Alexa’s Shocking Suggestion

A mother took to Twitter to complain that Alexa had suggested to her 10-year-old daughter that she play a game that involves touching the prongs of a live plug with a penny! Playing The mother, Kristin Livdahl (of Minnesota, USA), was reported to have been doing physical challenges indoors on Boxing Day with her 10-year-old daughter because…

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One Million UK households May Be ‘Brushing’ Scam Victims

A report from Consumer watchdog Which? reveals that as many as 1.1 million people in the UK may have been caught up in a parcel delivery ‘brushing’ scam. What Is Brushing? Brushing is where people are sent packages of goods to their address that they didn’t order, apparently purchased on Amazon, by a person not…

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Amazon To Start Selling Cyber Insurance

Amazon has entered the B2B insurance market through a partnership with Superscript and is offering cyber insurance to small and medium-sized businesses in the UK. Cyber Insurance? Cyber insurance protects businesses (and individuals providing services for businesses) by helping with the compensation costs that can arise from Internet-based risks and handling data. For example, businesses may…

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Jeff Bezos And The Space Race

In this article, we look at some of the lighter aspects of the technological achievement that was the recent Blue Origin rocket flight, and we look at the vision behind it. Space Passengers The recent flight of the rocket containing and funded by (richest man in the world and Amazon Founder) Jeff Bezos yielded pictures…

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Children Called “Alexa” Getting Bullied

It has been reported that children called ‘Alexa’ are being bullied because they share the same name as Amazon’s digital assistant and consequently, some parents are now calling for a digital name change. Alexa There are an estimated 4,000 people in the UK who are under the age of 25 and called “Alexa” (a female…

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UK Nuclear Plant Funded By Amazon Cash

General Fusion, a Canadian company with Amazon’s Jeff Bezos as one of its backers is building a Nuclear Fusion power demonstration plant at Culham in Oxfordshire. Fusion Whereas current nuclear power plants split atoms in a process known as ‘fission’ to generate energy, ‘fusion’ generates energy by fusing atoms together, which is the same process…

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Huge Lockdown Profits For Amazon

Changing consumer habits due to lockdown are believed to have been a big factor in Amazon’s Q1 profits being a massive three times larger than last year. Huge Profit Growth in Just One Year In the first 3 months of 2020, before the first lockdowns for the pandemic, Amazon recorded a $2.5bn profit. Fast forward…

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New Amazon AI Tool Monitors Your Business KPIs

In a move to provide more business intelligence, Amazon is launching a new tool that monitors key performance indicators (KPIs) to detect ‘anomalies’ so it can alert the business to potential problems. Lookout For Metrics ‘Lookout For Metrics’ is the name of the new service from Amazon Web Services (AWS) which uses machine learning for…

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Amazon Offering Custom ‘Brand Voice’

Amazon’s AWS is offering a new ‘Brand Voice’ capability to companies which enables them to create their own custom voice for Alexa that replaces the default voice with one that reflects their “persona”, such as the voice of Colonel Sanders for KFC. Brand Polly The capability is being offered through Amazon’s ‘Brand Polly’, the cloud…

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Amazon Announces Smart Office Supply Re-Ordering Device

Amazon has announced the introduction of a ‘smart’ office essentials re-ordering device called Dash Smart Shelf which uses a weight-sensing, Wi-Fi-enabled smart scale to re-order products when they’re running low. Why? According to Amazon, monitoring and reordering everyday business essentials (e.g. printer paper) can be unnecessarily time-consuming for the small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) that…

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