Amazon Slashes Prices Across its Echo Smart Speaker Range for Black Friday

Amazon today began offering devices in its Echo smart speaker range at discounted prices for the first time in the products’ short history, as part of its Black Friday Deals Week.

For those unfamiliar with the devices, the connected speakers’ array of microphones lets users query voice-based assistant Alexa, who can be asked to do things like play music, read the news, use apps, check the weather, turn on the lights, set timers, and more.

The full-size Echo speaker is being offered at $140 (usually $180), while the second-generation Echo Dot – a smaller variant with the same features – has had $10 lopped off the price and is going for $40.

Elsewhere, Amazon has slashed $40 off its Alexa-enabled portable Bluetooth speaker, now selling for $90 instead of $130.

Apple is also offering its own Black Friday deals this year. For all the discounts on Apple products offered on Amazon, Apple, and elsewhere, be sure to check out the MacRumors Black Friday Holiday Roundup, continually updated throughout the week.

Related Roundup: Black Friday
Tags: Amazon, Amazon Echo
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Amazon may bring its ticket sales to the US

Amazon introduced online concert and theater ticket sales in the UK back in 2015, and it now looks like you should have that option elsewhere in the world — possibly including the US. Recode has spotted job listings that point to an “international expansion strategy” for Asia and Europe, while multiple recent openings at Amazon’s Seattle headquarters hint at American operations. There’s even talk of a Prime Tickets feature, although it’s not clear what that would entail beyond some added value for your yearly Prime membership.

The company isn’t commenting on the scope of its plans. However, worldwide expansion seems likely. Amazon Tickets’ main selling point is its unusually candid pricing, which lists everything up front — unlike many rivals, it isn’t burying service fees. Pair that with Amazon’s established online shopping tech and it promises to be much more straightforward than rivals.

The challenge, as Recode explains, is finding enough tickets to sell in the US. Heavyweights like Live Nation tend to secure exclusive deals with major artists and venues in the country. Amazon may have to offer strong incentives to get performers dropping their exclusives, or else accept that its early business will focus on artists and shows that don’t always get top billing.

Via: Recode

Source: Amazon Jobs (1), (2), (3)

Control Neato’s robot vacuum with Amazon Alexa voice commands

Getting your robotic vacuum to clean the house is usually a matter of setting a timer or pressing a start button — but what if you could just ask it to get to work? If you happen to own an Amazon Echo and a Neato Botvac Connected robot vacuum, now you can. Today the company announced that its Wifi-connected vacuum cleaner will take commands from Amazon Alexa. The feature is extremely straightforward, and features just two commands: start and stop.

Users who set up their Botvac with the Amazon Echo will be able to start cleaning with the phrase “Alexa, ask Neato to start cleaning.” The vacuum can be similarly stopped by asking it to “pause cleaning.” It’s not exactly the “huge leap forward for the smartphone,” Neato claims it to be, but it’s still a nice feature for folks who already have Amazon’s digital assistant. The company says the feature is compatible with both the original Echo and the Echo Dot. We have to admit, it is kind of neat.

Source: Neato

Fake news sites are using Amazon to hire their writers

It appears that right wing websites that traffic in “alt-right” fake news are using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk system to recruit writers to produce content for them. The Mechanical Turk platform is an “odd-job board” where companies can hire random folks from the internet to perform a variety of menial online tasks, like filling out surveys or transcribing audio. In this case, white supremacist outlet The Goldwater wants people to produce “news” articles for $5 a pop.

The advert, which has since been removed, requested that applicants write in the style of Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones and other white nationalist media personalities. “At times, we may give you a conspiracy theory to write about. Roll with it,” the post continues. “You are a reporter now!” Of course, regurgitating baseless conspiracy theories on the web doesn’t make you a reporter any more than pouring water in a Cup-Noodle makes you a chef. These people aren’t covering actual news, they’re generating SEO fodder that pads the site’s Google page rankings and provides a platform for banner ad sales — which is why http://Google has recently taken steps to bar its adsense ads from running on such garbage sites.

