In an unusual step, Amazon Music Unlimited is being offered at a discounted price if its use is restricted to the company’s voice-controlled speakers. Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-37628975

Amazon has reset some customers’ passwords and asked them to change them, according to reports. Amazon says that during “routine monitoring,” it stumbled on a set of email and password sets posted online. Read more: https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2016/10/11/amazon-finds-cache-of-reused-passwords-change-yours-now/

Video game streaming site Twitch is to introduce its own virtual “currency”, says its owner Amazon Game Studios. “Stream+ is a loyalty points system where players can earn points by watching streams,” said Patrick Gilmore of Amazon Game Studios. He said points could be used in “polls and wagering” and could be spent on items […]

Amazon, Google’s DeepMind, Facebook, IBM and Microsoft will work together on issues such as privacy, safety and the collaboration between people and AI. Dubbed the Partnership on Artificial Intelligence, it will include external experts. One said he hoped the group would address “legitimate concerns”. “We’ve seen a very fast development in AI over a very […]

Amazon has confirmed its virtual assistant Echo speakers are coming to the UK and Germany. Until now, the company sold its voice-controlled devices only in the US. The machines can answer questions, control other internet-connected devices, build shopping lists and link in to dozens of third-party services including Spotify, Uber and BBC News. Experts say […]

Amazon’s UK customers can now push a button when they run out of toilet rolls or washing powder – and within 24 hours a package will arrive at the front door. You can see the launch of the Dash service in two ways. It’s either another miraculous piece of innovation from the e-commerce giant that […]

Strong earnings from Amazon and a boost to the company’s stock have made its founder, Jeff Bezos, the world’s third richest person, according to Forbes. Mr Bezos owns 18% of Amazon’s shares, which rose 2% in trading on Thursday. Forbes estimated his fortune to be $65.3bn (£49.5bn). Amazon’s revenue beat analysts’ expectations, climbing 31% from […]

The government’s getting together with the retail giant Amazon to start testing flying drones that can deliver parcels to your door. Amazon’s paying for the programme, which will look at the best way to allow hundreds of robotic aircraft to buzz around Britain’s skies safely. The company claims it’ll eventually mean small parcels will arrive […]

Amazon has revealed it is experimenting with personalised video adverts. The clips feature images and text about products the US retailer has detected the user has shown interest in. Amazon regularly displays customised static ads on third-party sites, but the videos have the potential to be more eye-catching and appear in more places. One expert […]

A robotic arm that combines a suction cup, a “two-fingered” gripper and a 3D depth-sensing camera has won Amazon’s latest warehouse bot competition. Team Delft’s machine triumphed over its rivals at both of the two tasks. One involved selecting products from a container, picking them up and putting them on a shelf. The other was […]

Google has announced a conversation-based tool to control smartphones, smartwatches and other devices. Google Assistant can be used to find information, play media and carry out tasks – such as booking cinema tickets – via a back-and-forth chat between the user and the software. The firm also announced a voice-activated device with a built-in speaker […]

Amazon illegally charged parents for children’s in-app purchases between 2011 and 2014, a US judge has ruled. In 2014, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sued Amazon over its handling of in-app purchases on its app store for Kindle and Android devices. The FTC reached out-of-court settlements with Apple and Google over their app stores […]

It has a good claim to being the most daring and innovative technology company of the last 20 years. It has launched at least two world-changing businesses – an online retailer of breathtaking scale and efficiency and a cloud computing service that has changed the way thousands of businesses work. But why on Earth is […]

Users of older Kindle e-readers will be disconnected from the internet if they do not install a critical update by 22 March. Affected customers will no longer be able to access new books from the Kindle Store, or sync with the Cloud, unless they manually download the update via USB. However, a message being displayed […]

Internet-connected baby monitors: all too often, they spell Internet-of-Things (IoT) security disasters. Stories of cybercreeps invading nurseries, swiveling the camera around at will, using it to spy on infants or to swear at a baby are just some of the reasons why New York City recently launched an investigation into the gadgets’ hackability. But an […]

Amazon’s Fire Tablet offers both parental controls for quickly locking down a device as well as fine-grained “child profiles”. These child (or teen) profiles use the Kindle FreeTime feature, which is perhaps the most sophisticated parental-control solution for a tablet operating system Fire OS is actually quite compelling if you’re looking for powerful parental controls and child-friendly features. […]