It appears that Twitch-integrated games are not the only thing Amazon has been working on with the live-streaming site it owns. A small number of Twitch users are now reporting seeing a new section called “Twitch Prime” pop up in their profiles. According to a banner ad spotted by one user, Twitch Prime will include perks like “free loot every month,” as well as… Read More
from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/30/twitch-appears-to-be-getting-its-own-version-of-amazon-prime-called-twitch-prime/?ncid=rss
Amazon Games Studios this week showed off the first games that will be integrated with live-streaming site Twitch, which Amazon acquired for over $1 billion in 2014. The new games will run on Lumberyard, the game engine powered by Amazon Web Services, that debuted earlier this year. These integrations will allow gamers to stream their broadcasts in real-time, overlaid with live stats,… 
If you need an Uber, Amazon Alexa has your back. Unfortunately if what you need is a conversation buddy, the personal assistant isn’t quite up to the task. In an effort to bolster Alexa’s social intelligence, Amazon is putting $2.5 million into a new university competition to design and build “socialbots” for the platform. Engineers will use the Alexa Skills Kit to… 
Artificial intelligence is quickly shaping up to be one of the key defining technology areas of our time. A day after announcing a new artificial intelligence partnership with IBM, Google, Facebook and Amazon, Microsoft is upping the ante within its own walls. The tech giant announced that it is creating a new AI business unit, the Microsoft AI and Research Group, which will be led by… 
The world’s largest technology companies hold the keys to some of the largest databases on our planet. Much like goods and coins before it, data is becoming an important currency for the modern world. The data’s value is rooted in its applications to artificial intelligence. Whomever owns the data, effectively owns AI. Right now that means companies like Facebook, Amazon… 
Slowly but surely, Amazon is incorporating Alexa functionality into its numerous existing hardware lines. A few weeks ago, the company announced an update that would bring its friendly voice assistant to its TV streaming hardware solutions, the set top Fire TV and its smaller dongle-based brethren, the Fire TV Stick. A newly announced version of the latter will now ship with that… 
Amazon’s delivery prowess is impressive; just today, it announced free Prime same-day delivery for my home city of Toronto, and the speed and consistency with which they hit their deadlines is astounding. For Amazon’s next act, it might one-up itself by arranging to leave your packages inside your door, or in your garage, when you aren’t home to receive them yourself. The… 
Amazon continues to roll-out its free same-day delivery offering for Prime subscribers, adding Toronto and Vancouver to the list of cities where it’s available. The free same-day option applies to items labeled as eligible via the ‘Prime FREE Same-Day’ tag located next to the price in a product’s listing. Orders placed earlier in the day will be delivered by 9 PM,… 
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella took the stage at his company’s massive Ignite conference to lay out his vision for how deep learning and artificial intelligence will transform the company. “AI is at the intersection of our ambitions,” Nadella said, noting how it will allow us “to reason over large amounts of data and convert that into intelligence.” He likened AI to… 
Microsoft has already expressed some interest on bringing Office to the car, and it sounds like it’ll continue to do that work with Renault-Nissan via a new tie-up between the two companies. The newly formed strategic partnership will see Microsoft help the automaker develop more connectivity services, particularly through the use of Azure cloud services. What does the partnership… 
Back in July, Microsoft tempered its Windows 10 expectations a touch, noting that its initial projection of mid-2018 for one billion active devices was probably a bit over ambitious. That pronouncement came shortly after the company announced that its OS had hit 350 million machines (after hitting 300 million in May) – and roughly a fortnight before ending its free upgrade period.… 
At its Ignite conference today, Microsoft announced that it is making its Edge browser more secure in enterprise environments. As Microsoft explained during a press conference ahead of the event, the so-called Windows Defender Application Guard insulates Windows 10 from untrusted browser sessions by running it in a container that is bound directly to the hardware. Microsoft argues that… 
Microsoft’s Ignite conference is bringing 23,000 IT professionals to Atlanta, Georgia this week and the company is using this opportunity to talk about how it plans to bring more intelligence to its tools and platforms. As companies gather more and more data, Microsoft argues, it’s becoming imperative that the tools these companies use also become smarter. This means bringing… 
Microsoft and Adobe today announced a major partnership that will see Adobe deliver its cloud services on Microsoft Azure and that will make Adobe the preferred marketing service for Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 Enterprise CRM solution. Microsoft says Adobe will now make Azure its “preferred cloud platform” for its three main services: the Adobe Marketing Cloud, Creative Cloud… 
FreshDirect, a popular online grocery service on the East Coast, is arming itself with $189 million in additional funding. The round was led by J.P. Morgan Asset Management, with W Capital and AARP Innovation Fund investing as well. The new capital will be used to help FreshDirect build up its “manufacturing capacity” and “open up some new geographies,” according… 