Amazon released Echo in the US a year ago, and has introduced a wealth of additional features to it since. You can use the Bluetooth and Wi-Fi-enabled cylindrical speaker to get answers to your questions, order food, request a taxi, play music and even control your home.

For those of us in Europe the wait for Echo -- and its personal voice assistant Alexa -- has been a long one, but today the retail giant announces the device is finally set to be made available in the UK and Germany.

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As someone on the go, I have always craved the ability to listen to audio books in my car. Whenever I research getting them, however, the high prices always scare me away. Look, I understand a lot of time and effort goes into creating versions of books that are read aloud, but with current pricing, it is simply not reasonable for an average person to truly take advantage.

Today, this changes as Amazon delivers audio-focused benefits to members of its Prime service. Users can now access 50 audio books for free, meaning consuming them is an affordable reality. In addition, Prime members are getting free access to the company's 'Audible Channels'.

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Today, Amazon reveals details of the latest addition to its Fire range of tablets, the Fire HD 8. As the name would suggest, this is an 8-inch tablet and the key selling point is the fact that it is absolutely dirt cheap.

Of course, this is not its only selling point: there's also 12 hours of battery life -- something which is important for an entertainment-focused device. Much of the hardware has been upgraded from previous models, but it is by no means a powerhouse.

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While many people hate advertisements, I actually like them. Why? Well, not only do they alert me to new products on the market, they subsidize a lot of content too. From television, to radio, to the web... ads make the world go around.

Amazon even leverages advertisements with its 'Prime Exclusive Phones' program. This allows consumers to get a discounted Android phone in exchange for seeing ads on the lock screen. It is a great way for shoppers to save money, while Amazon makes money from the ads -- win/win. Today, a new phone joins the program for a mere $99 -- the Moto G Play. It even works on all four of the major USA carriers, including Verizon!

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Amazon Dash Button is now available in the UK. For anyone who finds logging into their Amazon account to place an order for everyday things like loo roll and coffee difficult, this physical button (thought by many to be an April Fool a couple of years ago) does the 'hard' work for you.

Available exclusively to Amazon Prime members, the Amazon Dash Button is available for a number of top brands and is (effectively) free. Amazon describes the button as "the Wi-Fi-connected device that conveniently reorders your favourite products with the simple press of a button", but it's hard not to see it as a product that panders to the terminally lazy and those under the illusion that their time is the most valuable.

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Lost your phone? We probably all have at one time or another and it borders between annoying and scary depending where you've been. If you didn't leave home then it's there somewhere. If you did then it can be a full panic.

Now Amazon would like help via its Echo device. You're likely familiar with that by now, thanks to a TV ad campaign a while back, but it continues to do different things thanks to constant updates.

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Windows 10 Anniversary Update has been causing problems for users in all sorts of ways. There have been reports of it freezing systems, and killing webcams.

Now owners of Amazon Kindles are reporting their PCs crashing when plugging in their devices via USB to charge them or transfer books.

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The ability to read is something many of us take for granted. At a young age, you probably had tons of books in your homes and schools, enabling you to learn to both read and write. Believe it or not, not everyone has access to books. Isn't that sad?

Luckily, Amazon is looking to change this. Today, the famed retailer launches a new literacy initiative called 'Kindle Reading Fund". The company is aiming to get books into the hands of those who don't normally have access. How? It will be distributing free Kindle e-readers, Fire tablets, and Kindle e-books to those that need them.

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There are lots of cloud storage services available, offering varying amounts of free space, and additional storage for a fee. OneDrive, Google Drive, and Dropbox are all great services.

Amazon wants you to consider storing your files in its cloud, and today it introduces unlimited storage for people in the UK -- and you don’t have to be a Prime subscriber to get it.

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Its been two and half years since I parted ways with DirecTV. It wasn't them, I honestly loved the service, but I was paying for countless channels I never watched. I replaced it with Hulu Plus and Sling TV and now pay much less for fewer channels I don't watch. I have the same few I flick between, but without al-a-carte this is the best I can do.

Recently a system problem eliminated one of my options -- not the TV channels, but how I view them. I'd been predominantly using an Amazon Fire TV along with a Harmony remote. The remote stopped connecting to its hub and no fix I could think of worked. The batteries in my Fire TV remote were dead and I had no spare AAA ones lying around. Similarly, the Roku 3 batteries were also history, but I did have the required AA ones.

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Another plugin bites the dust. The Windows and macOS versions of Firefox have supported the Widevine video protocol for a little while now, and the upcoming Firefox 49 for Linux gets the same treatment.

What this means is that streaming video services that use the Google-owned protocol -- including Netflix and Amazon Prime Video -- can be watched without the need for plugins.

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Many businesses are turning to virtualization technologies and to public cloud services like AWS, but bringing these technologies together can be tricky.

Hybrid IT specialist HotLink is launching a new Cloud-Attach platform that enables customers to quickly, easily and holistically incorporate public cloud resources into their existing production data centers.

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When Amazon initially announced that it wanted to make deliveries by drone, the world became very curious. The media jumped on the story, of course, driving people to get both excited and anxious about the possibilities.

Like many things, however, the USA government bureaucracy stifled our drone delivery dreams, somewhat. While I am all for safety and testing, I hate to see progress move at a snail's pace. The UK Government seems a bit more open to the unmanned delivery idea, as it is now working with Amazon to begin testing these drones in the nation as a delivery method.

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Amazon Web Services (AWS) has acquired the San Francisco-based startup Cloud9 for an undisclosed sum in an effort to add more development tools to its web services stack.

The company was founded in 2010 and gives remote teams of developers the ability to work together to develop, edit and test code across 300 different browsers and operating systems.

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As you're no doubt already aware, Amazon Prime Day is upon us. You have to be a Prime Member to take part in this day of deals, but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial if you're not already a Prime subscriber.

The team over at TechBargains has prepared some of the best, longer lasting deals but be warned, this is a pretty crazy day and a lot of offers are going fast. For full coverage be sure to check out TechBargains for the most up to date coverage on the Lightning Deals which launch every 5 minutes and will have a limited supply and time limit, so act fast.

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