Amazon

Amazon just launched Alexa Custom Assistant: a service that lets automakers and device manufacturers build their own digital assistants using Amazon’s Alexa technology. Continue Reading →

In the aftermath of the insurrection, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and Snapchat suspended some high profile accounts (including President Trump's personal accounts) for violating their terms of service. Google and Apple removed Parler (a poorly monitored social media site) from their respective app stores. Continue Reading →

The official title of the Amazon Science blog is "Alexa gets better at predicting customers’ goals," but you should read this as, "The Turing test is not for machines to pass, but for humans to fail." Continue Reading →

In a statement published Tuesday, the European Commission said it took issue with Amazon using independent sellers’ data to benefit its own retail business. It also announced a second formal investigation into Amazon’s e-commerce processes. Should Amazon be able to analyze data it gathers from its vast number of third-party sellers to help it create Continue Reading →

The House Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law of the Committee on The Judiciary published Investigation of Competition in Digital Markets. It’s not a page-turner, but you should read it today. Continue Reading →

Amazon, Google, Apple, and the Zigbee Alliance announced a new partnership called Project Connected Home over IP. It will create a new smart home standard so their products can work together. Sadly, we won’t see a draft specification until late next year. But the good news is that the partnership is announced and there will be a spec and open source materials, too. Continue Reading →

A few weeks ago, Amazon announced new developer tools to enable Alexa to speak with emotion, either excited or disappointed across a range of intensities. Amazon said, "Use new Alexa Emotions and speaking styles to create a more natural and intuitive voice experience." Continue Reading →

In engineering parlance, getting closer to the "edge" means bringing computational resources closer to the user. To do that, you need a bunch of stuff to line up. In an ideal world, you'd combine powerful cloud resources and a low-latency high bandwidth network. That's exactly what Amazon and Verizon plan to do. Continue Reading →

According to Space News, "NASA announced Nov. 18 that it was adding five companies to a contract to perform commercial deliveries of payloads to the surface of the moon, a group that ranges from small ventures to Blue Origin and SpaceX." Continue Reading →

According to eMarketer, the U.S. search ad market is expected to grow to $55.17 billion (up 18% YoY). Roughly 73 percent (approx. $40 billion) of that goes to Google. But Amazon is on fire. Its search business is growing fast and it is expected to reach almost 13 percent this year and nearly 16 percent Continue Reading →