Amazon launches pre-Black Friday Alexa-exclusive deals
If you’re doing some pre-Black Friday shopping this weekend from Amazon, you may as well take advantage of the website’s Alexa-exclusive deals. So long as you’re down for some voice shopping, you can grab nice items at a discount starting today until November 21st. Simply ask “Alexa, what are your deals?” through one of the company’s speakers (Echo, Echo Dot or Tap), the Fire TV or the Fire HD tablet. It sounds like different items will be up for grabs on different days and times, so you’ll have to check every now and then.
These are some of the most notable deals, though:
- Save $50 on an Amazon Tap – say, “Alexa, order an Amazon Tap”
- Save $80 on a 32-inch Samsung 1080p LED TV – say, “Alexa, order a Samsung TV”
- Save $30 on a Sphero Star Wars BB-8 App controlled robot – say, “Alexa, order a Star Wars robot”
- Save $15 on a Philips Hue LED Starter Kit with 2 Bulbs & Hue Bridge Hub – works with Amazon Alexa – say, “Alexa, order a Hue Starter Kit”
- Save $80 on Beyerdynamic Limited Edition Headphones – say, “Alexa, order studio headphones”
- Save $130 on a 10-piece All-Clad stainless steel cookware set – say, “Alexa, order an All-Clad cookware set”
- Save $10 on LEGO Classic Large Creative Brick Box – say, “Alexa, order a Lego Classic Brick Box.”
- Save 30% on a 48-pack of Amazon Basics AA batteries – say, “Alexa, order AA batteries”
- Save 35% on Lindt Lindor Milk Chocolate Truffles – say, “Alexa, order Lindor truffles”
You can also check out the official Deals site if you need to see the items before getting them. Amazon says the website will also launch some Alexa-exclusive deals for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, so keep an eye out for those, as well.
Source: Amazon
Huawei’s MediaPad M3 is out now for $299
After launching in Europe this September, Huawei’s high-end Android tablet has finally made its way stateside. Available now to order on Amazon, the 8.4-inch MediaPad M3 ships on November 20th. Although Europe got 32GB, 64GB and 128GB versions, complete with 4G and WiFi options, only the 32GB WiFi model has made it over to the US, priced at $299.
Announced at this year’s IFA, the MediaPad M3 is a tablet with an unsurprising focus on media. Huawei is aiming to court those who love watching movies on the go with the M3, as it boasts a 2,560 x 1,600 display, high resolution audio support, Harmon Kardon-certified speakers and a generous 5,100mAh battery. Additionally, Huawei says its 10.1-inch MediaPad M2, another tablet already available in Europe, will join the M3 in the US next month.
Source: Amazon
Amazon Music Unlimited now has a family plan
It’s hard to compete in the streaming music world unless you have a family plan, and Amazon knows it. The shopping pioneer has introduced a family plan for Amazon Music Unlimited that lets as many as six people listen to tunes for a low price. If you’re not a Prime subscriber, the pricing is a very run-of-the-mill $15 per month. You won’t save anything by leaving Apple, Google or Spotify. However, it’s another story for Prime subscribers — you have an additional option to subscribe for $149 per year, or $30 less than what everyone else pays. If you’re already devoted to Amazon and don’t care for rivals’ exclusives or features, this may be your obvious choice.
Source: Amazon
Amazon Music Unlimited Launches $15 Per Month Family Plan
Amazon today has expanded its Music Unlimited streaming service with a new subscription tier: $14.99 per month for a “Family Plan.” The option supports up to six family members (at least 13-years-old) for simultaneous listening and personal recommendations. There’s also an alternative payment option to pay $149 upfront for an entire year of the Family Plan, cutting the subscription down to about $12 per month (via TechCrunch).
The plan works by creating an Amazon account for each family member, but there is no unified family account; as Amazon said, “the only thing that’s shared is the payment.” On the plan, one family member uses a “shared payment method” to pay for the subscription, which is a debit or credit card that Amazon uses to charge each month for the service. Each member can make purchases on Amazon and Amazon Music Unlimited with the shared payment method, and the subscriber of the plan will get notifications of all the activity going through the group.
Despite the group connectivity, each member will have “the same functionality as the Individual Plan subscription,” with personalized music, library, playlists, and recommendations. The Individual Plan launched in October and marked Amazon’s entry into the on-demand music streaming category, along with Apple Music and Spotify. Amazon’s Family Plan directly sits alongside Apple Music’s $14.99 per month Family Membership, which grants the full Apple Music experience for up to six people.
