Monthly Archives: October 2019

Spook the heck out of the kids this Halloween with these Echo tricks (and treats).

It’s that time of year again — the holiday where kids dress up as monsters and Alexa comes out to scare. Yes, that’s right, Amazon’s voice assistant can help turn your smart home into the best Halloween house in the neighborhood.

Not only can you conjure up Halloween music and creepy sounds with Alexa, but you can also set up a haunted house-themed light setting. Here are all the ways Amazon Echo ($70 at Amazon) can make your home spooky on All Hallows’ Eve.

Play spooky sounds

It’s not Halloween without spooky sounds, and there are many Alexa skills that are designed for that purpose.

• Spooky Halloween Sounds will play a continuous loop of spooky sounds until you tell Alexa to stop. Just say “Alexa, start Spooky Halloween Sounds” to get started.
  
• Spooky Sounds plays 50 minutes of original spooky sounds (in a continuous loop), complete with an audio easter egg hidden within. Say “Alexa, open Spooky Sounds” to begin.
  
• Spooky Scream will play a random scream after a set time of your choosing. Say “Alexa, ask Spooky Scream to start in five minutes.” Turn up the volume and wait for your unknowing victim to fall right into your trap.

You can also request audio like the Spooky Sounds for Halloween EP on Spotify.

Play Halloween-themed games

If you’re looking for an eerie game to play, there are quite a few Alexa skills to choose from.

• The Magic Door is a popular interactive adventure game. If you take the Dark Forest Path, it will lead you to the Witch’s mansion in search of the Wise Wizard.
  
• Ghost Detector is exactly what it sounds like. You must detect and capture ghosts to earn Ghost Bux, which will let you purchase “improvements, gadgets and missions” to further gameplay.
  
• Haunted Adventure is just one of several spooky adventure games.
  
• Halloween Feel The Pressure is a spin-off of Feel The Pressure with a Halloween twist. You must answer questions based on a letter of the alphabet. You need 10 correct answers in a row to “save your soul.”

Tell scary stories

Want to hear something chilling, yet kid-friendly? Simply say “Alexa, tell me a spooky story” and you’ll hear a short story voiced by an actor. They’re pretty cheesy, so they are best for younger ears.

If you want to hear something a bit scarier, you can try the Scare Me skill. Just say “Alexa, ask Scare Me to tell me a scary story.” It’ll read you a short, two-sentence scary story.

Play Halloween music

Of course, one of Alexa’s best tricks this Halloween is thematic party music. You can easily make (or follow) a playlist with all your Halloween favorites on Amazon Music or Spotify — like this Halloween Party Soundtrack — and ask Alexa to play it. Or you can use the Halloween Music skill.

Check who’s at the door

Did the doorbell just ring, or was that the TV? Check if there are trick-or-treaters waiting with Alexa.

For this, you’ll need a video doorbell — like one from Ring, August Home or Nest — and a device where you can watch a video feed, such as the Echo Show or Echo Dot. If you have an Amazon Fire TV, you can use it to show live video feeds on your TV.

When you hear the doorbell, or think you hear it, ask Alexa to “Answer the front door” or “Show [camera name]” to see who’s there.

Create your own spooky scene

If you have smart bulbs and other smart devices around the house, you can use a SmartThings hub or a service like Yonomi to create scenes that turn your house from normal to Halloween-ready in seconds.

For instance, you could create a scene called Haunted House that:

• Turns the lights orange
  
• Toggles on a smart switch with a decoration plugged into it
  
• Plays a specific Halloween playlist over Sonos speakers

Then you just need to say, “Alexa, turn on the Haunted House.” Here are a few more recommendations from Yonomi.

Get costume ideas

If you still haven’t come up with a solid costume idea, Alexa can help. The Halloween Costume Ideas skill will serve up ideas until you find the right one.

Just say, “Alexa, open Halloween Costume Ideas.” Then answer the “yes” or “no” questions until you come across the perfect costume idea.

