It’s Alexa’s birthday! If you wish that lady a happy birthday, she’ll give you a rendition of when Michael Buble sang Happy birthday to her. We’re not saying it’s not weird. But what isn’t weird? Amazon is -for a limited time only – discounting all kinds of Echo technology. So if you want a robot lady in your house, now might be the time.
You can;
Save $5 off Echo Buttons
Save up to 20% on a Tile Mate 1 pack or buy a Tile 4 pack and save up to $50 on an Echo Dot
Amazon recently announced that it will offer free 2-hour delivery of Whole Foods groceries for Prime customers via Amazon Prime Now.
What.
You read that right, beginning in four select markets – Austin, Cincinnati, Dallas and Virginia Beach, Prime Now Members will get free Whole Foods Delivery with only one caveat – their purchase must be over $35. At Whole Foods? Sounds easy peasy.
Oh, and the delivery window? A measly 2 hours. If you need your foods within the hour? That’ll be an extra $7.99.
From the Sauce, Whole Foods Co-Founder and CEO, John Mackey:
“We’re happy to bring our customers the convenience of free two-hour delivery through Prime Now and access to thousands of natural and organic groceries and locally sourced favorites,” said Whole Foods co-founder and CEO John Mackey in a press release.
Amazon plans to expand the service across the country during 2018.
Go into a store, take the food that you need, and walk out. Scan only one item- your smartphone- once.
This is the vision of Amazon Go. A supermarket where you walk in take what you want, and walk out. Everything you take out of the store is automatically (and correctly) charged to your Amazon account. No lines, no food scanning, no checkout.
The first Amazon Go store will open in February in Seattle, with more stores to follow. The technology that allows Amazon to do this? Well, simple, really. Computer vision, deep learning algorithms, and sensor fusion.
Do you have a 2016 wish for yourself, your family or your company? Jeff Bezos does. Do you think it’s the same? It might be. Want to find out?
It’s to win an Academy Award. As ambitious as we might be, this is not on our wish list for 2016, but kudos to you if it’s on yours! Jeff, the CEO of Amazon, is pinning his hopes on Amazon Studios to win the prestigious award.
From the Sauce:
“We want to win an Oscar,” he told German newspaper Die Welt in a recent interview. “Amazon has already won Golden Globes and Emmys. Our current target is to produce 16 home movies a year.”
Amazon’s first movie, the Spike Lee film Chi-Raq, is apparently already generating Oscar Buzz, (although a not very great imdb rating…) so he’s nicely on path to succeeding. But then – he’s the CEO of Amazon. That’s seemingly a path to success all on it’s own, whatever the industry.
Have you guys heard of Amazon’s drone delivery service?
The concept has been in the works since 2013, and now we have not one but two brand new teasers as well as an updated Amazon page that gives us an idea of the design and processes of the drone system that will one day be, they assure us, as normal as seeing mail trucks on the road.
The eventual goal is to deliver packages weighing 5 pounds or less within half an hour.
Amazon has a new product called Echo. We wrote about it in our most recent Deals Of The Week Blog article, the folks over at Amazon are very excited about it, BUT the product does have it’s naysayers (particularly concerning the price and similarity to other services).
So let’s have a look!
It’s a futuristic little guy, a black cylindrical speaker with a voice, called and responding to ‘Alexa’. It functions very similarly to how Siri does within an Apple device.
Little Alexa sits in a room in your house, waking up when the word ‘Alexa’ is spoken. A nice hands-free touch that will be great for solving general knowledge arguments. It answers any questions you have, as well as having the ability to complete functions and tasks for you such as playing music, setting an alarm and creating and editing lists.
Echo (slightly confusing with the 2 names, Amazon) has 7 microphones and far-field voice recognition capability that can detect a request from anywhere in a room and speakers that can fill any room.
If you buy Echo, you are also purchasing access to Amazon Music, Prime Music, iHeartRadio and TuneIn, and as Echo has Bluetooth, you will also be able to play music from a phone or tablet though the Echo. Which is definitely cool.
Similar to Siri, it’s designed to learn over time, and you can use part of the functionality (such as shopping lists and alarms) through the accompanying Amazon Echo App (unfortunately but not unexpectedly only on Android or Fire O/S), or through a web interface.
We can definitely see the opportunities and futuristic functionality of Echo, but perhaps the current price is a little high for something that is so similar to the free (within purchased devices of course) services of Siri and Google Now. We do look forward to having a play with the little dude.
Right now if you’re an Amazon Prime member you can purchase the Echo/Alexa for only $99 which is $100 off the real price tag of $199 for everyone else, however you still have to request an invitation to be able to buy it.
Kindles have always been pretty cool, but they just recently got a whole heck of a lot cooler.
They recently released new tablets which are awesome, BUT it is their massively increased customer service that is funneled directly from their understanding of their customers experience with the tablets that has us impressed.
We’re talking about the Mayday Button.
This is magic portal (other wise known as an icon you can press on screen) which connects you to a live Amazon representative through a video feed. Whoever you connect to can’t see you (hooray for Pajamas!) but they can talk to you, they can draw on the screen and they can take control of your device to fix any issues. These magical Amazon elves are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and they will respond within 15 seconds.
Uncategorized | iPhone-Antidote | 
November 5, 2018 10:20 am | 
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