Read up on more information about Amazon Music Unlimited’s new Family Plan here.
Tags: Amazon, Amazon Music Unlimited
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Amazon Prime Now delivers Morrisons products in an hour
To help expand its grocery delivery service quickly, Amazon teamed up with Morrisons, the UK’s fourth biggest supermarket chain. It’s allowed the online retail giant to add lots of fresh and frozen products to Amazon Pantry and Amazon Fresh, as well as open hundreds of in-store lockers in select Morrisons locations. Today, though, the two companies are expanding that agreement with the announcement that Prime customers can now choose from thousands of additional products to be delivered in under an hour.
Amazon has added the supermarket to its Prime Now app with a dedicated “Morrisons at Amazon” section. It joins John Bell & Croyden — pharmacists to Her Majesty The Queen — and wine seller Spirited Wines. At launch, Morrisons products are only available to customers in select London and Hertfordshire postcodes, who will pay £6.99 for a one-hour delivery or choose a free two-hour slot between 8am and 10pm every day.
As brick and mortar stores upgrade their online experiences to better fight Amazon, the company has quickly moved to partner with specialist retailers in order to increase the quality and quantity of products that can be delivered in under 60 minutes. Speed of delivery is something that its competition have yet to come close to, bar Argos, but Amazon’s product offering continues to get more diverse by the day.
Source: Amazon UK
Twitch chases YouTube with improved upload options
Content creators who have been testing the waters of Twitch’s new Uploads Open Beta can now wade in just a little deeper — the gameplay streaming site has announced a slew of improvements to the manual upload feature, including increased tag character limits, new language settings and, most importantly, much wider support for common video file formats.
In addition to the existing .MP4 support, Twitch users can now upload H.264-encoded videos in MOV, AVI and FLV formats. That’s still half as many as YouTube supports, but it’s a big step forward that should accommodate the needs of most users. Twitch’s upload tools have also been updated to include a default language setting and longer tags — up to 100 characters per individual tags and 500 for all tags total. Finally, Twitch has fixed a ton of small glitches, including a issues that kept users from uploading custom thumbnails and an experience-ruining bug that caused videos to restart near the end of their runtime.
While this update is relatively small, it shows how serious Twitch is about competing with YouTube’s vast library of non-live gaming videos. Twitch also says the improvements are the result of community feedback, and says more user requested features (like bold and italic text formatting in video descriptions) are on the way.
Source: Twitch
Hyundai adds Amazon’s Alexa to its Blue Link connected cars
It’s no fun starting your commute by going at your car with an ice scraper on a frosty morning. If you own a 2016 Hyundai, you won’t have to — at least if you have an Amazon Echo at home. The car-maker has baked Amazon’s Alexa virtual assistant into its Blue Link connected car app. This means you can start your car, and set the temperature (among other things) from the warm embrace of your comforter using just your voice starting today.
Hyundai isn’t the first to think about connecting its cars to Amazon’s smarthome kit. Back at CES in January, Ford announced it’d be integrating Alexa with its SYNC platform. That still hasn’t come to pass, though. Hyundai still isn’t technically the first, with its own luxury Marque — Genesis — adding the same functionality back in August. At least now, those of us without the budget for a G80, or G90 can get in on the action.
What can you do from the driver’s seat of your new Hyundai? Most of the things you’d imagine, which include starting/stopping your car, setting the climate control, lock or unlock the doors, toggle the lights, or even set off the horn (for scaring the bejeezus out of the mail carrier, we assume). There’s no option to locate your car right now, but Hyundai tells us that’s in the works. If you’re familiar with Blue Link, you’ll know that much of this functionality is already in the app, Hyundai’s just adding in another layer of convenience.
You’ll need to be a paying user of Blue Link of course, which costs $99 a month, but if you are, you’re good to go starting today. Hyundai says that all 2017 vehicles will be compatible, and most of its 2016 lineup too. There are even a few 2015 models that will get the feature too, so be sure to check to see if your car made the cut.
