Round up #194: Prime Day (13-14 October), Gadget Day, Amazon Explore…
The ILMK Round ups are short pieces which may or may not be expanded later.
Prime Day (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)
is October 13-14th!
Even though it’s much later than the normal mid-summer date (and close to holiday sales), this annual extravaganza exclusively for
Amazon Prime (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)
members, feels like a welcome touch of normalcy.
The sales have started now!
One interesting thing they are doing is letting you earn $10 to spend on Prime Day when you spend $10 at various places, including their brick-and-mortar stores (I’m not doing that at this point…except we do shop at Whole Foods, which counts…check the conditions), but also with small businesses online through Amazon. For readers of this blog in particular, it’s worth noting that it may not apply to e-books (the small business one doesn’t).
They are also doing a thing where you can post a photo to your social media following certain procedures, and have a chance for one of thirty $1,000 Amazon gift cards.
Prime Day is definitely worth checking it out! It’s certainly possible you could save the cost of your annual Prime membership.
New Amazon hardware
Amazon had their annual event September 24th for new
Amazon devices (at AmazonSmile*)
This is always fun, even if the Kindle didn’t get any of the spotlight.
I think making the Echo Spot into a sphere is a bit of a weird choice, since I thought one of the main benefits of the “hockey-puck” style was its unobtrusiveness.
They introduced a fitness band, the
You can only request it and you don’t know when you might get the chance to buy it, but it may make some dent in the gift market. It can measure your body composition , and intriguingly, the emotional tone of your voice. Clearly, this is coming out of Amazon’s work on artificial empathy for Alexa, which is something I’ve mentioned in a general sense before.
Artificial intelligence getting smarter is a good goal, but if we can get our software to have a better sense of how we feel, that’s going to be a larger contribution to our comfortableness, which transfers to their usefulness.
Amazon has made it clear that one of their moon landing moments would be when Alexa can interrupt your conversation…and you appreciate it. They already think it can follow a conversation with multiple people better, figuring out when it is being addressed as opposed to one of th eother speakers.
Another weird one that they announced (for release next year, most likely), the “attention grabber”, is an Amazon Alexa that can fly around your house! Yes, it’s a drone…not the first way I thought we’d be interacting with Amazon drones, but hey, 2020, right? 😉 I think a lot of people may be very uncomfortable with this. You can teach it places to go (“Alexa, check out the baby’s room”), but it could also autonomously go somewhere to check out something it heard. I can think of a lot of scenarios where you might be responsible for a noise and not particularly want it to be on video…
Amazon Pay with Your Palm
Amazon has also announced Amazon One. It’s a palm reader…not one that tells you your fortune…well, I guess it sort of does because it works with your fortune, or at least, your credit.
You connect an image of your palm to a credit card. Then, you just hold your hand over a reader at the store, and you are good to charge your purchases. They’ll start it out at a couple of their own stores, but assuming it works well, they’ll make it available to other places, such as sports venues (which are being used again in some places).
There were some interesting details: it seems part of it is reading non-visual elements, like vein patterns. They also pointed out that you can’t recognize someone from their palm, so it that sense, it’s more secure.
How to trick or treat in 2020
One extra touch we’ll do: I’ve created a page where I link to where you can get public domain Halloween-related content (including e-books, like Dracula). I created a QR code that we’ll print out: someone could point a phone at it (most modern SmartPhones), be taken to that page, and enjoy the content. It’s sort of a digital treat. 🙂
I keep sending it around places, hoping someone promotes it enough so that people hear about it…celebrities, even government agencies. Still hoping!
What do you think? Would you want an Amazon drone flying around your house? Would you pay for a virtual Amazon Explore experience…and do you provide one? What do you think about paying with your palm? Feel free to let me and my readers know by commenting on this post.
Oh, one more thing: WordPress really changed its editor, and I’m not at all used to it…hope all of this works!
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* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. 
Shop ’til you help!
This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other organizations, begin your Amazon shopping from a link on their sites: Amazon.com (Smile.Amazon.com)
I Love My Kindle 