Nick-Blog – The Ham Radio show

DemandTheHAM on Google Assistant

June 21, 2022 by HamRadioNick

With The Announcement of Google sun-settng the “conversational actions” (which is what the upcoming DemandTheHAM service on Assistant was created using) in June 2023. DemandTheHam will not be available on Google Assistant for the foreseeable future, there is a future on Google assistant with DemandTheHAM, redevelopment and restructuring of the service for the platform is on going.

Google looks to be streamlining assistant into an apps intergration. so we are looking into many options, For now. You can access The Ham Radio Show via Google Podcast app and cast it to your Google Assistant or Spotify

The Ham Radio Show w/ ConvoWorks

May 20, 2022 by HamRadioNick

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Exciting News for fall and into 2023 at Ham Radio Show.

Ever since I got my hands on an Amazon Echo, my first thought is “I want the Ham radio show to play out of this 😊”. After numerous trial and errors with skill development (my tech skills were primarily web and server development, not software engineering 😆) , The task ahead was going to be very complex. This skill couldn’t be just your usual run of the mill thousands of Podcast skills on Alexa/ Google assistant, this skill will have to be one of a kind..All Episode and bits like the Alexis ford segment all available just by saying “Alexa, play the Alexis ford segment on the Ham radio show”. A tall order. But a challenge accepted. Tagging in ConvoWorks to help link Hamradioshow.com to Alexa and Google assistant it will be become a reality for another avenue to get your Ham!

Stay tuned, just one of the many things in the pipeline for the Ham radio show.

Update on Project: DemandTheHam!

September 20, 2021 by HamRadioNick

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Been awhile since I last updated on Project: DemandTheHam!

The Alexa skill is almost ready to submit to Amazon, but before I can do that, I wanted for the Show crew and fans to test out things before it goes live on Alexa devices!

The Google assistant version is still coming along, both versions will have nearly the same navigation by voice, however it’s not simple as copying the code from Alexa and paste it to google assistant. It’s a bit of a different process to do get the same thing done so it’s taking time to get it to work exactly the same on both!

The features in skill so far allow you to:

Search though the entire show catalog (all the episodes you can find on this site, it’s available!)
Hear the Alexis Ford segment (soon watch!)
Ask Alexa/assistant about the show, staff, pretty much whatever you find out on the site. Find out how much they know their H.A.M!
Call the show
Listen to the live broadcast

And more features to come!

“Demand The Ham” ( or whatever is decided to be called later)

May 10, 2021 by HamRadioNick

Nick-Blog

Been worked on alongside website during the course of the pandemic is a voice-based service for your Alexa and Google assistant based devices and apps that allows access to the entire ham radio show archives by voice. While most of the podcast skills I’ve come across can just play the podcasts by playlist type of experience. you can hear the latest episode and then you could play the next episodes down the list and so on and so on. what sucks about that is if you want to hear a episode all the way from 2011 or 2009. You could be saying next about 400 times until you get that episode…. SCREW THAT!

Our archives are served to iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Deezer, Google Podcasts. However like the experience with Spotify (they complained about the content in a episode that they themselves cached and we had deleted in our system beforehand, then they threw a complaint about the content of an episode we no longer in the archives…. lets not get off topic here). it reinforced the need for a Ham Radio show controlled platform in which to serve our content to the ham radio show universe! and I don’t want to half-ass our distribution strategy with only offering the show to other platforms and doing a bare-minimum voice skill just playing down the RSS feed entries. I wanted to ensure what you have available on the show website is available to Alexa, google assistant, and more voice assistants that crop up in the future that can be plugged into, no matter region or streaming service availability for your area. Demand The Ham will be available where you are ( even from mars!)

heres the proof of concept as a work in progress (as in the damn thing is buggy, but it does what its supposed to do, soon to come with more features to be rolled out at launch!):