This isn’t the first time that The Goldwater has crowdsourced its writers. A similar ad for a post titled “Predictable: First Lesbian Bishop of Stockholm Boots Out Christ and Welcomes Mohammed” has already been published on the Goldwater website. And it certainly won’t be the last.

“When objectionable HITs are posted, there is a link on the HIT for workers to report it to Amazon, but there is no follow up from Amazon with the worker on what action is taken, if any, Online labor “advocate Rochelle LaPlante told Motherboard. “I reported the HITs last night using that report button, but there’s no way for me to know if Amazon saw and removed it before it was completed by workers, or if Amazon has taken any action against the requester’s account.”

Via: Motherboard

Source: Rochelle LaPlante (Twitter)

Amazon Offers $100 discount off 13-inch MacBook Pro Without Touch Bar

Amazon has slashed $100 off the official price of Apple’s new 13-inch MacBook Pro sans Touch Bar, offering the machine at $1,399 instead of £1,499, presumably for a limited time.

Spotted by AppAdvice, the discount is for the stock 13-inch model, which comes with a 2.0GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor, 8GB RAM, and 256GB storage.

Meanwhile, for anyone still debating whether a Touch Bar equipped MacBook Pro is for them, Red Sweater has released a free Mac app that simulates the OLED keyboard strip as a bar on the screen.

Touché is essentially a test bed for developers, but still includes a fully functioning Touch Bar that dynamically changes based on the app currently in use, allowing anyone curious to see how it augments the physical keyboard.

On a more frivolous note, Facebook iOS developer Adam Bell has managed to hack Apple’s new Touch Bar to run classic first-person shooter Doom.

Doom runs on pretty much everything… but can it run on the new MacBook Pro Touch Bar?https://t.co/juJGlFIXFW pic.twitter.com/kr5rM0LVmn

— Adam Bell (@b3ll) November 20, 2016

Tag: Amazon
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Amazon Echo now talks you through 60,000 recipes

Believe it or not, there hasn’t really been a comprehensive recipe skill for Amazon Echo speakers. Campbell’s skill is focused on the soup brand, IFTTT integration is imperfect and Jamie Oliver’s skill won’t read cooking instructions aloud. Allrecipes might just save the day, though. It just launched an Alexa skill that guides you through cooking 60,000 meals — and importantly, helps you find something to cook in the first place. You can ask what’s possible with the ingredients you have on hand, find a quick-to-make dish or check on measurements.

When you’re in the middle of cooking, you can pause, repeat or advance steps.

The skill is free to use, and works with any device that supports Alexa skills in the first place (including Fire TV). If it works as well as promised, it might be a crucial addition. The Echo is already the quintessential kitchen speaker for many people — it’s that much more useful if it can save you from flipping through a cookbook (or a recipe app on your phone) with your flour-covered hands.

Source: Allrecipes

Amazon will let Italians buy Fiat cars with a click

Amazon has made it easier to research cars online, but actually purchasing a car? That’s another story. Even a recent deal with Seat in France limited customers to making a downpayment on the web — they still had to agree to a phone interview to clinch the sale. However, the dream of one-click vehicle shopping just came a bit closer to reality. Amazon is partnering with Fiat to let Italian motorists buy the 500, 500L and Panda on the web at discounts up to 33 percent greater than seen at retail. They’ll still have to visit a dealership to complete the purchase, but this is about as direct as it gets if you’re not ordering a Tesla.

Orders should be ready about two weeks after you pull the trigger, Fiat says.

This is clearly a competitive move on Fiat’s part. While its sales were turning a corner before this (it swung from a loss in Q3 2015 to a profit this year), incentivized online sales could help it keep that edge. You might be more likely to buy a 500 if you can order it from home and get a better bargain. Just don’t expect to see dealerships cut entirely out of the loop in the near future. As Tesla learned first-hand, dealers routinely fight attempts to introduce direct sales — Amazon can get close to that business model, but it faces a backlash if it makes dealerships obsolete.

Source: Reuters