Amazon

Amazon's Echo speakers and voice assistant Alexa are most synonymous, obviously, with Amazon the online store, but we're now seeing both offered in more and more places. One of the most surprising has been Microsoft, which seems to have acknowledged the shortcomings of its own assistant Cortana by cozying up with Alexa over the last few months in a number of ways. The latest is that Echo speakers are now sold directly by Microsoft both online and in store.

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Amazon's Alexa is adding another talent to help keep your remote control gathering dust, with a new Wake-on-LAN controller able to rouse TVs and other devices from low power mode. The new update addresses one of the lingering annoyances for those trying to use voice assistants with their home electronics, where gadgets in frugal standby modes aren't listening out for a wireless wake-up.

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Each day leading up to Black Friday 2018, the folks at Amazon revealed they'd be releasing new devices on sale. This day-by-day release schedule did not just include devices made by Amazon. It also included devices made by associated brands, like Blink, and Ring. This series of devices coming up on lower prices began on November 15th, 2018, and continues through the next week. Today we're focusing on the items that've just been listed (with different prices) starting on the 16th.

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Smart speakers are designed to be at the logical and visual center of the smart homes of today but, ironically, they aren't exactly designed to suit everyone's aesthetic tastes. Companies seem to expect that all such rooms are going to complement smart speakers' somber blacks, grays, or whites. That's why when alternative colors come officially, they become quite the sensation. But the 2nd gen Amazon Echo isn't going red just for appearances. It's doing it for a worthy cause.

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Today we're having a peek at all the already-released so-called Black Friday deals coming from Amazon. These items and likely more will be announced and pushed in a big way by Amazon and their associated brands and such in the next week. Today we're seeing what's going on so far - up until the day, when we'll have the rest, more than likely.

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Kitchen conversations usually consist of "what time is dinner ready?" and "it's your turn to load the dishwasher," but Amazon's Alexa-powered microwave hopes to change all that. It's easy to joke at the idea of a voice-controlled appliance, certainly one which counts proactively reordering popcorn among its key talents, but the AmazonBasics Microwave is more important than you might think. For $60, it's Amazon's cunning Trojan horse for Alexa.

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"Why are you talking to the microwave?" Being the spouse of an early-adopter has never been especially easy, but the arrival of the smart home - and voice-controlled systems like Amazon Alexa in particular - has certainly magnified the potential for confusion. How, then, to explain why the AmazonBasics Microwave powered by Alexa is really for your tech-tired partner's benefit, not yours?

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Amazon's Fire TV Recast isn't just a DVR for cord-cutters, it actually cuts any physical connection between the set-top box and your TV itself. Instead, the newest addition to the Fire TV line offers up a wealth of free, over-the-air channels and the storage to record them, then beams that wirelessly to your TVs, smartphones, and Echo smart displays, complete with a splash of Alexa convenience. Sounds good, but has the Fire TV Recast missed the boat in this age of on-demand entertainment?

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Joining Best Buy and select other retailers is Amazon with its own early Black Friday sales. The company has posted its deals on its website, where customers can get Echo, Kindle, and other Amazon devices at big discounts. As well, Amazon's device sale includes bundles with IoT gear, including connected lightbulbs and cameras.

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Amazon's monthly FreeTime subscription for kids content has added support for audiobooks. The additional support provides access to kid-friendly audiobooks, adding it to the existing games, video content, books, and apps. The audiobooks are accessible through Amazon's Kindle Fire tablets, as well as Android and iOS devices.

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Smart speakers like the Amazon Echo, Google Home speakers, and Apple HomePod are becoming more and more common in houses. But more than just homes for smart assistants, these devices might very well become silent witnesses to crimes. That seems to be the reasoning leading to a ruling in North Hampshire where a judge has ordered Amazon to provide any and all recording made by an Amazon Echo in the home of one of two victims in a double murder case.

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It won't be long before we see more Apple products available through Amazon. The two companies are said to have come to an agreement that will see Amazon's selections of Apple devices greatly expand. With the holidays quickly approaching, it makes sense that Amazon and Apple would look to strike this deal, despite the somewhat rocky history the two companies have.

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