Amazon is building treehouses for its employees to cry in

Amazon is hard at work on offering its employees something decidedly out of the ordinary when it comes to office culture. Instead of something frivolous like special chairs or a cafe, employees are getting a special greenhouse, which will contain a conjoined series of treehouses.

The New York Times reports the greenhouse will be constructed in downtown Seattle and is meant to act as a refuge for employees as well as housing 3,000 species of plants, many of them endangered.

The treehouses are meant for employees to meet up and discuss work and other topics, but the climate of a greenhouse isn’t really conducive to intensive thinking, or at least it doesn’t seem to be. At first, the greenhouses will only be available for Amazon employees to traverse, but there are plans to open them up to the public at a later date.

This is an interesting step to take following claims of Amazon’s supposed rough treatment of its employees, also rooted in a report from The New York Times, asserting the culture at the ecommerce giant is “brutal.”

Amazon is looking to open up the new greenhouses in early 2018, so there’s still a while to go yet before we see what effect this has on employee morale and the plants within.

Source: The New York Times

Amazon robot challenge winner counts on deep learning AI

Amazon’s robot Picking Challenge is back for a second year, and it’s clear that the competition has learned a lot in that time… in more ways than one. The Netherlands’ TU Delft won both parts of the challenge (stowing and picking warehouse items) with a robot that relied on the combination of deep learning artificial intelligence and depth-sensing cameras to get the job done. The machine studied 3D scans of the stockroom items to help it decide how to manipulate items with its gripper and suction cup. That adaptive AI made a big difference, to put it mildly. The arm got a near-flawless score in the stowing half of the event, and was over three times faster at picking objects than last year’s champion (100 per hour versus 30).

Even the also-rans fared better, TechRepublic notes. Despite tougher demands, only four competitors failed to score (versus half in the 2015 challenge). Nearly half of the entries managed over 40 points, which would have been good enough to get third place a year ago.

TU Delft and other entrants aren’t about to replace people any time soon. Human workers typically pick 400 items per hour, and they won’t suffer the 16.7 percent failure rate of the Picking Challenge leader. As it stands, Amazon is quick to stress that it doesn’t want robots to replace humans (at least, for now). They’d be supplements to the flesh-and-blood workforce, helping them fulfill orders more effectively. With that said, the rate of progress is brisk enough that you might just see robots like these in real Amazon warehouses within a few years.

Via: TechRepublic, The Verge, BBC

Source: TU Delft, Amazon Picking Challenge

Alexa shops for Amazon Prime items so you don’t have to

Amazon’s virtual assistant could already lend a hand with re-ordering items, and now Alexa is a much more helpful shopping companion. Rather than just replenishing items you’ve already purchased or compiling a shopping list, Alexa now searches for new items based on your voice commands. If you’re looking for a new food processor, for example, the virtual assistant will go through Amazon’s Prime product listings to make a suggestion. If you’re happy with what Alexa turned up, you can easily order it without having to use another device.

Alexa uses the payment method you’ve setup for Amazon’s one-click ordering and if you aren’t happy with the item when it arrives, you can always send it back free of charge. The company says the virtual assistant’s new skill allows it to sort through tens of millions of listings based on voice cues from an Echo, Echo Dot, Tap or Fire TV. All you have to do is say “Alexa, order me” whatever you’re after and the software does the rest, as long as you have a Prime membership.

Amazon opens up grocery deliveries to more of London

Amazon’s grocery delivery service only went live in the UK a couple of weeks ago, but already the company is expanding beyond the launch footprint of various central and east London areas. As of today, Amazon Fresh is now available in 59 additional postcodes in northern, eastern and southern parts of the capital, taking the total up to 128 (full list here). Reside within one of those postcodes, and you can order any of over 130,000 everyday products for home delivery, including meat, seafood, fresh fruit and vegetables.

Amazon Fresh is basically the online retailer’s alternative to Ocado, offering perishable produce from well-known brands and local suppliers with help from brother-in-arms Morrisons. You have to pay to play, though, with access to Fresh setting customers back £7 per month (after a 30-day free trial) on top of the price of their yearly Prime subscription. But, as long as your order rings up at over £40, delivery is free, with same-day slots available if you check out before 1PM.

Source: Amazon

Amazon Sets Second Annual ‘Prime Day’ for July 12

Following last summer’s inaugural, one-day sale event called “Prime Day,” Amazon this morning confirmed that it will be bringing back the Black Friday-like discounts this summer on July 12 (via Fortune). The company is referring to the second entry of Prime Day as the “biggest Amazon event ever,” exceeding over 100,000 deals when it launches at midnight PT on the 12th.

As last year, Prime Day is exclusive to those members who subscribe to Amazon Prime, the online retailer’s $99-per-year service which nets users access to exclusive Amazon video series, free two-day shipping, and one-hour delivery on certain orders. The company said last year that its first Prime Day broke sales records set on Black Friday in 2014, and with new deals popping up “as often as every five minutes” this year, it hopes to set a new record again in 2016.

Prime Day is a one-day only global shopping event exclusively for Prime members. On Tuesday, July 12, the second annual Prime Day will be the biggest global Amazon event ever. Members in the U.S. can shop starting at midnight PT, with new deals starting as often as every five minutes throughout the day.

With 100,000 deals exclusively for Prime members, across nearly all departments and product categories in ten countries, there will be something for everyone. In fact on the first annual Prime Day in 2015, worldwide members ordered 398 items per second, exceeding Black Friday records at the time.

Amazon is also promising greater inventory this time around, including a TV stock that is “double what it had for Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined last year.” Increasing the catalog of top tier items is most likely a reaction to last year’s Prime Day, which had copious sales, but saw the best products selling out fast and ending with a collection of random, unwanted marked-down items.

The company is giving members a way to combat missing out on items with new deal alerts as well, which will be sent out via its Amazon app [Direct Link]. Amazon encourages users who want more information to visit its Help page to prepare for Prime Day, and follow these steps to set up notifications for specific deals on its app.

Tag: Amazon
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Amazon’s Prime Day clearout returns on July 12th

It’s probably fair to say that Amazon’s homegrown shopping event, Prime Day, wasn’t the most exciting of retail events. For every discounted PlayStation 4 or Xbox One, there was a litany of deals for lawn chairs or to bulk-buy yoga mats. But even an underwhelming product line won’t deter the world’s biggest store from trying to make its mid-summer version of Black Friday an annual event. This year, July 12th will play host to more than 100,000 deals that are exclusively for Prime members in 10 countries. As before, the event will be structured around a series of lightning deals, some of which that will pop up as frequently as every five minutes.

Much as we can joke about the event being good for clearing out old inventory, Amazon believes that last year’s event was a blockbuster. According to the company’s Greg Greeley, Prime Day ’15 saw more than twice the number of TVs sold as on Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined. Of course, Amazon is famously stingy with real numbers, so it’s hard to gauge that figure properly, but it still sounds impressive. The firm also revealed some of the biggest selling products by country, with Canada loving slow cookers, Italy opting for beard trimmers and the US scooping up dog toys.

In order to build hype for July 12th, Prime members will be teased with a series of countdown deals leading up to the big day. Between July 5th and 11th, users will be offered bargain bundles such as a 32-inch TV and a bundled Fire TV stick for $119.99. They’ll also get the chance to win a “Prime Music Experience,” that involves hanging out with artists such as Pentatonic, Flo Rida or Blink 182. All you have to do to enter is listen to a song from a “select Prime Music playlist,” each one associated with a prize.

Source: Prime Day Music, Prime Day 2016