Tag Archives: amzn

Amazon Bets New Gear In Voice Control Fight Vs. Google, Apple

Amazon.com ( AMZN ) is doubling down on its voice-control tech Alexa as it wages a prolonged battle against Apple ( AAPL ), Google and others for a greater share of customer attention. The mighty, Seattle-based e-commerce firm announced Thursday that it was giving Alexa two new pieces of hardware that will beef up its roster of offerings. The voice-controlled household assistant will gain Amazon Tap and the Echo Dot. Tap is a smaller, portable version of Amazon’s original Echo speaker, which works like other Wi-Fi speakers to play music but also serves as Alexa’s cyber ears and voice. Unlike the Echo, Tap doesn’t need an electric outlet — it runs on a rechargeable battery. Like its larger sibling, Tap connects to phones and the Internet via Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. The Alexa-powered Tap requires people to press a button prior to commanding it to do things like order a ride via app-based car service Uber, read e-books and the news, and provide weather reports. Alexa can also operate, via voice commands, the growing number of “connected” home devices such as thermostats and lights, and perform dozens of other tasks. Tap will begin shipping at the end of March for $130. Amazon also announced the hockey-puck-like Echo Dot , which is basically a miniaturized version of its Echo without a large, high-quality speaker. It has a built-in smaller speaker along with a microphone and can connect to existing speaker systems via wire, or wirelessly by Bluetooth. Amazon is limiting Dot sales to existing Echo or Amazon Fire TV device owners; to get one, people will have to ask Alexa. Amazon’s stock was down a fraction to around 576 in afternoon trading on the stock market today . Amazon stock has an IBD Composite Rating of 80, where 99 is the highest. The stock more than doubled in 2015 but much like the rest of the market had a rocky start to 2016. But as the market has rebounded, Amazon stock has surged around 20% since Feb. 9. Executives have not disclosed to investors exactly how successful Amazon’s foray into voice-control tech is, but according to a Business Insider report , Echo vastly outsold the rest of the wireless speaker market in 2015. Amazon lists Echo as its #1 best seller in the home audio speakers section of its e-commerce site and notes that while Echo is available for orders now, it won’t actually be in stock again till March 12. The device debuted in 2014. Echo’s runaway success is not good news for other firms making voice-control plays. Apple, for example, has Siri — though unlike the Alexa-powered Echo, people must hit a button before activating Siri. Google has built a similar feature into its search engine and Android operating system. To activate the Google voice controller, people say, “O.K., Google” and proceed to command it to perform functions like setting appointments and timers. Google is a unit of Alphabet ( GOOGL ). Microsoft ( MSFT ) also has developed a virtual personal assistant called Cortana.

5 Weird Things That Have Been Listed On eBay

On eBay ( EBAY ), you can buy one year’s worth of work — to be completed in little more than four months. While that listing may be a joke — it appears not to be — over the years eBay has garnered fame and infamy for the sometimes weird items and services people have listed on the popular e-tail website. And last week was no different. On Feb. 25, a prankster listed Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi on the site after the president reportedly said, “By God, if it were possible for me to be sold, I would sell myself,” in an address on state television . His condition was listed as “slightly used” and the seller would not accept returns. Bidding surpassed $100,000 before eBay pulled the listing. Unlike many of eBay’s e-commerce rivals such as Amazon.com ( AMZN ), Wal-Mart ( WMT ) and even PayPal ( PYPL ), the San Jose-based company’s platform is set up in such a way that bizarre items are almost inevitable (though it is worth noting that you can buy some pretty weird stuff on Amazon as well). In that spirit, here’s a look at some of my favorite odd listings that have appeared on eBay: 1. As noted above, this one is currently live on the site . Listed is “one year of work equivalent to 2,000 hours of specialized labor over 4.25 months.” For $150,000 a “loyal, dedicated and tireless contractor” will labor 16 hours a day, seven days a week with no break or lunch — for projects like painting, light construction work and “bamboo plant propagation.” EBay spokeswoman Penny Bruce told IBD the listing is indeed in compliance with the company’s policies. 2. Another odd auction — again, completely legit — was the World’s Largest BBQ Pit offered by a Texas man for the princely sum of $350,000. The 76-foot-long truck trailer has 24 barbecue pit doors, a walk-in cooler, beer taps and a “place for stereo equipment” and TV. The truck cab was an extra $50,000. It sold. 3. In 2004, a man tried to sell an F-18 warplane via eBay for $1 million. Ultimately, the fighter jet did not sell — it used to be a Blue Angel-owned aircraft — but it did attract the attention of the FBI, which told the seller that the plane had to remain in the U.S. 4. The last of our favorite weird items sold via eBay is a letter that Nobel Prize winning physicist Albert Einstein sent to philosopher Eric Gutkind shortly before Einstein’s death. The letter references philosophical and theological themes, and expresses Einstein’s belief that God does not exist. It sold for … $3 million.

Google Releases Payments App, Mounts Pressure On Apple, PayPal

Google announced a pilot app program Wednesday that aims to make it more seamless to use its Android Pay payments app. The new app, called Hands Free, will remove the need to use a smartphone at checkout, when shopping at merchants participating in the pilot — which for now is limited to a southern portion of the San Francisco Bay Area. With Hands Free, shoppers at checkout tell cashiers that they want to “pay with Google.” Checkout computers, equipped with the Android Pay app, then let cashiers call up a photo that the shopper already has uploaded to the app, to verify the shopper’s identity, and then complete the transaction. In select stores, Google is testing the use of in-store cameras to automatically confirm a shopper’s identity, based on the uploaded picture. Google is a subsidiary of Alphabet ( GOOGL ). The announcement signals Google’s growing interest in the crowded payments sectors . It’s a complex and competitive arena, with companies in the mix including Apple ( AAPL ) with Apple Pay; PayPal ( PYPL ) which recently split off from eBay ( EBAY ); and recent IPO Square ( SQ ). If Hands Free indeed signals that Google plans to aggressively tackle online payments, it could spell trouble for PayPal, according to Alex Rampell, a general partner at the noted venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. PayPal executives stick to their message that the San Jose, Calif.-based company is well-positioned, in part because unlike Google or Apple, it’s platform agnostic. For example, PayPal processes many of the transactions conducted over Apple Pay. On Monday, San Francisco-based Square announced that it was adding the ability to store money on its Square Cash app, adding a feature already offered by PayPal and PayPal subsidiary Venmo. Venmo and Square Cash are peer-to-peer payments apps that are popular with millennials, which use them for things such as sharing the cost of a cab fare or meal. At least one analyst says Venmo stacks up well against rivals such as Google and Apple. Amazon.com ( AMZN ) is also in the payments business — and that’s the reason, according to industry watchers, that Amazon shoppers will not be able to pay with PayPal at any time in the near future. When PayPal spun off from eBay, executives said at the time that one advantage was the new business opportunities it couldn’t get while attached to eBay.