That folk get the government they deserve
The current case is not exempt
This is in respect to data I hold with regard to the forums I administer and mail-lists I run, all purely social activities, involving people who had explicitly joined up.
“Alexa, what is the temperature”,
Storyline is great for writing scripted skills, and also has facilities for connecting to other online applications to exchange data, via JSON and simple GET/POST connections.
Until recently, all of my skills were private. If you design an Alexa Skill but never publish it, it remains in Dev – it is accessible to all of your own Echo devices, but not to the outside world. This is actually extremely useful, as you can write your own personal skills to do quite specific tasks.
A web integration tool can be used to link two totally different systems. An easy example would be “Whenever I tweet, post it to Facebook”, or “Whenever someone posts to this page, send me an email”. But it can get a lot more sophisticated – I currently have automations set up that watch for specific YouTube videos and copy them to my Plex account, so they appear automatically on my home TV system; I have recently come up with a system that lets me log my medications via Alexa, and record them in Google Sheets.
At the moment, I have a Heath Robinson solution, using an existing skill, Tweet It, then using the Tweets it creates to log to a spreadsheet. But ultimately, I think I am going to use this to learn how to program my own Alexa skills
Plex media server has a “watch later” function, that can be used for watching *selected* YouTube videos. See a video while browsing, and want to watch it later? Simply open the video page and click a browser bookmark. When you next open Plex, it will be listed under your “watch later” items.
(I actually have a Vestax portable player, but it is gathering dust in the junk room.)
This is long overdue. Official support for the version I am on ended in 2009, although I’ve managed to keep it going and secure. I have made 2 attempts, over the years, to upgrade, both vexed by the new version lacking features that are central to my website – mainly a fully integrated calendar/scheduler, allowing you to attach dates to specific topics (so people can schedule a game session, then discuss who is coming and what games to bring).