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Amazon today announced a lot of new products including the new Echo speaker line. And the products looks dramatically different. Gone are the cylinders. They’re spheres now and look like nothing else on the market. The lights are now on the bottom, while there are still rounded buttons on the top.

The Alexa software got an upgrade, too. The new capabilities allows it to become more personalized as it can now ask clarifying questions and then use this personalized data to interact with the user later on. When you ask Alexa to set the temperature to your ‘favorite setting,’ for example, she will now ask what that setting is. The real breakthrough, though, is the conversation mode. In today’s demo, the company showed how Alexa could work when you’re ordering a pizza, for example. One of the actors said she wasn’t that hungry and wanted a smaller pizza. Alexa automatically changed that order for her. The team calls this ‘natural turn taking.’

The new Echo is only $99 and combines the features of the past Echo and Echo Plus. The mid-range roofer shoots out the top while dual tweets are on the bottom. Like the Echo Plus before it, this one features additional connectivity shrives including a Zigbee hub and Sidewalk Bridge.

The Echo Dot is now, well, more of a sphere. It looks half the size of the full-size Echo and costs half as much at $49, or, $59 for the clock version. Just like the last version, this is marketed as a secondary Echo.

Image Credits: Amazon

Like the last generation, the Echo Dot line has a version for kids, too. This time around they come in fun animal prints and cost $59.99 and are equipped for use by children with special features turned on by default.

The $249 Echo Show 10 features 10-inch HD display, 13 MP camera, and a 2.1 speaker system. But the key feature is its swiveling base, which uses an Amazon-made CPU, to understand the room and move the display to where a person is standing (like the Facebook Portal). And like the last version, it supports a lot of different video services including Skype, and Zoom.

So this is crazy. Amazon’s new Echo Show 10 swivels on its base to follow you around the room. The on-board camera is capable of recognizing a person and spins around to follow them — essentially taking the person tracking feature found on Facebook’s Portal and Google’s Nest Hub Max to the next, creepier lever.

Amazon is quick to note — from a privacy perspective — that the device doesn’t identify people individually, so much as just recognizing the general shape of a person and spinning around in such a way that always keep the display facing them. Not sure how it works with multiple people, et all, but will be interesting to see in person. I’m also, frankly, wondering how useful a feature this is ultimately — and whether it’s worth that extra level of tracking.

Image Credits: Amazon

As the name implies, there’s a 10-inch HD touch display on board. That’s paired with a. 13-megapixel camera and a 2.1 audio system. Like the new Echo, it has Zigbee functionality built-in, so the device also serves as a smart home hub.

Amazon’s been adding a bunch of third-party software functionality to the Show in recent months, and the list now includes Zoom, Skype and, get this, Netflix. Those are all big wins int he era of working from home, but Netflix especially, since the Show was dealt a major blow when Google removed YouTube support from Echo devices.

The Echo Show 10 runs $250. That’s pretty expensive, as far as these smart screens go. I suspect a lot of what you’re paying for here is that pricy mechanism to follow you around as you move — for many, that addition is probably not worth the premium.

Ring built its entire business on reinventing the doorbell – and now it’s taking a similar approach to the humble home security camera, with the Ring Always Home Cam, set to be available sometime next year. You might not guess from its name, but this security camera is actually mobile: It’s a drone that flies autonomously throughout your home, to provide you with the view you want of whatever room you want, without having to have video cameras installed in multiple locations throughout your house.

The Always Home Cam is a diminutive drone that can be scheduled to fly preset paths, which you lay out as a user. The drone can’t actually be manually flown, and it begins recording only once its in flight (the camera lens is actually physically blocked while it’s docked) – both features the company says will help ensure it operates strictly with privacy in mind. Always Home Cam is also designed intentionally to produce an audible hum while in use, to alert anyone present that it’s actually moving around and recording.

As you’d expect, the Always Home Cam doesn’t have the exposed rotors you’d see on a drone designed for use in outdoor open spaces. It has a plastic border and grills that enclose those for safety. It’s also small, at 5″x 7″x7″, which is useful for safety of both people and household objects.

I spoke to Ring founder and CEO Jamie Siminoff about why they decided to create such an ambitious, unorthodox home security camera – especially given their track record of relatively down-to-Earth, tech-enabled versions of tried-and-tested home hardware like doorbells and floodlights. He said that it actually came out of user feedback – something he still personally pays close attention to, even now that Ring is part of the larger corporate apparatus of Amazon . Siminoff said that a lot of the feedback he was seeing was from customers who wished they’d either been home or been able to see when some specific thing happened at a specific place in their house, or that they wanted a camera for particular room, but only for certain times – and then a different camera in a different room for others.

