information analyst

Amazon announced Thursday it’s launching its own generative AI service through its cloud computing platform, targeting corporate customers who want to incorporate AI into their businesses, a split-off from other tech giants’ consumer-focused approaches to AI.

The AI service Amazon Bedrock offers companies tools to build and grow their own artificial intelligence applications designed for their business needs, according to an announcement from Amazon Web Services.

 

Via Gust MEES

Amazon is buying robot vacuum cleaner company iRobot in a deal valued at approximately $1.7 billion.  

iRobot is best known for the Roomba, the autonomous vacuum cleaner that finds its way around household obstacles to vacuum floors completely on its own. It also makes robot mop devices, too.

 

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https://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-innovative-technologies-and-developments/?&tag=Acquisitions

 

https://www.scoop.it/topic/21st-century-innovative-technologies-and-developments/?&tag=Amazon

 

Via Gust MEES

Amazon.com Inc.’s Dec. 30 announcement that it was acquiring 4-year-old podcast network Wondery has industry insiders again saying the medium could turn a corner in the new year. The investment follows Sirius XM Holdings Inc., Spotify Technology SA, and a string of others spending hundreds of millions of dollars to buy podcasting companies.

 

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https://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-innovative-technologies-and-developments/?&tag=Acquisitions

 

Via Gust MEES

À qui s’adresse la Lending Library ? Le gros lecteur se heurtera en quelques jours au quota imposé par Amazon et devra acheter ses ebooks au prix fort sur la boutique. Du coup, la Lending Library semble être une offre de découverte, plutôt à destination de clients Prime qui n’ont pas encore adopté de Kindle. En effet, la notification de l’offre dans les prochains jours par l’intermédiaire newsletter d’Amazon risque de générer des ventes de readers.

Via DV

Amazon kauft Roomba-Hersteller für 1,7 Milliarden Dollar
Amazon steigt in den Markt der Saugroboter ein und konnte sich dafür einen der größten Player der Szene sichern. Der Deal könnte den Markt für Haushaltsrobotik auf den Kopf stellen.

 

Learn more / En savoir plus / Mehr erfahren:

 

https://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-innovative-technologies-and-developments/?&tag=Acquisitions

 

https://www.scoop.it/topic/21st-century-innovative-technologies-and-developments/?&tag=Amazon

 

https://www.scoop.it/topic/21st-century-innovative-technologies-and-developments/?&tag=Roomba

 

Via Gust MEES

Those weird “loved ones come back from the dead to visit you” stunts pulled by celebrities like Kanye West may soon become a reality through your digital assistant.

At Amazon’s re:MARS conference, the company announced it’s working on a feature that can synthesize short audio clips of a person’s voice and then reprogram it as longer speech. Amazon’s Senior Vice President and Head Scientist for Alexa, Rohit Prasad, showed off a demonstration where, as TechCrunch described, “the voice of a deceased loved one (a grandmother, in this case), is used to read a grandson a bedtime story.”

 

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https://www.scoop.it/topic/21st-century-innovative-technologies-and-developments/?&tag=Amazon

 

 

Via Gust MEES

Half a decade ago, Jonathan Heiliger compared the world of Internet data centers to Fight Club.

It was the spring of 2011, and the giants of the Internet—including Google, Amazon, and Microsoft—were erecting a new kind of data center. Their online empires had grown so large that they could no longer rely on typical hardware from the likes of Dell, HP, and IBM. They needed hardware that was cheaper, more streamlined, and more malleable. So, behind the scenes, they designed this hardware from scratch and had it manufactured through little-known companies in Asia.

This shadow hardware market was rarely discussed in public. Companies like Google saw their latest data center hardware as a competitive advantage best kept secret from rivals. But then Facebook tore off the veil. It open sourced its latest server and data center designs, freely sharing them with the world under the aegis of a new organization called the Open Compute Project. “It’s time to stop treating data center design like Fight Club and demystify the way these things are built,” said Heiliger, then the vice president of technical operations at Facebook. 

Google was the first company to rethink data center design for the modern age.

With the Open Compute Project, Facebook aimed to create a whole community of companies that would freely share their data center designs, hoping to accelerate the evolution of Internet hardware and, thanks to the economies of scale, drive down the cost of this hardware. That, among other things, boosts the Facebook bottom line. It worked—in a very big way. Microsoft soon shared its designs too. Companies like HP and Quanta began selling this new breed of streamlined gear. And businesses as diverse as Rackspace and Goldman Sachs used this hardware to expand their own massive online operations. Even Apple—that bastion of secrecy—eventually joined the project.

Two big holdouts remained: Google and Amazon. But today, that number dropped to one. At the annual Open Compute Summit in San Jose, California, Google announced that it too has joined the project. And it’s already working with Facebook on a new piece of open source hardware.

Via Philippe J DEWOST