President Trump, it seems, is going to war with corporate America. At the same time three executives are making news for exiting Trump's manufacturing council - garnering some negative reactions from the President on Twitter - Trump has renewed an attack on Amazon. Earlier today, President Trump laid into Amazon, criticizing it for doing damage to retailers across the US.
Making skills for voice agents isn't just a hobby now, with Amazon opening up its wallet for those who make popular skills for Alexa. Intended to encourage developers to adopt Alexa as their virtual assistant platform of choice, the reward will be offered to those making skills in the US, UK, and Germany initially. However, Amazon is playing coy with exactly how much developers might hope to make.
Ultimate Ears has announced the arrival of Amazon Alexa support for its UE BOOM 2 and UE MEGABOOM speakers, enabling both to be used as smart speakers in conjunction with an Android smartphone. The new functionality arrives in the form of app and firmware updates, all of which are free, of course. Once updated, using Alexa with the speaker is as simple as tapping a button.
Between its announced buyout of Whole Foods and revealing physical retail stores of its own, Amazon's brick and mortar aspirations are plain. It's little surprise, then, that we're we're seeing Amazon launch a new service called Instant Pickup in five cities around the US this week. The idea behind Instant Pickup is pretty straightforward: select from hundreds of "need-it-now" items on Amazon and obtain them up in person at physical pick up locations.
It's a confusing time for Eclipse Watchers in the United States as Amazon recalls hundreds (if not thousands) of Eclipse Glasses this week. This happened just before the Total Solar Eclipse of August, 2017. This Total Solar Eclipse is a rare event because of its position - massive coverage of the sun in a path that spans the United States for over 90 minutes in one go. That doesn't often happen over such a well-populated area of land.
Next week will be quite a show. Even before Samsung unveils its Galaxy Note 8, Google will supposedly finally launch and name Android 8.0 “O”. The latter, if true, will coincide with a historic event that, pardon the pun, eclipses the other technology-specific occasions. But before the solar eclipse party could even get started, Amazon sent out notices recalling eclipse glasses it formerly sold on its store, citing concerns about the certification, and therefore safety, of this spectacles.
Robert Kirkman, creator of The Walking Dead franchise, has made a surprise move in signing a new two-year deal with Amazon Studios over AMC, the network that runs the hit post-apocalypse zombie series. The deal means that any new shows to come from Kirkman and his production company Skybound Entertainment will be developed exclusively for Amazon Prime Video.
Amazon, not content with just dominating consumer shopping and ebooks, is looking into launching a food delivery service that will utilize special technology for keeping meals fresh...without refrigeration. This tech was first created and used by the U.S. military, but it could prove a vital way for Amazon to set itself apart from competing food delivery services. Assuming the sources are correct and Amazon's project goes according to plan, we may see these meal deliveries go live in 2018.
Amazon is about to give Ticketmaster a run for its money, according to sources, as it gears up to launch its own event ticketing business for U.S. venues. Through its service, which has been revealed by a total of four sources, Amazon will allow venue owners, sports leagues and more to sell tickets through the online platform, expanding its business and potential customer base while also loosening the grip a certain major ticketing company currently has on the market.
Andy Rubin's Essential, like many other start ups, needs funding from investors to get off the ground. Luckily for Rubin, there are quite a few high-profile companies looking to back Essential in its quest to break into the crowded smartphone market. Essential revealed its lineup of investors today, and some of the big names on the list include Amazon and Tencent.
Amazon is preparing to launch multiroom audio support for its Amazon Echo devices, sources have claimed, enabling users to play music in more than one room at once. The multiroom audio feature recently finished internal testing, per the sources, indicating it will be arriving on Echo in the relatively near future. Alexa will be able to respond to commands made to any one of the multi-unit speaker groups, too.
Smartphones from Blu are one again available for sale on Amazon. The budget Android devices were pulled from the site for the second time earlier this week over evidence they were still shipping with Chinese-linked spyware installed. Amazon has confirmed the relisting, and Blu has said that this incident was a "false alarm" and has cleared everything up.
