Technology News from the World's Most Influential Companies
Two months ago we reported that Walmart had teamed up with Alphabet’s Google to allow Google Home users to do voice shopping with Google Assistant. The retail giant has now integrated its own customer relationship management system with Google Express, which means customers can use their current Walmart accounts to shop online with their voice….
Barely a year after Amazon launched its first ever Voice Shopping Weekend in November 2016, Walmart and Google have teamed up to take on the e-commerce giant on its own turf. Starting this September, users of Google Assistant on Google Home smart speakers, Android devices and other products will be able to pick from hundreds of…
Amazon has finally brought Amazon Alexa, its smart voice assistant, to one of its own properties – the main Amazon app on iOS. Siri now has a friend to play with! Amazon Alexa is not going to be as easy to use as Apple’s own Siri because users will have to open the Amazon app and…
When chatbots were first introduced to us, they were a novelty that fit a specific niche like customer service and technical support. But chatbots aren’t going to be the future of artificial intelligence in retail. The real push will come from smart voice assistants like Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Microsoft Cortana and Apple Siri. Last…
Earlier this week Google announced that owners of Google Home will be able to use Google Assistant to do voice shopping from participating retailers on Google Express. Amazon first launched voice shopping with Amazon Alexa on Amazon Echo devices at the start of the holiday season last year, and even had a blowout Alexa-only voice…
Amazon Prime members with Amazon Echo devices will have definitely tried the new voice shopping feature from Alexa that was rolled out before the holiday season in 2016. Now, users can “voice order” food from local restaurants, and Alexa on their Amazon Echo will have the order placed for them. For now, the functionality seems…
The world’s most followed retailer has just announced its holiday toy list for 2016, but it’s not the 1,000 hottest toys that grabbed our attention. It’s the fact that you can now do your holiday shopping using just your voice! This year, owners of any Alexa-enabled device (Echo, Echo Tap and Echo Dot) will be…
Amazon isn’t waiting for Black Friday to come around this year. They’re already stoking the fire on holiday season spending with several deals announced more than a week ahead of the biggest sales day of the year. The official Black Friday shopping day is November 25, but Amazon is keen on pushing discounts through their…
Early in December 2018 Amazon Music announced that it was rolling out a new feature so users could interact more meaningfully with Alexa, the virtual assistant that’s being integrated into everything from refrigerators to cars, not to mention the Amazon Echo family of smart speakers. Essentially, the new capability involves the user being able to…
Amazon announced Friday that Vancouver would soon get a new corporate office that would double the company’s staffing in the city over the next few years. The e-commerce and technology giant is looking to leverage the growing technology talent in the area, which means the job openings will primarily be for tech and non-tech jobs…
There’s no doubt that Amazon Alexa has a lot of skills—more than 10,000, to be precise But how can you sort through the massive library of Alexa skills to find the ones that are actually useful? Most users repeat a few standard skills frequently: asking about the weather, playing music, setting timers, and adding to…
Every major tech company is vying for space in our homes. Apple has managed to stay in the palm of our hands through its iDevices; Google has become the gatekeeper when we get on the internet and start searching for things; Microsoft jumps in whenever we boot our desktops; and Amazon is making sure that…
Shopping apps are all the rage this year. It’s not that they haven’t been popular before, but just looking at the number of options for Black Friday 2016 alone will show you how demand has grown over last year. Windows 10 and Windows 10 Mobile users haven’t been left out of the action this year….
The 21st century is the century of the smart home. Soon, all our appliances and electronics will be integrated and web-ready, uploading data to the cloud and improving performance, maximizing our health, and making life more efficient than we can imagine in our wildest dreams. If you’re considering upgrading your home to be ready for…
Artificial Intelligence is going to be the biggest buzz-phrase of 2019. Machine learning this, deep neural networks that, voice shopping here, self-driving cars there. We’re neck-deep in AI, and there’s no denying it. But how far has it ‘invaded’ our private space, and are we comfortable with this? It’s not too early to ask that…
