing

for has no particular meaning. 

The Utterance is local movie times. And utterances lead to Intents.
(local movie times could also be a slot, as that's the specific thing we're asking for. Slots can go within utterances)


I think the second part of that code would need more information.

Me too. Maybe a lambda isn't the best option.

Could I use a Lambda to log into my Microsoft account and then use more resources to have it search afterward?

Maybe! Let's conceptualize some code!

if TriggerWord = "Hey Bing"

    run login.Bing({email | password})

 Yep, I think we need more code. Possibly something that opens the login URL and logs in for us, unless Bing has an API to do that.

 I asked Copilot to make me some Python code, and I adjusted it a bit. I didn't tell it it was for a mock AWS Skill.

    if user_vocal_input == "hey bing":
        def open_bing_login():
    # URL for Bing login
        bing_login_url = "https://login.live.com/"
        webbrowser.open(bing_login_url) 


How long would that take to run? This is not a header question, but me asking "from Trigger Word, to log in, to the actual process of logging in, to searching and retrieving information, how long would it take?"


Has This Been Done Before?

Yes, but the Skill was removed; It used to bring back the first page of Google search results.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Making KPI Dashboards with PowerBI

 While this is the free tier, I cannot share or collaborate with others, nor can I publish content to other people's workspaces, but they will not stop me from screenshooting and recording these self-taught adventures,so! I'm doing this because I idly searched "Mattel careers" and "Information Technology", and seeing a bulletpoint saying the following: Analytical and reporting skills such as creating dashboards and establishing KPIs such as experience with PowerBI, Cognos, Tableau, and Google Data Lake/AWS is preferred And thought "Well, I've used Tableau, and I've heard about PowerBI,  even if its in-demandness is questionable , so how similar is it? And can I write about it?"  First, PowerBI (PIB) does have a downloadable, local version, but apparently Windows-only. I could download the .exe but I couldn't run it / drag it to applications on my MacBook.  Not a problem, we'll use the online SaaS version, and a dataset found here, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Connecting IoT Devices to a Registration Server (Packet Tracer, Cisco)

 If you're seeing this post, I'm helping you, and you probably have LI presence: React and share this post to help me in return.   In Packet Tracer, a demo software made by Cisco Systems. It certainly has changed a lot since 2016. It's almost an Olympic feat to even get started with it now, but it does look snazzy. This is for the new CCNA, that integrates, among other things, IoT and Automation, which I've worked on here before. Instructions here . I don't know if this is an aspect of "Let's make sure people are paying attention and not simply following blindly", or an oversight - The instructions indicate a Meraki Server, when a regular one is the working option here. I have to enable the IoT service on this server. Also, we assign the server an IPv4 address from a DHCP pool instead of giving it a static one. For something that handles our IoT business, perhaps that's safer; Getting a new IPv4 address every week or so is a minimal step against an...
Post a Comment
Read more

AWS Infrastructure Composer

 A very brief look. The text says; Drag and drop any CloudFormation resource on a visual canvas Connect and configure enhanced components to automatically build IaC for an application architecture Seamlessly transition between authoring workflows visually with Step Functions Workflow Studio and defining resources with Infrastructure Composer Integrate your browser with your project through “local sync” or use Composer in the AWS Toolkit for Visual Studio Code In 2019 there was a similar tool to build infrastructure that would be converted to code. Nice to know they bought it back. When you enter the Composer, it's a blank space with a background reminiscent to the screen for Cloud Formation. Infrastructure Objects are to the left in a drawer;  I've selected a bucket that I can rename. I went to connect a bucket to a Dynamo DB Table, and it's not available yet. It also lost a bucket somewhere in the ether of the GUI. Ah well. I couldn't find the EC2 instance in the...
Post a Comment
Read more