Amazon Prime discounted to £59 for ‘The Grand Tour’ launch
Good news: The Grand Tour, Amazon’s answer to Top Gear, is now only three days away from release. The bad news is that you’ll need a Prime subscription to watch it. Amazon knows this, so it’s sweetening the deal by slashing £20 off the price of its annual subscription for anyone who has yet to sign up.
Between now and November 18th, when the first weekly episode of The Grand Tour debuts, Amazon Prime will cost £59. That brings it down to roughly £5 per month. It’s not the first time Amazon has done it — the company quickly reduced the price shortly after confirming the name of its new motoring show in May — but it’ll likely be enough to tempt fans of Clarkson and co., who may have never previously considered a subscription, into jumping aboard the Prime bandwagon.
Since signing the former Top Gear team, Amazon has put Jeremy Clarkson to work. He’s now the face of adverts for the Fire TV and Fire TV Stick and recently became the voice (alongside Hammond and May) of a particularly annoying alarm notification for Amazon’s Echo speaker. You can probably expect more TV spots as the show’s launch draws nearer.
Even if you’re not a motoring fan, Amazon’s Prime discount is still good value. Black Friday is approaching, meaning you can make use of the “free” next-day delivery, but the membership also provides access to music streaming and thousands of other TV shows and movies.
Source: Amazon UK
The Morning After: Monday, November 14, 2016
Engadget’s weekend included a Japan-only Kindle made for manga and comics, an early tour of Nike’s tech-packed store in NYC and staring at a supermoon. So it wasn’t a bad weekend. This week, expect to hear plenty of car news direct from the LA Auto Show. And even if you’re no petrolhead, there should be more than enough tech news, reviews and occasionally furious editorials to get you through the week.
‘Can I try on the Nike Mags?’ ‘No.’We tour Nike’s new tech-laced NYC store
Nike’s new five-storey store in the middle of SoHo has a Kinect-sensor rigged basketball hoop, a new “Nike By NYC” customization studio, plenty of space to show off the Apple Watch Nike+ and of course, self-lacing sneakers. The aforementioned customization studio will let shoppers place on-demand orders for designs that will be exclusive to the SoHo store.
Made for mangaAmazon Japan’s manga-centric Kindle has ample space for your comic collection
Japan loves its homemade comics, so Amazon made an e-reader especially for them. Delivering eight times the storage of existing Kindles, and a bunch of speedy navigation upgrades, you might just be ready to start reading manga and comics on your e-reader. It’s not quite perfect, however.
Microsoft might be a little hostile to third-party security apps.Kaspersky says Windows’ security bundle is anti-competitive
Windows 10’s bundled Defender security tool can help with basic antivirus protection, but what about third-party options? The operating system normally steps aside when you run other programs, but antivirus mainstay Kaspersky (and its boss, Eugene… Kaspersky) believes Microsoft still isn’t playing fair enough. He’s filed complaints in both the EU and Russia alleging that Windows 10’s handling of third-party antivirus tools is anti-competitive.
But wait, there’s more…
- Get excited, here’s the first ‘Ghost In The Shell’ live action trailer.
- Did you stare at the supermoon? It’s the biggest in 68 years.
- The last week in numbers, here’s the After Math.
Amazon Music Unlimited now available in the UK from £8 a month
After months of rumours and teasing, Amazon finally launched its own unlimited music streaming service in October. Access was initially reserved access for US customers, but today the retailer is expanding to the UK. Music Unlimited — Amazon’s answer to Spotify and Apple Music — offers over 40 million tracks and starts at £7.99 per month or £79 per year if you’re a Prime member (£9.99 for everyone else) and comes with an discounted “For Echo” plan that costs £3.99 each month.
Just like its rivals, Amazon’s music service provides access to thousands of curated playlists and personalised radio stations via the company’s mobile apps but also its Echo speaker. The company has tightly integrated Music Unlimited with its intelligent hardware, allowing you to find a track by simply saying a few words from the song. Alexa can also create playlists on any artist, play tracks based on a specific day, date or month, and find music that will suit your mood.
To activate a free 30-day trial, you can either visit the Amazon UK website or just say “Alexa, start my Amazon Music Unlimited free trial.” While Apple, Spotify and Google are more established on the streaming scene, Amazon has a distinct advantage over its rivals with its Echo hardware. The cheap Echo-exclusive plan could lure lots of new users to the platform, allowing the company to upsell its services in the future.
Via: Amazon UK Media Centre
Source: Amazon Music Unlimited
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