“It’s not practical to have a camera at every angle in every room of the home,” he said. “Even if you had unlimited resources, I think it’s still not practical. What I love about the Always Home Cam is that it really does solve this problem of being one cam for all – it allows you to now see every angle of the home, in every part of the home.”

Drones are also not Ring’s main business, and yet the Always Home Cam will be available at the relatively low price of $249 when it becomes available, despite the technical challenges of creating a small aircraft able to operate indoors safely, and fully autonomously. I asked Siminoff how Ring was able to achieve that price point in a category that’s outside its core expertise, with a design developed fully in-house.

“As the technology has kind of aged, a lot of these parts come down in price,” he said. “There’s also a lot of price compression happening because auto manufacturers are using a lot of these parts now at higher volumes, because to have an autonomous drone, you need some similar things to autonomous cars. Obviously, it’s not the same exact parts, but so all of those costs have been coming down, and we were able to go with a fresh perspective to it. But I also challenged the team when we came up with this, that this has to be affordable.”

The Ring Always Home Cam will also work with Ring’s existing suite of products, including Ring Alarm, to automatically fly a pre-set path when an alarm is triggered. You’re able then to stream the video live to your mobile device via the Ring app. In many ways, it does seem like a natural extension of the Ring ecosystem of products and services, but at the same time, it also seems like something out of science fiction. I asked Siminoff if he thinks consumers are ready to take this kind of technology seriously as something that’s part of their daily lives.

“I think it is sort of something that is, in some ways, way out there,” he acknowledged. “What I love about it, though, is that it’s what happens when you just take the constraints away of this linear thinking. I love that we are doing stuff from really looking at the need backwards, and then what technology exists, and ask what can we build? It’s really exciting for me to be able to do somethin,g and put our stamp on something that is an industry first.”

Ring will be stepping up its efforts to make its security products secure for users by enabling end-to-end video encryption later this year. The company will be providing this toggle in a new page in tits app’s Control Center, which will provide more information about Ring’s current encryption practices, and measures to keep user video secure, until the end-to-end encryption feature goes live. Ring is also taking the covers off a range of new devices today – including its first drone – but Ring CEO and founder Jamie Siminoff says that this new security measure could actually make the biggest difference to its customers.

“[End-to-end encryption] could be our most important product that we’re sort of putting out there, because security and privacy, and user control are foundational to Ring, and continuing to push those further than even the industry, and really even pushing the res of the industry, is something I think that we have a responsibility to do.”

Siminoff also points to Ring’s introduction of mandatory two-factor authentication earlier this year as something that’s above and beyond the standard across the industry. I asked him them why not make end-to-end encryption for video on by default, with an opt-out option instead if users feel strongly that they don’t want to take part.

“Privacy, as you know, is really individualized – we see people have different needs,” he said. Just one example for end-to-end, is thatwhen you enable it, you cannot use your Alexa to say ‘Show me who’s at the front door,’ because of the physics of locking down to an end-to-end key. As soon as you do something like that, it would actually break what you’re trying to achieve. So it really is something that is optional, because it doesn’t fit every user in terms of the way in which they want to use the product. But there are some users  that really do want this type of security – so I think what you’re going to see from us in the future, and I hope the industry as well, is just really allowing people to dial in the security that they want, and having transparency, which is also with the Video Control Center that we’ve launched today to provide you with the knowledge of what’s happening with your data, in this case with Ring videos.”

Overall, Siminoff said that the company hopes through all of its products, to be able to provide its users to build the system that they want to use, its the way that they want to use it. The Alway Home Cam drone, he points out, is another expression of that, since it provides the potential to monitor every room in your home – but also the ability to be selective about when and where.

“I think it’s just about building the options to allow people to use technology – but use it comfortably, understand it, and control it,” he said.

Amazon -owned Ring is expanding from home and neighborhood security to the automative world, with three new products it debuted today at Amazon’s expansive devices and services extravaganza. These include Ring Car Alarm, Ring Car Cam, and Ring Car Connect – two new devices and one API/hardware combo aimed at automotive manufacturers, respectively. Each of these will be available beginning sometime next year.

“Truly since we started Ring, and even back in Doorbot days, people were asking for automotive security,” explained Ring CEO and founder Jamie Siminoff in an interview. “It was something that we always kind of had top of mind, but obviously we had to get a lot of other things done first – it does take time to build a product, and to do them right. So while it did take us some time to get into it, our mission is making neighborhoods safer, and a lot of the stuff that happens to cars happens in the neighborhood.”