Tell Halloween jokes

Alexa has a few thematic jokes up its sleeve. Just say, “Alexa, tell me a Halloween joke.” One of the ones it gave me was, “What’s black and white and dead all over? A zombie in a tuxedo.”

These jokes won’t knock you off your feet, but your kids will probably like them.

When Halloween’s over, dive into the 10 weirdest things your Amazon Echo can do and read how Amazon Echo’s auto features will make your day smooth as buttah.

via:  cnet

Amazon is turning up the heat once again in the world of groceries, and specifically grocery delivery, to make its services more enticing in the face of competition from Walmart, as well as a host of delivery companies like Postmates. The company announced that it would make Amazon Fresh free to use for Prime members, removing the $14.99/month fee that it was charging for the service up to now.

The move is part of a bigger effort that Amazon is making into grocery delivery, which now covers some 2,000 cities when you combine Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh delivery locations. Alongside free delivery, Amazon is giving users one and two-hour delivery options for quicker turnarounds, and it’s making users’ local Whole Foods inventory available online and through the Amazon app.

Prime members who were already using Amazon’s grocery delivery services — either for Amazon’s own-branded service or to get Amazon-owned Whole Foods shopping delivered — will continue to get these, now free.

But Prime members who might be interested in trying this out for the first time will have to sign up here and wait for an invite. (“Given the rapid growth of grocery delivery we expect this will be a popular benefit,” Amazon explained about the waitlist.) It seems that the footprint for Amazon Fresh is currently quite small — around 20 cities — with the rest of that 2,000 covered by Whole Foods, so the sign-up process could also be one way for Amazon to decide where to roll out Amazon Fresh next.

“Prime members love the convenience of free grocery delivery on Amazon, which is why we’ve made Amazon Fresh a free benefit of Prime, saving customers $14.99 per month,” said Stephenie Landry, VP of Grocery Delivery, in a statement. “Grocery delivery is one of the fastest growing businesses at Amazon, and we think this will be one of the most-loved Prime benefits.”

Making Amazon Fresh free is the latest price tinkering (and reduction) that Amazon has made to drive more usage of the grocery service, while at the same time expanding the sweeteners it gives to consumers to lure them into Prime memberships. The $14.99/month fee was introduced back in 2016, itself a reduction on a $299/year fee that Amazon previously charged Amazon Fresh customers. Before that, Amazon charged a $99/year subscription plus separate delivery fees to use the service.

It’s not clear how many customers are already using Amazon Fresh, or whether the service is profitable for the company at this point. Notably, despite the boost of Amazon owning the Whole Foods chain of supermarkets, analysts earlier this year estimated that while Amazon was still seeing its grocery service growing, that growth was slowing. (To add to that, we’ve seen some consolidations that point to Amazon looking for ways to simplify — and reduce the cost of — its overall food and beverage offerings.)

Despite all this, in the U.S., about a year ago it was estimated in a separate report that Amazon accounted for about one-third of all grocery delivery in the U.S.

Grocery delivery is a tricky business, much more perishable than delivering a book or a piece of clothing or consumer electronics. But if done right, it represents a frequently recurring line of revenue. To add to that, Amazon has made fast and free delivery one of the major cornerstones of how it grows its business and attracts customers away from using other online shopping options, or visiting actual brick-and-mortar stores (an area where it looks like it may be expanding, too).

In other words, regardless of whether it is profitable or not, it makes sense that Amazon would invest in ways of trying to boost its grocery delivery service, making it free being perhaps the biggest boost yet (next stop: cash back when you use it?).

Simply put, it fits with the company’s more general economies-of-scale approach: bring in more users buying more groceries, and make up the margins in the latter to offset losses from the former.

But the move to make deliveries “free” — free, that is, for those who are already paying $12.99/month or $119/year for Amazon Prime — is a classic Amazon move not just to boost its own usage numbers of the service.

