Amazon Fire TV owners will now be able to control more video apps using Alexa and their voice, the company announced today. This feature lets you ask Alexa to “watch,” “play,” “pause,” “rewind,” “fast forward,” and more. It can also take you to an individual show, network, or specific genre of programming. Before, Alexa could… Read More
Alexa’s not the only Amazon property that’s getting a workplace component at this week at AWS Re:Invent. The LTE-M Button isn’t branded as a Dash Button, but it works in much the same way. Basically it’s a hunk of plastic which, when pressed, will perform one specific task — namely buying stuff online. Unlike all of the pre-programmed Dash Buttons, this AT&T… Read More
Last month, Microsoft announced its intentions to bring its Edge Browser to iOS and Android, as it works to broaden its reach on third-party mobile devices. After being made available in preview form for roughly a month, the app officially hits iOS and Android’s respective app stores starting today. The followup to the once ubiquitous Internet Explorer has been blossoming on Windows… Read MoreIt depends.
Before we can even begin to discuss the price (how much to charge), it's important to understand what something costs to make. And the answer isn't always obvious.
If you want to know how much it costs to make the first one, to scale the operation up, to get the machinery, the systems, the staff... it might be a million dollars for a piece of toast or a billiard ball. Perhaps ten million.
Or the question might be: How much does the last one off the assembly line cost? After the entire system is up and running, after everyone's been paid by everything else that was produced today—the last unit the shift produced, what's the marginal cost of that one? In the case of our mythical billiard ball, it might be just a nickel.
But maybe we're talking about this particular unit, the one that was hand sold, that was customized, that was delivered to precisely the right spot at precisely the right time—all of that just in time customization and risk reduction cost a fortune.
Finally, perhaps we ought to consider the opportunity cost. How much better would it have been for us to spend our time and our capital and our risk to do something else, something more useful or profitable?
In the long run, all we need to do is divide our total costs by the total number of units we made. But in the long run, we're all dead. In the short run, the cost depends on what sort of decision we're trying to make.
The interface is evolving. What has long been dominated by screens of all shapes and sizes is now being encroached upon by the voice. And while many companies are building voice interfaces — Apple with Siri, Google with Assistant, and Microsoft with Cortana — none are quite as dominant as Amazon has been with Alexa. At the AWS reinvent conference, Amazon will announce Alexa for… Read More
One more bit of news out of tonight’s Alexa State of the Union Keynote at AWS Re:Invent in Vegas. Amazon is finally bringing its voice service to Oceania. After several months of rumblings, the company announced today that Alexa will be arriving in Australia and New Zealand at some unspecified point in early 2018. In the meantime, it’s opening up its tools for developers, in order… Read More
As one of its last announcement on a day chock-full with new tools and features, Amazon previewed a new security device for the internet of things. Called IOT Device Defender, the new service will monitor policies around devices to look for anomalies in device activity and support customized rules and auditing policies that a customer would want to put in place. The service will also… Read More
Taking the battle with Google, Apple and Microsoft for dominance in speech recognition and natural language processing to yet another front, Amazon announced a new translation service as part of its AWS extravaganza. As part of Amazon Web Services, Translate will provide text translations for supported languages (Google and Microsoft have been offering these services for years). Amazon is… Read More
Amazon is hosting AWS Re:INVENT today, its developer conference for all things AWS. And the company just announced a promising new service called Amazon Transcribe. The service is now available as a preview and goes beyond many automated transcribing services. Now that video and audio have overtaken the web, it has become harder to parse information inside those media formats. One way to do it… Read More
Customers using AWS’ Amazon DynamoDB to store data have two new services to help make their applications work better and more quickly in more regions around the world. The first is a Global Tables feature that allows AWS customers to automatically replicate tables across different AWS regions. Tech companies are now, already, global businesses, but sometimes their data isn’t… Read More
Amazon is in the middle of its AWS Re:invent keynote right now, and the company just announced a brand new database service. Amazon Neptune has been specifically designed for relationship graphs. So if you’re thinking about building a social network feature, Neptune can help you. The issue with traditional relational databases is that they’re not made for complex social graphs… Read More
Amazon is adding to its slew of perks for Prime members by offering subscribers the chance to purchase early tickets to an upcoming movie for the first time. The deal gives Prime members the chance to watch the movie Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle twelve days before its release date of December 20. Customers can buy up to 10 tickets for a 7 PM showing of the movie on December 8 at one of… Read More
With little fanfare, Amazon launched its Silk web browser for Fire TV, allowing users with Fire TV, Fire TV Stick, and Fire TV Edition televisions to surf the web from their big screen. The app offers several standard web browser features, like the ability to search or enter URLs, access bookmarks, move forward or back, save passwords, and more. It also uses Bing.com as the default search… Read More
On the heels of record holiday sales over the Black Friday through Cyber Monday timeframe, Amazon announced this morning that Cyber Monday was the biggest shopping day worldwide in company history. The company earlier this week noted it had sold record numbers of Amazon devices on Cyber Monday, but made no claims about the size of the event in terms of sales. This morning, however, that… Read More
A couple of years ago when I was working at Samsung, around the time the GearVR was being launched, there were lots of ideas flying around regarding the services to offer alongside the device. Many (most) of these ideas were related to hosting 360 Video content, and our boss David Eun (ex-YouTube) often reminded everyone that YouTube will be the YouTube of VR. He meant that the content on… Read MoreThe first is quite common. Learn to play the notes as written. Move asymptotically toward perfection. Practice your technique and your process to get yourself ever more skilled at doing it (whatever 'it' is) to spec. This is the practice of grand slalom, of arithmetic, of learning your lines or c++.