Siminoff said that he’s especially pleased to be able to launch not just one, but a full suite of car security products that he feels covers the needs of just about any customer out there. Ring Car Alarm is an OBD-II wireless device that can detect any bumps while the car’s unoccupied, or even break-ins and when the car’s begin towed. Ring Car Cam is a security camera, which can work either via wifi, or LTE available via an add-on plan, and check for incidents while parked, or offer emergency crash detection and traffic stop recording when on the road. Finally, Ring Car Connect is an API and aftermarket device for carmakers that allows them to integrate a vehicle’s built-in cameras, and lock/unlock state.

I asked Siminoff why start right out the gate with three separate products, especially in a new market that Ring’s entering for the first time.

“As we started looking into it more, we realized that really, it wasn’t a one-size-fits all kind of product line, even to start,” he said. “We realized that it really was about trying to build more of a suite of products around the car. At Ring. we try to – and I won’t say we hit this 100% of time – but we’ve certainly tried to only launch something when it’s truly inventive, differentiated for the market, fits our mission and can really make a customer’s life better.”

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The products definitely span a range of price points – Ring Car Alarm will retail for $59.99, while Car Cam and Car Connect will both be $199.99. Ring Car Alarm is obviously aimed at the broadest swath of customers, and provides a fundamental feature set that can work in concert with the Ring app to hopefully provide deterrents to potential criminal activity around a user’s vehicle. The device sends alerts to the Ring app, and they can then trigger aa series if they want. Car Alarm can also be linked up to other Ring devices, or Amazon Alexa hardware, and Alexa will provide audible alerts of any bumps, break-ins or other events. Ring Car Alarm will require connectivity via Amazon Sidewalk, the low-bandwidth, and free wireless network protocol that Ring’s parent company is set to take live sometime later this year.

Ring Car Cam goes the extra mile of actually letting a user check in on their vehicle via video – provided they’re either within range of a wifi network, or connected via the optional built-in LTE with a companion plan. It also provides additional security features when the car in which it’s installed is actually in use. Ring’s Emergency Crash Assist feature will alert first responders to the car’s location whenever it detects what it determines to be a serious crash. Also, you can use the voice command “Alexa, I’m being pulled over” to trigger an automatic recording in case of a traffic stop, which is automatically uploaded to the cloud (again, provided you’ve got active connectivity.). On the privacy side, there’s a physical shutter on the camera itself for when you don’t want it in use, which also stops the mic from recording.

Finally, Ring Car Connect consists of an API that car manufacturers use to provide Ring customers access to mobile alerts for any detected events around their vehicle, or to watch footage recorded from their onboard cameras. This also allows access to information that wouldn’t be available with a strictly aftermarket setup – like whether the car is locked or unlocked, for instance. Ring’s first automaker partner for this is Tesla, which is enabling Ring Car Connect across the 3, X, S and Y models. Users will install an aftermarket device coming in 2021 for $199.99, but then they’ll be able to watch Tesla Sentry Mode footage, as well as video recorded while driving, directly in the Ring app.

Image Credits: Ring

Ring’s security ecosystem has grown from the humble doorbell, to whole-home (now, much more now) and exterior, to a full-fledged alarm service, and now to the car. It’s definitely not resting on its laurels. And it’s also releasing a $29.99 mailbox sensor, which will quite literally tell you when “You’ve got mail,” which is Iike a delightful little cherry on top.

At its annual hardware event, Amazon today announced new capabilities for its Alexa personal assistant that will allow it to become more personalized as it can now ask clarifying questions and then use this personalized data to interact with the user later on. In addition, Alex can now join a conversation, too, starting a mode where you don’t have to say ‘hey Alexa’ all the time. With that, multiple users can interact with Alexa and the system will chime in when it’s appropriate (or not — since we haven’t tested this yet).

As Amazon VP and head scientist Rohit Prasad noted, the system for asking questions and personalizing responses uses a deep learning-based approach that allows Alexa to acquire new concepts and actions based on what it learns from customers. Whatever it learns is personalized and only applies to this individual customer.

When you ask Alexa to set the temperature to your ‘favorite setting,’ for example, she will now ask what that setting is.

In addition, Alexa can now adapt its speaking style depending on the context, based on the team’s ability to better understand how to generate a natural-sounding voice for Alexa. In an example today, Amazon showed what that means when you ask it to play music for example, with Alex having a bit more pep in its voice compared to its regular, somewhat monotone voice.

