Amazon

Apple plans to make a major Apple TV announcement at WWDC that should delight Amazon Prime subscribers - the addition of an Amazon Prime Video app for the Apple TV. The news comes courtesy of BuzzFeed's John Paczkowski, who often accurately shares details on Apple's plans ahead of events. According to Paczkowski, sources of Apple's plans say the company will announce an Amazon Prime Video app...

Amazon today debuted an all-new touchscreen Echo device, which it's calling the "Echo Show," following a report from yesterday that said the company was gearing up to debut the new Echo as soon as today. As was expected, the Echo Show is a smart home speaker system that has all of the features of the basic Echo system with an additional 7-inch touchscreen. With the addition of a touchscreen,...

After nearly two years of being absent from the fourth generation Apple TV's app lineup, Amazon Prime Video is reportedly on its way to Apple's set-top box and could arrive for Prime subscribers to download and watch videos as soon as this summer. The news comes from Recode, citing sources familiar with the plans of each company who said that Apple and Amazon are "close to an agreement" in...

Amazon today announced the expansion of its popular Echo line with the $200 Amazon Echo Look, a device that packs in all of the typical Echo functionalities and adds on a hands-free camera with built-in LED lighting that can give users an edge on their wardrobe choices. With Echo Look, users can take full-body photos and videos using their voice, and view the content on the connected Amazon iOS...

Amazon on Wednesday made the AI and voice-recognition software that powers the company's Alexa virtual assistant available to all its cloud-computing customers. Called Amazon Lex, the service will allow developers to make chat bot applications using Alexa's voice recognition technology and leverage the AI's deep learning abilities to enable their apps to understand more text and speech...

Amazon today announced it is launching its Fire TV media streamer stick in the United Kingdom, approximately six months after the device first launched in the U.S. The redesigned Fire TV stick, which costs £39.99, is the first of Amazon's media streamers to come with an Alexa-enabled voice remote. It features a new quad-core processor that makes it 30 percent faster than the previous version, ...

Amazon today announced a new way for its users to add funds to their Amazon accounts, called Amazon Cash. By visiting a participating retailer, Amazon users will be able to show a barcode to a cashier, choose an amount between $15 and $500, and pay the amount in cash to see it transferred digitally and able to be spent on Amazon.com. As TechCrunch reported, Amazon Cash is aimed at "cash...

Amazon has launched another grocery initiative, this time for Amazon employees in Seattle. The service is called AmazonFresh Pickup and it allows customers to order groceries from the Amazon mobile app on iOS and Android, or on the web, select a pickup time, and show up at the AmazonFresh Pickup location to get their items bagged into their vehicle by an Amazon worker. Although it's limited to ...

Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa are being put through their paces in a "tech incubator" hotel chain, in order to determine which voice assistant brings more to the table for guests wanting to order room service, control lights, change TV channels, adjust the temperature, and more (via Bloomberg). The main incubator for the test is happening in Aloft Hotels, which are owned by Marriott. The...

Amazon has added a long-awaited Pocket-style read-it-later feature to its Kindle iOS app that allows users browsing the web to send articles to their Kindle device for offline reading. Amazon has offered desktop Chrome and Firefox browser extensions to feed into its Send to Kindle feature for some time, but the company had not offered a Safari-compatible iOS solution until now. The new...

Amazon today updated its Amazon Music app for iOS devices to version 6.4.0, adding a small but important new feature: support for CarPlay. With the latest version of the Amazon Music app, Amazon Music subscribers who own a vehicle equipped with CarPlay can access their music directly through the CarPlay interface when an iPhone is connected to the car. Amazon Music is available to Amazon...

Amazon today announced that it will introduce its Siri competitor, Amazon Alexa, directly into the company's iOS app over the course of the next week (via VentureBeat). With the addition of Alexa, users will now be able to ask questions about the status of their orders, use their voice to initiate searches, play music, and start audio books from Audible. Alexa's powers go beyond Amazon's...

Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Cisco have filed an amicus brief supporting Google in an ongoing case dealing with security and privacy, topics that Apple has been known to advocate in the past (via Business Insider). Most recently, Google's case has led to a court in Pennsylvania requesting the company to comply to an FBI warrant asking for emails residing on foreign servers. Although it's...

Amazon is building upon the Alexa voice-recognition technology found in its Echo range of speakers so that the virtual assistant can distinguish between individual users based on the sound of their voices. According to anonymous sources who spoke to TIME, Amazon's feature would work by matching the person speaking to a pre-recorded voice sample, or "voice print", to verify the speaker's...

Amazon's latest Fire TV stick, with Alexa built in, is coming to the U.K., after launching in the U.S. back in October. The streaming TV dongle will make its debut in the country on April 6 and have a price tag of £40, with Amazon already taking pre-orders. The device comes with a quad-core processor that Amazon says makes it 30 percent faster than its predecessor. The dongle also...

Developers at U.S. digital consultancy Rain have created a little-known app called Reverb that allows users to access Amazon's Alexa virtual assistant from their Mac desktop or iOS device. Launching the free Mac app prompts users to sign in to their Amazon account, after which a window opens showing the familiar blue Alexa ring on the desktop. Click and hold on the ring with the mouse cursor, ...

Both Amazon and Google are working on turning their popular AI-based speaker products into replacements for a home telephone, reports The Wall Street Journal. The Amazon Echo and/or the Google Home could be used to make and receive phone calls, with the two companies planning to add the updated functionality as soon as this year. Smart home products like the Amazon Echo have become a staple in ...

Amazon's push into the services space continued today with the launch of Chime, a new online VoIP call and video messaging platform aimed at business users. Apart from video conferencing and chat messaging, Amazon Chime allows users to host or join virtual meetings with a single click, and share content and screens across multiple platforms, including Mac, Windows, iOS and Android devices. ...

Amazon has announced it is extending third-party support for its Alexa Voice Service (AVS) internationally, with rollout beginning today across the U.K. and Germany (via TechCrunch). First launched in the U.S. in 2015, AVS is the voice-interaction software that powers the company's Echo family of smart speakers as well as a range of supporting third-party smart home connected devices, such...

Apple and Amazon have agreed to cease all exclusivity obligations previously put in place between the two companies regarding the supply and distribution of audiobooks through iTunes and Audible (via Reuters). The partnership between the two companies previously incited a complaint from the German Publishers and Booksellers Association in 2015 centering around the potential for a monopoly in the...