As it turns out, several people use my Feiertag Alexa skill, which I’ve described in a previous article. Recently I’ve upgraded it to use Amazon’s new device location API. Therefore now immediately after you install the skill through the Alexa app, you get asked, whether you want to share device country and postcode with the skill. That makes the user experience much easier, since you are no longer required to link an Amazon account to the skill. For backwards compatibility reasons, I’ve left the account linking in, but made it optional. So current users don’t have to change anything and will still get the correct Feiertag for their Bundesland.

Check out the updated skill in Alexa Skill Store. Just install it and ask: “Alexa, frage Feiertag, wann der nächste ist.”

Source code is in my GitHub repo.

Tags: Alexa, Amazon, AWS, iot, Lambda, Node.js