The real breakthrough, though, is the conversation mode. In today’s demo, the company showed how Alexa could work when you’re ordering a pizza, for example. One of the actors said she wasn’t that hungry and wanted a smaller pizza. Alexa automatically changed that order for her. The team calls this ‘natural turn taking.’

Amazon today introduced a redesign of its best-selling smart speaker, the Echo Dot. The company is bringing a new spherical design to the Echo Dot, Echo Dot with Clock and a new Echo Dot Kids Edition — the latter which now features colorful animal character designs. Instead of a flatter, hockey puck-shaped device that can better be hidden on shelves, the updated Dot designs mean consumers will have to think more about where they’re placed in the room.

The Dot and Dot with Clock will come in Charcoal, Glacier White, and Twilight Blue colors. The Kids Edition will now be available with either a tiger or panda design to also make them feel more like room décor.

The devices will also include a 1.6-inch, front-firing speaker, producing crisp vocals and balanced bass for full sound, Amazon claims.

The actual functionality provided by the new Dot hasn’t changed as much. It still offers access to the Alexa smart assistant, music, skills, news, reminders, lists, alarms and more.

Kids Edition devices also come with kid-friendly responses, and allow kids to listen thousands of Audible books from brands like Disney, Nickelodeon, and National Geographic, among others.

Another new Alexa feature, Reading Sidekick, has been designed to complement kids’ reading routines, and helps them build fluency.

When this launches, Alexa will take turns reading from a supported book with the child then listen for quality of reading. It will offer encouragement when the child is reading well and support when the child struggles, Amazon says. Reading Sidekick at launch will work with hundreds of children’s books and will be available in preview for Amazon Kids+ families in the months ahead.

In another move to cater to parents, Amazon says the Amazon Kids parental controls will be expanded to work all over the house, not just on their Echo Dot Kids Edition. Plus, parents will be able to create an Alexa voice profile for their kids.

Once enabled, Alexa will shift to the Kids Alexa experience whenever it recognizes the child’s voice—on any device in the household—and then provide kid-friendly responses, games, skills, music, and more. Those families who subscribe to Amazon Kids+ will have access to all the kids’ favorite premium skills and Audible books, as part of that catalog.

A preview of Alexa voice profiles for kids will begin rolling out for Amazon Kids and Amazon Kids+ families in the coming months.

Echo Dot Kids Edition will be available for pre-order today for only $59.99 and will ship later this year.

The Echo Dot will be available for pre-order today for $49.99 and will ship later this year. The Echo Dot with clock option will cost $59.99.

Amazon kicked things off at today’s big (virtual) hardware event in Seattle by introducing a very new and very round take on the Echo. The biggest change appears to be aesthetic, turning the smart speaker into a big, fabric covered call. That’s a nice improvement from a sound perspective, doing a better job of offering fuller sound from all sides. It’s a design the company is carrying across the speaker line, including similarly shaped versions of the Dot.

The new smart speaker automatically tunes itself to the size and layout of your room, according to the company. It also features Zigbee and Bluetooth low energy built-in, serving as a smart home hub and essentially negating the need for the Echo Plus. Amazon Sidewalk is also built-in now, so the speaker works with the company’s new home networking system.

The blue light ring that lets you know the device is working has been moved to the bottom of the device, which appears to be a largely pragmatic choice, so as to not break up the all-over speaker design.

A number of top app makers have banded together to fight against Apple’s control of its App Store and, to a lesser extent, Google’s control of the Play Store — a topic of increased regulatory scrutiny in recent months. Today, 13 app publishers, including Epic Games, Deezer, Basecamp, Tile, Spotify and others, have launched the Coalition for App Fairness. The new organization formalizes efforts the companies already have underway that focus on either forcing app store providers to change their policies, or ultimately forcing the app stores into regulation.

Epic Games, for example, is currently involved in a lawsuit against Apple over the App Store’s commission guidelines. Basecamp’s launch of its Hey email app led to a public battle between the two after Apple blocked the app’s updates for its decision to not use Apple’s own in-app purchase platform. Other app makers in the group have through public statements previously spoken out against Apple’s practices, and some have also communicated their complaints to Congress.

Included in the new group of app makers are Basecamp, Blix, Blockchain.com, Deezer, Epic Games, the European Publishers Council, Match Group, News Media Europe, Prepear, Protonmail, SkyDemon, Spotify and Tile.

On the coalition’s website, the group details its key issues, which include anti-competitive practices, like the app stores’ 30% commission structure, and the inability to distribute software to billions of Apple devices through any other means but the App Store, which the group sees as an affront to personal freedom.

