Articles about Amazon

The problem with unleashing any child onto the internet is keeping track of what they are up to, and trying to ensure they're not accessing content you'd rather they didn't. With this in mind, Amazon has launched two new services for its Fire for Kids tablet.

Parent Dashboard and Discussion Cards not only give parents the chance to keep an eye on what their kids are doing, but also to encourage dialog about apps and content. Amazon says the aim is to connect parents and children, but it's also about managing time limits and setting educational goals.

Continue reading →

In the dash to move systems to the cloud many organizations neglect the need to safely backup their information.

Secure file services specialist CTERA Networks is addressing this problem for Amazon cloud users by making its Cloud Server Data Protection Platform available on the AWS Marketplace.

Continue reading →

Everybody deserves a quality wireless router in their home, but understandably, not everyone can afford the latest and greatest. If you opt for a no-name budget offering, you may be in for a world of pain -- dropped connections and needed reboots. Luckily, there are plenty of affordable routers from reputable manufacturers that can get the job done. Sure, they may not be loaded with features, but they can be dependable.

One brand that you can often depend on for quality routers is Linksys. Its best models can be a bit expensive, but they are well worth the money. Today, the company launches a new 802.11ac wireless router that has high end features, such as tri-band wireless and MU-MIMO, but doesn't break the bank. Called "Max-Stream EA8300," it has a rather unique feature -- Amazon Alexa support!

Continue reading →

Amazon today announced details of Amazon Cash, a new way to shop online that does not require shoppers to have a bank card. The system allows shoppers to print out a barcode -- or display it on the screen of their iOS or Android phone -- and make a payment in brick-and-mortar stores.

Launching in the US, Amazon Cash can be used to add money to a customer's Amazon Balance, and a number of big names including CVS Pharmacy, Speedway and Sheetz are among the stores participating in the scheme.

Continue reading →

Amazon has announced a new contact center solution aimed to "power millions of customer conversations." The solution, named Amazon Connect, is a cloud-based offering, with customers paying by the minute of usage.

It all starts with the "Virtual Contact Center" solution, integrated deep within AWS. According to Amazon, it only takes a couple of minutes to set the feature up and it requires no special training to use. Payment by the minute goes on top of telephony costs, a pricing model AWS uses in its cloud services, too.

Continue reading →

Thousands of Alexa developers can now build and host most Alexa skills for free using Amazon Web Services (AWS), thanks to a newly released Amazon program.

Previously, developers have had at their disposal the AWS Free Tier, offering a million AWS Lambda requests and a total of 750 hours of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) -- monthly, for free. However, exceeding these limits also meant monthly fees.

Continue reading →

Following a ruling by a Pennsylvania court that Google would have to turn over emails stored overseas, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Cisco have come together to file an amicus brief in support of the company.

Filing an amicus brief is a way in which companies or people not directly involved in a case can show their interest in it to a court. In this situation, it is in the best interest of the companies that filed the brief that US law enforcement remains unable to access customer data that is currently stored outside of the US.

Continue reading →

When a large portion of the Internet went offline earlier last week, no one could have guessed that the reason for it would be a simple typo. Yet, that’s exactly what happened, as Amazon gave an explanation to the incident.

A number of big websites (and an even greater number of smaller ones) went offline for five hours -- Trello, Lonely Planet, Medium, IFTTT, Quora, and pretty much every site built on Wix.

Continue reading →

If you happen to have an Amazon Prime account then you're aware of the benefits that come along with your annual fee. There's the free two-day shipping, the streaming video service, the music, and more.

Amazon is also producing its own original shows, several becoming big hits, like The Man in the High Castle and Transparent.

Continue reading →

The explosion of digital information flooding the modern enterprise today creates its own unique challenges. Organizations strive to integrate multiple disparate systems, connect to a global ecosystem of partners and customers, and transfer large files and data sets securely -- basically, do business today -- but doing so efficiently and securely challenges even the largest and most skilled IT teams.

