Amazon

Earlier today, Logitech announced that you will soon be able to view a live feed of footage from its incoming Circle 2 camera on Amazon's new Echo Show. It turns out that the Circle 2 is just the tip of the iceberg here. Amazon plans to incorporate Echo View functionality with a lot of smart home cameras from a bunch of different companies - in fact, you might already some of these cameras up and running in your house already.

Continue Reading

Logitech has announced that its soon-to-launch Circle 2 home security camera can now be used with the Amazon Echo Show device, enabling users to view their security video feeds on Amazon's latest IoT product. This is thanks to Logitech's newly announced support for the latest Alexa camera API on the Echo Show. Logitech Circle 2 owners will be able to take full advantage of the Echo's Alexa abilities, including using voice to pull up a camera's video feed.

Continue Reading

Smart speakers like Amazon Echo and Google Home are mostly verbal affairs. You talk to them and they respond by voice. Visual feedback is mostly an afterthought, an add-on, or a different device altogether. That makes it sometimes difficult to check the type of notifications you get without having these assistants blurt out potentially incriminating information. Fortunately, at least one of them does have an alternative means of calling your attention. Amazon has just given the Echo a few more light signals, distinguishing between an incoming call and an incoming message.

Continue Reading

In its quest to get as many Prime subscribers as possible, Amazon has been packing it with more and more services. This year alone we've seen the launches for services like Prime Reload, Prime Reading, and Anime Strike, but today Amazon is going either further by launching a Prime service that is arguably bigger than any of those. Its name is Prime Wardrobe and it promises to "bring the fitting room to you."

Continue Reading

Today Amazon confirmed that it intends to acquire grocery chain Whole Foods. This news comes just hours after Whole Foods' CEO John Mackey indicated that he would resist such a buyout. Amazon is prepared to pay a ton of money to make Whole Foods part of its portfolio, which may have had a hand in changing Mackey's mind.

Continue Reading

For years, we've walked into retail stores only to pull out our phones and compare the prices we see to those online, generally using a website like Amazon to see if we're getting a good deal. Now that Amazon is beginning to expand into retail spaces of its own, it has to worry about those same pricing comparisons. In a fantastic bit of irony, Amazon could use a new patent to outright prevent people from comparing prices in its own stores.

Continue Reading

How many ways can you take an idea and turn it into different things? If you’re Amazon and you’re talking about Echo and Alexa, it might be a near limitless list. Even if the idea ends up being slightly laughable. After the Amazon Echo Look comes the Amazon Dash Wand. Don’t worry, you don’t actually wave it around to make magic. You don’t even hold it that way. Instead, you use it to scan barcodes or speak into it to ask Alexa anything, like converting from different units of measure.

Continue Reading

Amazon has quietly launched Amazon Reload, promising Prime subscribers a 2-percent reward back on every purchase as long as they jump through a few hoops. The deal builds on Amazon's gift card system, though it can be funded with any debit card or bank account. Effectively, in return for preloading cash into your Amazon account, the retail behemoth is promising 2-percent cash back on whatever you buy.

Continue Reading

Remember back in May when DISH rolled out new functionality that allowed you to control your DVR using Alexa voice commands? It's possible that we'll see functionality like that roll out on a much larger scale soon. Today, Amazon announced that all developers now have access to Alexa's Video Skill API, the very same API that companies like DISH and YouView have already been using with their own products.

Continue Reading

Amazon has followed in the footsteps of certain other cloud storage services, dropping its unlimited storage option. The unlimited storage deal used to be available for the company's Amazon Drive cloud storage platform for $60, but now that $60 gets you a single terabyte of storage space. That's still a decent amount, but far less attractive for those in need of ample space. Unfortunately, an alternative isn't readily available.

Continue Reading

Amazon Prime can be a handy service to have, especially if you're a cord cutter or you do a lot of shopping on Amazon. The issue with it is that at $99 per year or $10.99 per month, it can be a little on the expensive side for some folks. Today Amazon announced an initiative to help with just that, revealing that it will offer discounted Prime subscriptions to low-income customers in the US.

Continue Reading

Amazon tried to get into the smartphone market a while ago with its Fire Phone, a product that promptly crashed and burned. While the company has seen better success with its tablets, Amazon hasn't try to dabble in the smartphone market since then, though that may be changing in the future. Sources have surfaced claiming that Amazon is working on a new Android smartphone product, one that goes by the name 'Ice.'

Continue Reading