You’ve written an Alexa skill. Now you want to upload it to Alexa and submit for certification. Before you do anything, you’ll want to make sure you have a developer account setup and that you’ve accepted the EULA for the Alexa developer program at https://developer.amazon.com/alexa. To do so, simply go there and click sign in and it’ll take you through the prompts. You’ll need this as when you init your session, you’ll be prompted to link an account through the Amazon website. Once done, let’s get the technical stuff out of the way. First, install the latest version of node from https://nodejs.org/dist/v6.10.0/node-v6.10.0.pkg (it’s a package so follow the defaults to…
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Allow Connections From Other Hosts With IIS Express
IIS Express is a simple web server that can run on Windows with a couple of easy features for developers of Windows applications. This includes things like, webhooks, a modern way of accepting POST requests and responding to them. Each IIS Express site is managed on a user basis, as it’s written as a tool to assist with development. Many web applications will attempt to communicate with one another via a specific port. And when you’re using IIS Express, you’ll need to create a socket binding to that port and allow external users to connect (again, by default, IIS Express is configured for developers to test code on their own machines). To do…
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Upgrade to OS X Yosemite
Installing OS X has never been easier than in Yosemite. In this article, we’ll look at upgrading a Mac from OS X 10.9 (Mavericks) to OS X 10.10 (Yosemite). The first thing you should do is clone your system. The second thing you should do is make sure you have a good backup. The third thing you should do is make sure you can swap back to the clone should you need to do so and that your data will remain functional on the backup. Once you’re sure that you have a fallback plan, let’s get started by downloading OS X Yosemite from the App Store. Once downloaded, you’ll see Install…
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Talking A Look Under Apple Configurator's Hood
Apple Configurator has now been in my grubby hands long enough for me to start looking at it a little deeper than I did in the introductory article I did awhile back. Architecturally, Apple Configurator keeps its data in ~/Library/Application Support/com.apple.configurator. Here, you’ll find a directory called IPSWs, another called Resources, file called AppleConfigurator.storedata and another called Users.storedata. The IPSWs directory is where operating system versions, per model of iOS are stored. These look something like iPad2,1_5.1_9B176_Restore.ipsw, which is iOS 5.1 for a standard iPad 2. iPad 1, the retina display iPad, as well as each iPod Touch and iPhone 4 each have their own entry as well. The IPSWs…