Two new Amazon Fire TV devices are reportedly headed our way

A new report from AFTVnews claims we’re getting more Amazon Fire TV options this year. There will be two new devices, supposedly, and one is coming next month. Both devices will have 4K HDR video support at 60 frames per second. The “mid-tier model,” which looks like a square Google Chromecast is the one we’re expecting in October and will reportedly be priced within the US$60 to $80 range.

Meanwhile, the more exciting model, which is expected to come out later this year or early in 2018, is considered the high-end Fire TV. It’ll reportedly have far-field microphones and an integrated speaker, meaning it might be able to support remote voice commands. With an LED light bar, it might mean this model gets Alexa support. The estimated price for this model is over $100.

Amazon Alexa adds kid-friendly skills, lets your child play with SpongeBob and Elmo

We haven’t really seen kid-related skills because of strict child privacy protection laws but Amazon has found a way to comply with the laws and encourage a new set of users to keep using its smart assistant and home speakers. The new Alexa skills rolling out in the US first will let kids play a SpongeBob game and an Elmo-related skill are debuting alongside a new Verified Parental Consent feature, where parents will need to approve use of the features via the Alexa companion app the first time the “kid skill” is enabled. Parents or guardians will need to enter a one-time password via SMS or phone or verify by credit card. It’s a one-time approval process. This new feature is sure to entice more companies itching to reach out to a younger demographic. And making it easier for children to access this tech will make them more reliant on them in the future

The new skills include a SpongeBob SquarePants game where kids need to take and relay increasingly difficult food orders to the staff that include the likes of SpongeBob, Squidward, and Mr. Krabs. For the Sesame Street’s skill, you get to play hide-and-seek with Elmo using audio clues to find out where he’s hiding. You can also practice the alphabet. On top of that, Amazon is launching its own Storytime skills that can read bedtime stories to kids from ages 5 to 12. The collection features stories read by Saturday Night Live’s Aidy Bryant and Tom Kenny, the voice of SpongeBob SquarePants.

Source: TechCrunch

Amazon and Microsoft collaborate to make Alexa and Cortana work together

It seems like an unlikely partnership but it’s been in the works for a while. Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos first broached the idea to Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella about having their digital assistants work together around a year ago. And it looks like we might see that happen soon. In the near future, later this year to be exact, we’d just have to utter the words, “Alexa, open Cortana” or “Cortana, open Alexa” to be able to work with both platforms. According to both companies, this integration will benefit both users of the respective digital assistants. Amazon users will get better access to Cortana’s deep integration with Office Suite just from talking to Amazon’s smart speakers. Microsoft’s AI will get access to Alexa’s 20,000 skills and make it easier to shop on Amazon.com.

As mentioned, the two digital assistants are expected to start talking to each other later in the year. Alexa on Cortana will be coming to Windows 10 PCs first and then later on to the Android and iOS apps. At first glance, it seems this could be seen as Microsoft and Amazon trying to gain an advantage in the digital assistant space. But both CEOs claim they are willing to work with Apple and Google to integrate Siri and Google Assistant—if both companies are open to that, that is. We can’t say that’ll be in the cards in our future, especially with Apple and Google being particularly protective of their properties. But we have seen stranger things happen.

Source: Engadget

iMCO Watch is the newest Alexa-powered smartwatch

You may or may not have heard of CoWatch, an Amazon Alexa-powered smartwatch that launched last year. The device just got rebranded and is now called iMCO Watch. It just launched in India via Yerha.com, an Indian e-commerce startup. The iMCO Watch also brings Alexa’s voice assistant feature to the wearable and will let you do what most smartwatches do, such as asking for the weather or controlling your smart home. It can be activated via a crown button on the side of the device or tapping on the Alexa icon on the display. You don’t get voice activation here, though. It runs on Cronologics OS, which is an Android-based operating system. It works for both Android and iOS but with the computing happening on the watch or the cloud, you really don’t need a phone for it to work all the time.

The iMCO Watch is made with mostly stainless steel and it sports a ceramic ring. The smartwatch also comes with water and dust resistance. It has a 400 x 400 pixel AMOLED display, 1.2GHz dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, 8GB onboard storage, and a slew of sensors, including an accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer, and heart rate sensor. It comes in Mineral Silver and Carbon Black for ₹14,990 (around CA$300).

Source: Android Authority