The company is facing persistent competition from a number of other companies also providing online grocery shopping and delivery. In the U.K., just about every large grocery chain offers this service directly (or through another non-Amazon partner). And in the U.S., Walmart announced just last month that it would be expanding its $98/year Delivery Unlimited service, which up until today would have been a cheaper deal than Amazon’s. Both Postmates and Doordash are among the delivery hopefuls who also have ambitions to make a dent in this area.

via:  techcrunch

Ford provided its first peek of a Mustang-inspired electric crossover nearly 14 months months. Now, it’s ready to show the world what “Mustang-inspired” means.

The automaker said Thursday it will debut the electric SUV on November 17 ahead of the LA Auto Show.

Not much is known about the electric SUV that is coming to market in 2020, despite dropping the occasional teaser image or hint. A new webpage launched recently, which provides few details, namely that Ford is targeting an EPA-estimated range of at least 300 miles. The look, specs and price will have to wait until at least the November 17 debut date.

What we do know is that Ford’s future (and certainly its CEO’s) is tied to the success of this shift to electrification. The Mustang-inspired SUV might not be the cornerstone to this strategy (an electric F150 probably deserves that designation), but it will be a critical piece.

Ford has historically backed hybrid technology. Back in 2016, Ford Chairman Bill Ford said at a Fortune event that he viewed plug-in hybrids as a transitional technology.

A lot has changed. Hybrids are still part of the mix. But in the past 18 months, Ford has put more emphasis on the development and production of all-electric vehicles.

In 2018, the company said it will invest $11 billion to add 16 all-electric vehicles within its global portfolio of 40 electrified vehicles through 2022.

Ford unveiled in September at the Frankfurt Motor Show a range of hybrid vehicles  as part of its plan to reach sales of 1 million electrified vehicles in Europe by the end of 2022.

It also invested in electric vehicle startup Rivian and locked in a deal with Volkswagen that covers a number of areas, including autonomy (via an investment by VW in Argo AI) and collaboration on development of electric vehicles. Ford will use Volkswagen’s MEB platform to develop “at least one” fully electric car for the European market that’s designed to be produced and sold at scale.

via:  TechCrunch

General Electric, one of the few big businesses that still pays out private pensions, said it will freeze pension plans for 20k US employees and offer pension buyouts to another 100k former employees.

Pensions are a pricey problem for GE: Its pension programs face a roughly $22B deficit. Icing these pensions will reduce that deficit by $8B, the company says.

Private pensions used to be HOT

American Express became the first US company to offer a private pension in 1875. By 1930, many of the country’s largest companies — Standard Oil, AT&T, Goodyear, GE — offered pension programs to their ’ployees.

Pensions — AKA “defined benefit” plans — became popular among both employers (who didn’t pay federal corporate income tax on them) and employees (who liked getting predictable retirement checks).

In 1975, 88% of private-sector employees with retirement plans had pensions — they were the rocks upon which Americans built their Jimmy Buffett-inspired retirement dreams.

But then prevalence of pensions plummeted: By 2005, just 33% of private-sector employees with retirement plans had pensions.

So, where-oh-where did all the pensions go?

To put it bluntly: They were 401(k)illed.

Pension-pocalypse came about largely by accident: In 1978, Congress added a new provision to the tax code — subsection 401(k) — that allowed wealthy executives a tax-free option to defer compensation.

The change was aimed at the 1% — and NOT meant to replace pensions — but the cost-saving benefits inadvertently inspired the Great Pension Pivot: In 5 years, nearly ½ of big biz was offering 401(k) programs — which were cheaper than pension programs.

Then, pension programs started FREEZING

In our new, 401(k)razy world, employees — not their employers, as before — are at risk when the markets take a turn for the worse.

This leaves pension-payers like GE with huge costs: GE’s pension obligations are the worst in corporate America, and last year it contributed $6B to try to reduce its deficit.

By freezing its pension program, GE will stop paying out benefits to 20k formerly pensioned employees in 2021 and force them to join its 401(k) program instead (it stopped accepting new pension participants in 2012).

GE joins a number of other big businesses that have rolled back their pension promises in recent years: UPS, AIG, IBM, Boeing, and The Washington Post all changed pension plans since 2014.

via:  thehustle.co