Amazon's '12 Days of Deals' will continue by 17 December

Amazon is helping customers get into the holiday spirit with daily discounts across all its product categories -- it's all part of the "12 Days of Deals" promotion that started on the 7th December and will continue through December 17. 

Amazon promises to roll out a new themed-deal every day with at least five discounted products to buy at heavily discounted prices, but there will also be hundreds of Lightning Deals throughout the site as the promotion moves forward.

Amazon launches Black Friday deals store

The online retailer kicked off the first day of November with the launch of its Black Friday Deals store, which gives Prime members access to over 30,000 “Lightning Deals” 30 minutes early. Steve Shure, vice president for Amazon consumer marketing, said the company was “pulling out all of the stops” over holiday shopping. 

Amazon also outlined changes to its Electronics Holiday Gift Guide and Gift finder tool, which this year will offer 3-D images of gifts and unboxing videos. People can create a holiday shopping list via Amazon Echo and Alexa, the retailer’s cloud-based voice service, and order via voice control with a mobile app.

Amazon' Prime Day verses Black Friday

Amazon’s big “Prime Day” sales event had sent the online retailer’s sales spiking.  Amazon is detailing the impact of Prime Day by releasing its own internal metrics. According to the company, Amazon Prime Day broke sales records, even exceeding Black Friday 2014 sales, which had been the biggest Black Friday to date, notes Amazon.

Amazon's Latest Kindle Paperwhite Review:

Amazon has improved on last year's excellent Paperwhite e-reader with the sharper, higher resolution screen found in the step-up Kindle Voyage.

A smattering of new features enhance Amazon's already best-in-class content ecosystem. The built-in light isn't quite as good as the Voyage's, but it works well.

Amazon Echo Connected Speaker available For $180

This week, Amazon has opened up U.S. availability of its connected speaker-cum-virtual-assistant, the Echo. Previously it was limiting who could buy it to invite-only. It’s now put the speaker on general pre-order release, for $180, with a shipping date of July 14. The Echo is still only available in the U.S.

The ecommerce behemoth unveiled the Echo last November, packaging a voice assistant called Alexa in a 360-degree speaker/listening post which could be vocally commanded to play music, radio, news and answer queries such as what’s the local weather. It also has its own app.

Like Dropbox, Amazon is also offering Unlimited Cloud Drive Storage

Amazon is an e-commerce retailer formed originally to provide consumers with products in two segments. It offers users with merchandise and content purchased for resale from vendors and those offered by third-party sellers.

Operating in North American and International markets, Amazon provides its services through websites such as amazon.com and amazon.ca.  The next generation of file storage is in the cloud. With more consumers owning more computers, tablets, smartphones, and other electronic devices, it is no longer practical to keep all your files in one computer that you can't bring with you wherever you go.

Amazon recently announced two new unlimited storage plans to encourage users to store all their photos and files in its cloud.  The first plan — just for photos — costs $11.99 per year and the second "everything" plan costs $59.99 per year. Amazon's offering free three-month trials for both.

Amazon Fire TV With USB Storage and Wireless Headphones

Amazon recently announced that its streaming media players Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV stick will be soon receiving a software update that will deliver a series of new features, including support for expandable USB storage and wireless Bluetooth headphones on the Fire TV, the ability to watch via Wi-Fi that requires authentication on both devices, and more.

Additionally, the company says that the Fire TV Stick is now available in two new markets, like U.K., Germany and Austria.  The devices will be available in those new countries for pre-order today, and will begin shipping on April 15. Captive portal support will make the two devices the first streaming media players which offer the ability for users to watch via Wi-Fi that needs you to authenticate, Amazon notes. That includes places like hotels, airports or even college dorms, in some cases.

Amazon Web Services Launches WorkMail

Amazon Web Services, Amazon’s cloud computing business unit, announced on Wednesday WorkMail service which is a secure managed email and calendaring solution – a contemporary solution alongside Google Gmail and Calendar or Microsoft’s exchange products. It’s also a contemporary of Zimbra, an email product once owned by VMware.

WorkMail can be seen as an extension of a couple of recent AWS products that have had much more of an “end user” feel than its usual cloud computing solutions. Amazon WorkSpaces, a Desktop as a Service (DaaS) solution and Amazon Zocalo, AWS’ file sharing and synchronization product aimed squarely at competing with Box or Dropbox, are both much more mass market than other AWS products.

Amazon rolls out Kiva robots to cut operating cost

Amazon.com Inc has installed more than 15,000 robots across 10 U.S. warehouses, a move that promises to cut operating costs by one-fifth and get packages out the door more quickly in the run-up to Christmas. The orange 320-pound (145 kg) robots, which scoot around the floor on wheels, show how Amazon has adopted technology developed by Kiva Systems, a robotics company it bought for $775 million in 2012.

Amazon showcased to media on Sunday ahead of Cyber Monday, the biggest online shopping day of the year. The robots are designed to help the leading U.S. online retailer speed the time it takes to deliver items to customers and better compete with brick-and-mortar stores, where the bulk of Americans still do their shopping.

The robots also may help Amazon avoid the mishaps of last year's holiday season, when a surge of packages overwhelmed shipping and logistics company UPS and delayed the arrival of Christmas presents around the globe. Amazon offered shipping refunds and $20 gift cards to compensate customers. Amazon deployed the robots this summer, ahead of the key holiday quarter, when the company typically books about one-third of its annual revenue. The updated warehouses are in five states -- California, Texas, Florida, New Jersey and Washington. The move comes at a cost.

Amazon estimated in June 2013 that it would spend about $46 million to install Kiva robots at its warehouse in Ruskin, Florida, including $26.1 million for the equipment, according to company filings to local government. The Kiva robots have allowed Amazon to hold about 50 percent more items and shorten the time it takes to offer same-day delivery in several areas, said Dave Clark, senior vice president of worldwide operations and customer services.

At Amazon's warehouse in Tracy, California, workers stack goods in shelves carried by more than 1,500 Kiva robots, which use markings on the floor to navigate and form a "big block of inventory," Clark said. Squeezing the racks of items closely together eliminates the need for workers to navigate aisles to collect items ordered by consumers. Now, a worker calls for specific items and the robot steers itself to their particular work station.

Each robot can carry as much as 720 pounds. In some cases, the robots have allowed Amazon to get packages out the door in as little as 13 minutes from the pick stations, compared to about an hour and a half on average in older centers. "It's certainly proving out that it's justified itself," Clark said of the Kiva acquisition. "We're happy with the economics of it."