AI tools like ChatGPT and Google Bard are designed to automate specific tasks and make them more efficient.
Some jobs will be eliminated (e.g., customer service, lawyers, software developers, designers), but in other cases, these tools will likely change the nature of the particular role that a person is doing and require workers to adapt to new technologies.
In other words, “if you can’t beat it – join it.”
Continue reading
Next time you are driving to Tahoe you don’t need to open the phone, navigate to the browser and check if the road is closed (or not).
You can just ask the Google Assistant: “Hey Google, Talk To Highway 80 Conditions”.
You will get the most updated data about the road like in the example below:
Please ignore the text formatting (which I’ll improve in the near future) as it should be use as voice only while you are driving.
Check it on the Google Assistant or on the web here.
If you are using Telegram check this.
Be safe!
Northstar Pow Day – Action on Google
Last week, we had a big storm at Tahoe.
I thought it might be great if with one quick question (while you washing our face in the morning) you can learn if it’s a powder day.
After all, when there is a pow day, you should close the shop and run for the slopes, no?
The result is here: pow-day-northstar.glitch.me and you can find the code at GitHub.
If you are on a mobile device, click here to check it on the assistant, or just say “Hey Google, talk to Northstar pow day”.
Have fun!
Here are the slides from my talk today at the Chat Bot Summit.
It was a great experience to talk about the Google Assistant platform and to run two workshops with live coding.
If you could not make it and you wish to test this platform, you can go over the slides (and other tutorials or videos) and check on of the code labs that we have for the Assistant on your own.
There are many good apps that you can check in order to get ideas and inspiration. Here are some apps for the Assistant that I’ve created for the code labs and demos.
Good luck!
It’s not a new hack but it will work well if you have short texts (1-3 sentences) that you wish to convert to speech.
After all, when returning a response to the Google Assistant, you can use a subset of the Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML).
Because you can make your agent’s responses seem more life-like experience.
Open your terminal and try something like this:
curl "http://www.google.com/speech-api/v1/synthesize?lang=en-us&text=actions+on+google+rock" -o aog-rock-hack.mp3
That’s it.
If you want to use SSML and get fancy, it’s also support it in the request: Continue reading
During the holidays, I had a bit of time to do some fun stuff with Actions on Google.
It started with an idea that a runner friend brought up during a long run and the results is “OK Google, Talk to Western State Race“. If you are an ultra trail runner, you are smiling now, right?
Later, it was around another passion – good coffee. I used the templates for Google Assistant to create a fun trivia game. It’s super easy, as you only need to copy a google sheet and update it with your questions and answers.
When you are using the google assistant for common task on daily basis it’s great to make a shortcut so with one word you can invoke a long ‘command’. One of the first shortcuts I have created is ‘bitcoin’ which is translated to “OK google, talk to bitcoin info about the price”. Let’s see below how you can easily work with the shortcuts inside the Google Assistant. See in the short video below how to create it and use it.
Did you know that your app for the Google Assistant can reach users on millions of devices? Over 100 million devices (and many more in the future) already have the Google Assistant with them so when users wish to use your app, you are already there. There is no friction. In this post we will focus on the methods you can use in order to reach users.
There are 4 ways for users to get to your app for the Google Assistant through:
Let’s go a bit deeper into each one. Continue reading
Ido Green 