The other kind of practice is more valuable but far more rare. This is the practice of failure. Of trying on one point of view after another until you find one that works. Of creating original work that doesn't succeed until it does. Of writing, oration and higher-level math in search of an elusive outcome, even a truth, one that might not even be there.
We become original through practice.
We've seduced ourselves into believing that the this sort of breakthrough springs fully formed, as Athena did from Zeus' head. Alas, that's a myth. What always happens (as you can discover by looking at the early work of anyone you admire), is that she practiced her way into it.
Microsoft has announced a massive expansion plan aimed at modernizing its headquarters in Redmond, Washington. Unlike fellow Washington-based tech giant Amazon, which is seeking a second HQ in a new location, Microsoft is building on existing ground in order to “grow right here at home.” Its current Redmond Campus includes 125 buildings that house a workforce of around 48,000,… Read More
As part of its victory lap extravaganza in Las Vegas as the dominant web hosting platform, Amazon Web Services today launched a new service, AppSync, which allows applications hosted on the service to work even if they’re offline. Read More
Just a few weeks after the major launch of Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, Microsoft is already looking toward what’s next as the company tests features that could fundamentally shape how you use web browsers. Today, Microsoft announced a new feature tentatively called “Sets,” a fairly significant retooling of how web browsers and apps operate philosophically in Windows 10. Read More
The last time U2 offered up an album exclusive, things didn’t go great. Apple reportedly paid $100 million for exclusive rights to Songs of Innocence, the Irish arena rock band’s first record in half a decade — and irritated countless iTunes users in the process by forcing it onto their iPhones and iPads. Probably no surprise, then, that the two seem to have parted ways.… Read More
Amazon says it will allow Alexa skill developers to alert customers using notifications starting today, and soon, it will allow them to recognize users’ individual voices as part of their skill-building process. These changes, along with other developer enhancements, are being announced this morning at Amazon’s re:Invent conference in Las Vegas, where the company delved into the… Read More
Instacart has inked a deal with Albertsons to offer same-day delivery from the grocery store chain. The deal will include 1,800 of Albertsons stores across the country by mid-2018, helping Instacart deliver on its promise to be available in 80 percent of markets across the U.S. by the end of 2018. This isn’t Albertsons first foray into the tech space. Earlier this year, the company… Read More
On the heels of news that Amazon may have accounted for half of Black Friday online sales, the retailer today announced that the Black Friday holiday shopping weekend – which it defines as Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday – was its best-ever, in terms of Amazon devices sold. The company historically doesn’t release hard numbers related to its device sales. Instead, it… Read More
Here's a sign I've never seen hanging in a corporate office, a mechanic's garage or a politician's headquarters:
WE HAVE AN UNFAIR ADVANTAGE:
We care more.
It's easy to promise and difficult to do. But if you did it, it would work. More than any other skill or attitude, this is what keeps me (and people like me) coming back.
Microsoft Office is now available for Google Chromebook users through the Google Play Store – a notable addition, given the two companies offer competing products in terms of office productivity software. Neither Google nor Microsoft are making a formal announcement about the Office applications’ arrival on Chromebooks. But we understand the Office Android apps will only be free… Read More
So you’ve had a nice, calming two-day respite from all of the bargain hunting. But don’t worry, it’s almost over. It’s Cyber Monday, a holiday made up in 2005 because Black Friday wasn’t quite doing the trick. Sure it’s a crass cash-in and yet more grist for the end of year Capitalist mill — but the deals! Over the past few years, Cyber… Read More So you’ve had a nice, calming two-day respite from all of the bargain hunting. But don’t worry, it’s almost over. It’s Cyber Monday, a holiday made up in 2005 because Black Friday wasn’t quite doing the trick. Sure it’s a crass cash-in and yet more grist for the end of year Capitalist mill — but the deals! Over the past few years, Cyber… Read More
Video is what consumers are paying attention to these days, and Amazon’s AWS is hoping to capitalise on that with one of its latest launches. Doubling down on its video services for media companies, app publishers — and actually any other organization that has considered launching a video service — Amazon today announced a new suite of five video processing tools as part of… Read More
We’d heard months ago that Amazon would be using its Re:Invent AWS event to roll out some a new service related to building in mixed reality — augmented reality and virtual reality. And on the eve of the conference kicking off, it’s done just that. Today the company announced Amazon Sumerian, a new platform for developers to build and host VR, AR and 3D apps quickly and… Read More
The old-boy's network is powerful indeed, an unfair impediment to those that would seek to make a contribution, but it can be defeated with a combination of:
Skill (the result of practice and effort)
Technique (developing a point of view)
Extraordinary effort
Charisma (the confidence to care about connecting with others)
Passion
Generosity
Experience
Risk-taking (and not being confused by false fear appearing real)
Consistency and keeping promises
Honest storytelling
It would be fair, efficient and honest if everyone had an easy introduction and got the benefit of the doubt. Until that happens, though, outsiders of all kinds will have to rely on all of these skills instead.
The weight of problems being demonstrably attached to heavily used tech services has acquired such a gravitational and political pull that it’s becoming harder and harder for these businesses to sidestep wider societal responsibilities. Read More
