Pat Higbie, Author at XAPPmedia

March 23, 2017

3 Reasons Why Radio Stations Should Launch Alexa Skills Now

XAPP is getting a lot of attention for developing Federated Media’s B100 Alexa skill for the Amazon Echo. You can imagine that the strong and favorable reception has led many radio broadcasters to reach out to learn more.

February 2, 2017

Amazon Recognizes XAPPmedia as Leading Creator for Alexa Skills

Amazon published a new webpage earlier today that in part highlights XAPP’s proven expertise in building great Alexa voice experiences for brands and media companies. The Alexa Skill Builders and Tools announcement was designed to help organizations find experts to help with the paradigm shift to connecting with consumers by voice. We are proud to be a part of it.

November 7, 2016

Watch Amazon Alexa Meet Google Home

How long will it be before we have an Internet of Bots? Today’s video demonstrates that we aren’t too far away from that becoming a reality.

September 15, 2016

Alexa Skills Provide Presence, but Add a Voice Persona™ to Deliver a Distinctive Voice Experience

Brands should build Alexa skills to establish a presence on the voice web, but that is just the first step. Marketers need to add voice personas to their skills to truly deliver an on-brand voice experience. Examples included.

August 24, 2016

Alexa is Growing Fast. Are You Missing It?

Mary Meeker of KPCB devoted more than 10% of her widely followed Internet Trends 2016 report to voice computing interfaces. In the 2015 report, voice assistants didn’t merit a single mention. What changed?

August 18, 2016

Alexa Skills Require Voice Experiences That Differ from Our Visual Past

Amazon's Alexa is ushering in a new era of voice interaction between brands and consumers. However, there is a big difference between the visual experiences of the web and mobile apps and those driven by audio and voice. XAPP has deep expertise and tools designed specifically for creating great voice experiences and are helping brands and organizations design and implement Alexa Skills. We are also building rapid custom Alexa demos and prototypes so people can hear what their brand sounds like on the new voice-first platforms.

November 19, 2015

Part 2: Spotify and Other Streaming Services are Saving the Music Industry

Music industry revenue has fallen consistently since peaking in 1999. Some would like to claim that streaming music services are a cause of the decline even though they arrived well after the downward trend was established. However, there is ample evidence to suggest the industry revenue would have declined in the absence of streaming music services.

November 18, 2015

Part 1: Spotify and Other Streaming Services are Saving the Music Industry

A report issued by the National Bureau of Economic Research last month concludes that, “interactive streaming appears to be revenue-neutral for the recorded music industry.” The summary conclusions by the report authors, Luis Aguiar and Joel Waldfogel, don’t fit the industry trends prior to the study period or the math behind the data.

August 26, 2015

Why Audio is the Quintessential Mobile Media

Mobile devices have changed how and when consumers interact with digital media. The rapid proliferation of smartphones in particular has both created new consumption habits for digital media and diverted consumer attention away from traditional media. But there are really two definitions of mobile media.