Amazon recently launched a service to literally drive a truck to your data center, load it up with all of your data, and drive it back to an Amazon server farm to plug it in and push it to the cloud. The rationale behind this offering stems from the idea that businesses looking to move massive amounts of data -- terabytes and petabytes of information -- to Amazon’s cloud don’t have a fast, affordable option to do so over the internet. But what if they did?

Continue reading →

When I want to stream locally stored media to my television, I turn to Plex. The popular service has apps for many devices such as Xbox One and Apple TV -- both of which I own. Heck, even my Samsung 4K TV has Plex support built in. Ultimately, the value of the service is found in both its ease of use and cross-platform support.

Never known to stand on its laurels, Plex is constantly improving, and today, it gets a really exciting new feature. Users of the service that are also owners of Amazon Echo or other compatible devices can now leverage the Alexa voice assistant to interact with Plex.

Continue reading →

The measure of Apple fiscal first quarter 2017 isn't record revenues ($78.35 billion) but comparison to major competitors: More than three times Google ($26.06 billion) or Microsoft ($24.1 billion). Amazon announces tomorrow, Groundhog Day. Will the retailer's CEO, Jeff Bezos, see his shadow? The 3x multiplier nearly applies to net income: $17.89 billion, versus $6.64 billion and $5.2 billion, respectively, for the two rivals. Looked at differently, compared to Apple's same quarter in fiscal 2010, seven years later, profits exceed total revenues ($15.68 billion). That's an astounding comparison.

The results defy pundits' prognostications, including my own, about gravity pulling the company back to Earth. iPhone, as major source of revenue, can only stay up for so long, before slowing smartphone sales wreck havoc. That said, credit where it's due: CEO Tim Cook is, as I've asserted before, a logistics and manufacturing genius. He is a strategist, but not an innovation leader like predecessor Steve Jobs. Cook masterfully manages his inheritance, but he, nor Apple observers, should get lost in the quarter's glow: iPhone remains boon and bane.

Continue reading →

Starbucks coffee fuels the days of many people. While the company's beverages are a bit expensive compared to, say, McDonalds or 7-11, they are chock full of caffeine and very tasty. Quite frankly, I drink Starbucks coffee or tea pretty much every day, as I often work in its locations -- they have clean tables and free Wi-Fi.

The company has often embraced technology within its stores -- it offers a nice mobile app with Spotify integration, and many of its tables offer wireless smartphone charging. Today, the company rolls out voice ordering through its own mobile iOS app or Amazon Alexa. Unfortunately, the iOS feature will be limited to 1,000 beta testers at first.

Continue reading →

Amazon has steadily been expanding the scope of its cloud storage business AWS beyond hosting websites and apps for businesses and today the company announced its latest venture aimed at increasing IT skills training in the UK.

During an event in London, the company announced its new training and job placement program, re:Start. Amazon's new service, that was built in partnership with the UK's Ministry of Defense, the Prince's Trust and QA consulting, is geared toward educating young adults and military veterans and their wives.

Continue reading →

Today we arrive at the first of two 10-year anniversaries regarding iPhone: Steve Jobs unveiling the handset six months before its release -- unusual for Apple's then-CEO to pre-announce something, but necessary, with the federal regulatory rigmarole that cellular devices go through. Jobs and his management team brought the smartphone to market at great risk: Established and entrenched manufacturers, mainly Nokia, had huge distribution channels and massive amounts of research and development invested in their cellulars. iPhone debuted in one market (United States) and on a single carrier (AT&T, which concurrently rebranded). By most measures of business strategies: Insanity. But risk was a defining characteristic of Jobs' leadership style running the company.

You will read many "state of iPhone" analyses and commentaries this week spotlighting slowing sales, as buying growth plateaus in major markets (China, Europe, and the United States) and observing that Android continues to gobble global market share. The problem with iPhone is something else, and it's a metaphor for what's desperately wrong at Apple as 2017 starts: Loss of innovative mindshare; obsession with an outdated design motif; unwillingness to take meaningful risks. The company's fortunes rose with iPhone, and they will fall with it.

Continue reading →