Alexa is about to get better at handling more complicated, multi-step conversations, as well as acting more like a useful personal assistant. The new functionality was revealed by Amazon's director of applied science, Ruhi Sarikaya, who leads the Alexa Brain initiative trying to make AIs more natural to engage with.
Amazon's Android tablets have always been impressively competitive on price, but a big promotion on the Amazon Fire HD 10 today might have you questioning your iPad upgrade. The largest of the current Fire Tablet line-up, the Fire HD 10 not only gets a 10.1-inch display but offers Amazon Alexa support too, with a hands-free mode.
Alexa comes in a new package as of this week, the Echo Dot Kids Edition, complete with three lovely kid-friendly color casings. This device is basically an Echo Dot with a few tiny differences. The hardware is literally the same - one speaker to blast out sound or Alexa responses, and 7 far-field microphones for top-notch listening for voice commands. What's different is the skin - with colors - and the services that come pre-activated with the product.
The advent of the Amazon Echo and Google Home smart speakers have practically pushed HDMI into streaming dongles out of the spotlight. While those two categories can and do work in tandem, it seems that the market is at least gravitating more towards faceless speakers and disembodied voices that don't need a screen to function. Amazon, however, might have a way to bring them together into one. It has practically confirmed the existence of the Amazon Fire TV Cube that could very well be a fusion of Amazon's two device lines.
We need to talk about Amazon Key In-Car Delivery, and not just because Amazon announced it formally this week. Today I'm going to run down 5 main points you need to be aware of, whether or not you'll be participating in Amazon's futuristic product delivery adventure. The first and most important point here is: Amazon doesn't get a copy of your car key - they don't need it.
Amazon Key is still a fairly young service, having only launched back in November. Amazon is wasting little time in expanding it, though, today launching in-car delivery as part of Key. Yes, you heard that right: Amazon will now deliver packages to your car, so long as it'll be in a publicly accessible area when you want your item dropped off.
Amazon is holding a big sale on board games, strategy games, and family games, with a one day promotion that promises more than 40-percent off on select titles. The deal includes some of the most popular games in the retailer's catalog, including classics like Cranium and Trivial Pursuit, as well as newer board games and more.
Amazon's next move in smart assistant domination may be a robot that moves around with its user. It doesn't hover, it doesn't wear an apron, and its name isn't Rosie - but it might as well be. Following along with the fire and flame theme Amazon's rolled with for years, this project's code-name is "Vesta." That's a Roman goddess of hearth, home, and family, most often represented as a sacred fire.
Amazon has already worked its way into homes around the world with Alexa, but now the company might be thinking bigger. New rumors today claim that Amazon is looking to launch something technophiles have dreamed about for decades: a consumer robot for the home. Many companies have tried and failed to create domestic robots before, but if there's one company that might have the resources to pull it off, Amazon definitely tops the list.
Amazon has mildly annoyed some consumers by locking Star Wars and Marvel physical movie discs behind a Prime paywall. Anyone who tries to order DVDs and Blu-ray discs from either franchise via the online retailer must subscribe to Prime, otherwise the purchase is unavailable. The good news is that Amazon is only one of many online retailers and you don't need it to get any of these movies.
It's time to turn Alexa into a joke machine, using the first round of Alexa Blueprints to do some mischief. If you're a big fan of The Office, you know the episode cold open where Michael Scott figures out he can make his computer speak. Today, you can make all your Amazon Echo or otherwise Alexa-infused devices do what you want. Or at least answer all the questions you ask it, how you wish.
It's hard to believe that Amazon Prime has been available for 13 years at this point, but perhaps ever more surprising is Amazon's hesitancy to talk about just how popular it is among users. Obviously, we can guess that Prime has been a big win for Amazon, but the fact that the company has never shared specific subscriber numbers means it's impossible to know just how successful it's been. That all changed today, as Amazon finally shared some hard numbers for the first time in Prime's 13-year history.