Google allows apps to be side-loaded, so it’s not as much of a target on this front. In fact, much of the focus of the coalition’s efforts have to do with Apple’s business, given its stricter guidelines.

Of course, much of Apple’s success in the app economy can be attributed to its tight controls over how apps are created, designed, reviewed and distributed. Its App Store is purged of junk and spam more often and app reviews are handled largely by humans, not automated tech. Apple app developers also have to abide by guidelines that control how their app should look and feel, what sort of content is allowed and how those apps should behave. Its rules around in-app purchases have also led to a customer experience where making purchases inside an app are as simple as pressing down your thumb or clicking a button, then looking at your phone to complete a transaction.

On the flip side, however, Apple’s guidelines don’t offer much freedom to businesses that have no need to rely on the App Store for things like customer acquisition, search ads or the handling of payments. They may also be capable of hosting their own app and services and their own infrastructure, but have no choice but to use Apple’s platform to reach iOS customers.

“As enforcers, regulators, and legislators around the world investigate Apple for its anti-competitive behavior, The Coalition for App Fairness will be the voice of app and game developers in the effort to protect consumer choice and create a level playing field for all,” said Horacio Gutierrez, head of Global Affairs and chief legal officer at Spotify, in a statement issued by the group on Thursday.

The group has also published a list of 10 “App Store Principles” it would like to see enacted industry-wide. These include the ability to distribute apps outside of app stores, protections from having their own data used against them to compete, timely access to developer documentation, the right to communicate with users through its app for legitimate business purposes, no requirements to use the app store’s payment systems, no requirements to pay unfair fees and more.

The members have also issued individual statements, which are available on the group’s website and, perhaps mostly importantly, they’ve launched a mechanism to recruit new members. App makers who feel similarly oppressed by Apple’s practices are able to fill out a form to request to join.

The organization says this represents “an open call to all developers, big and small, to join us.”

Apple didn’t directly comment on the group’s launch, but it did today release new resources, including a redesign of its About the App Store page that details its benefits, the addition of a page that focused specifically on developer benefits, an overview of the advantages provided by its app developer program and a new site that explains its Apple Video Partner program and how to apply.

Apple tends to not be transparent about some of its programs. Instead, it tends to brief press on background when its rules change (or it say, launches new websites…), instead of issuing public statements, writing blog posts, or issuing press releases. When reached for comment over App Store issues, Apple rarely goes on record.

But the company’s inner operations were revealed during the recent antitrust hearings, which brought to light how it cut a special deal with Amazon, how it determined which apps to commission and how it handled complex decisions — like banning an entire category of apps by claiming they were now a privacy threat, instead of offering an alternative path to remain in business.

The backlash over this behavior has been bubbling up for years and is now coming to a head thanks to the regulator investigations. Not all the companies fighting Apple are necessarily in it to save the little guy, however. Had Apple quietly cut special deals with Epic or Spotify too, you may have never heard from them about App Store abuses.

Twitter’s experiment to get people to actually read the content they’re sharing is going so well the company plans to expand it to the platform at large “very soon.”

In June, Twitter introduced a test feature on Android to promote “informed discussion” on the platform — something social media’s staccato conversational bursts are rarely conducive to.

The experimental prompt appeared for users who went to retweet an article they hadn’t clicked to open, and suggested they read before they retweet.

Twitter prompt

Twitter says the prompts worked, and users opened articles before sharing them 40% more often than they did without the nudge. Users in the test group apparently opened an article and then retweeted it 33% more than they did without the test prompt.

“It’s easy for articles to go viral on Twitter. At times, this can be great for sharing information, but can also be detrimental for discourse, especially if people haven’t read what they’re Tweeting,” Twitter Director of Product Management Suzanne Xie said.

It seems like a small product change, but steps like this — and ideally much bigger ones — could be key to shifting the social media landscape to something less toxic and reactionary. Other test prompts on Twitter and Instagram warn users before they share content that could be harmful or offensive.

After building platforms tuned to get users sharing and engaging as much as possible, introducing friction to that experience seems counterintuitive. But inspiring even just a moment of pause in user behavior might address a number of deeply entrenched social media woes.

Ridding platforms of their problems won’t be easy, particularly for companies that are seldom motivated to make meaningful changes. But reprogramming user behavior away from impulsivity could help undermine the virality of misinformation, harassment, hyper-polarization and other systemic issues that we’re now seeing seep across the thin barrier between online and offline life.