[shukerr]

I can confirm that UK users need to configure the Alexa Skill to use the English UK language. You get a pulldown choice of English US, UK or German on the first page of creating the app for the three regions where Amazon are selling the Echo.
You should be able to add the language to your existing app and then remove the English US language, although I did mess that bit up and had to start again.
This is the same reason that IFTTT doesn;t work for UK Echos and you need to use Yonomi instead.

I also had to add a load more custom types that are in the latest Intents file now which aren't covered in the guide.

I followed the howtogeek guide using Heroku and haven't found the sleep thing a problem.
If it's gone to sleep then it will wake up automatically when you issue a voice command.
I notice the howtogeek guide has since been updated to use AWS Lamda.
If I get time I might also set up AWS Lamda and duplicate the skill to use a different invocation name.

Lastly, I notice that when you create an Alexa Skill you can choose whether your skill will use audio controls.
This would be great to add to the intents file if it's possible. e.g. "Alexa pause" would hopefully pass that through to the correct skill.