We got an Amazon Echo a while back and I recently went to an Amazon Developer Day event to get a little help with using the Echo/Alexa developer services. I am now able to ask Alexa to read my daily North Korean official motivational phrases to me using an AWS Lambda NodeJS script.

A good example script is provided with the Lambda console and all I had to do was modify that to get Alexa to read a random phrase to me. You do need to get access to the SDK and developer portal but that did not take long once I requested it.

The Echo is pretty entertaining to mess with and I think that there is a lot of opportunity in voice integration type stuff. The voice recognition has worked very well in general but it can be hard to break the habit of using a phone or tablet to do something when Alexa could also do it.

Some of the NK phrases can be pretty funny if you have not heard them.

You can find the phrases at http://yourdailyjuche.dougtoppin.name/