TimeMachinerThe future of delivery trucks should be electric. The USPS is finally going to head into this direction. Amazon has been part of this change too. Their 2019 deal with Rivian created an electric delivery van that looks amazing and is great for the environment. But in typical Amazon style, they’re barely living up to…
Slowly but surely, electric vehicles (EVs) are breaking through into the mainstream. As much as I hate to give credit to Lord Manchild, his company has been a difference-maker in this area. Now we’re seeing the government get involved here in the US. The United States Postal Service (USPS) is making strides toward electrifying its…
With the massive proliferation of Amazon Echo / Alexa devices, Amazon found a gaping hole by which to get their hardware into people’s houses. For years Amazon has generally released shoddy, commodity (AKA crap) they sell at a loss in order to get you to use their services more. The Echo was a hit, mostly…
It’s been… a week in the tech sphere. So much so that I felt the need to write about it all in a Lightning Round update because it stretches far and wide. For starters, there’s the trainwreck that is Twitter & Elon Musk. To call it a crisis is an understatement. A billionaire with thin…
In a world where there’s always enough money to spend and enough companies to buy, leave it to Amazon to buy one of the biggies. News broke late last week that the World’s Largest Bookstore has acquired iRobot, the company that makes the Roomba. The price tag? A cool $1.7 billion. Brian Heater at TechCrunch…
It’s no secret that Amazon is pushing hard into grocery. Here on Long Island, there are no less than six Amazon Fresh stores under construction. One innovative aspect of Amazon stores are their “Just Walk Out” system that tracks your items and auto-bills you for them when you leave. That works great for convenience store…
Leave it to “trends” on TikTok to come up with terrible ideas. The latest viral trend, on the social network that’s definitely not funneling data to China (we promise!), is to buy Kindle books on Amazon, then return them within the allowed window for a full refund. Claire Woodcock at Vice has more of this…
The Kindle is one of the best single-use products on the market. To me, it’s everything a dedicated device should be. It does one thing and excels at it. In fact, anything else the Kindle tries to do (audio, web browsing, etc) is laughably bad. One part of the Kindle that’s been different than other…
Amazon’s runaway success with Alexa and the Echo devices “she” lives in is quite obvious. As someone who owned an original Echo back when you needed an invite to buy it, I can remember the awe in how good the voice recognition was. The time it took to understand a question, send it to the…
Amazon, a company worth $1.75 TRILLION, uses normal people to deliver goods from Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh. Amazon calls their program Amazon Flex. It’s a near-identical setup to DoorDash and Uber Eats jobs. Normal people use an app for “gig work” and deliver stuff using their own vehicles. Earlier this month Amazon settled a…
Amazon dropped a deluge of new tech and among them is the cool-looking Echo Show 15. It’s a framed display that mounts to the wall and shows you information you may find relevant. You can see to-do lists, a calendar, or even smart home controls. It’ll also recognize people via its camera and play music…
Finally, finally, finally. Amazon has decided to give the Kindle Paperwhite one hell of an update. Amazon announced a new Paperwhite with three features that were a long time coming: bigger screen, adjustable color temperature, and USB-C. The new model, however, looks to improve on virtually every aspect of the e-reader. The battery has been…
Amazon loves to say they’re “customer obsessed” in everything they do. Turns out it’s a great smokescreen to toss up when they want to ignore the reality of their business. This thread on Twitter is indicative of every customer service interaction I’ve ever had with Amazon. Even when there’s obvious fraud, Amazon DGAF. The CSR…