Turnaround time from submission to Amazon response was but a few days. My skill was rejected because I hadn’t properly setup ‘out’ links from skill.

The root cause was that my links were going to the rss page itself. I did not know why I even needed links; I thought it was part of the RSS Feed Spec Amazon required. However, In the Amazon Website, you can click ‘read more’ for ever news item read

This was an easy enough fix. I just used Google to take care of the outbound link and resubmitted my skill. I also added a case for when there hasn’t been a notable death in a while.

I got a response in a few days telling me that now my skill has been approved and you can see it in Alexa’s Skill site.

I am really impressed with the Alexa Development Ecosystem and the capabilities of the platform. It has been a breeze to find my way around. This changes everything in development. I believe it will not take long before there’s Alexa’s everywhere doing so many useful things.